posted on December 7, 1998 08:55:00 AM new
Tom: Thanks for this post as well. Our logic is that in a reserve auction you state the lowest price you would take. There are a couple of things you could do. One would be set your reserve at the lower price. This is probably the best idea. Another would be open the auction at the $160 price using the straight auction format. You mentioned you had several... why not try a Dutch auction? Finally, if you insist on the $180 reserve auction, you could encourage those who bid to contact you with any questions. I would be more explicit than this though. For instance, I would not guarantee that we would not end an auction early if it contained the text... email me for the reserve price, as this could be considered a form of manipulation. You could post the reserve publicaly in your auction as it does not provide an advantage to any particular bidder. Recognize that contact by the bidder to the buyer is beyond our control (bidders have to be able to contact buyers for additional information and we will not encroach upon this area of communication. However, efforts to encourage this, such as the direct offering by email of the reserve amount, may be force the end of the auction. Similiarly, text in the auction that says that the bidder is to disregard his failure to make the reserve price in bidding and should contact the seller directly, would be an obvious effort to go around the auction. I would personally suggest that you set the reserve at the lowest price you would accept. Tom, I understand totally where you are coming from -- this form for sales is very common on eBay and you expected it to be so on AU. It is not for several reasons. First, there is the cheat the auction out of its commission scam (Not accusing you, at all and our experience was that about 1 in 8 did report the sales and pay the commissions. I'm sure you'd be among those.) Second, the reason is simple equity. We didn't want to charge a higher listing fee for a higher-dollar item like ebay. For instance, if you listed this item with this reserve price on eBay, you'd be paying $2.00 for the listing fee (based on your $180 reserve)... whereas on AU, you pay the same quarter you'd pay if you were selling a $5.00 CD rom. (Your commission would be lower on AU too.) Finally, we also prefer that sellers use straight auctions rather than reserves as buyers typically prefer them. I might add that AU does allow the seller to place a single bid using the email addy the item was listed under. The seller would pay commissions on that amount. The seller, in these cases, actually "buys back" the item at auction. We stand forthrightly behind this right and because our feedback system is transactional, you need never worry about a negative feedback from those buyers you outbid in this instance. (If the high-bidder was higher than your single bid and complained, we would contact the bidder on your behalf to explain the situation.) neomax
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