posted on December 11, 2000 05:53:25 PM
I confess. eBay has been such an unpleasant pain to deal with in the last several months that I quit buying as well as selling.
However, there are a couple of books I am searching for, in a mild way; I'll get them at some point, at a price I want to pay, but there really isn't any urgency about it.
Tonight, while waiting for the rice to steam, I did a search on one of the names I am looking for -- and lo and behold, one auction popped up, ending December 14. And when I clicked on the auction listing, I was greeted with "This auction has been closed using Buy It Now." It actually closed three days ago and has probably been paid for by now.
Note that the listing showed up in the ACTIVE search list, with no indication that it was other than a normal listing, until I actually viewed the page.
Don't waste my time with completed auctions, eBay; when I search on active listings, I expect to see items that are still for sale!
SilkMoth
who will not be buying on eBay this time either
posted on December 11, 2000 08:42:42 PM
I have rather mixed emotions about BIN myself...and yet I can see why eBay has adopted this strategy of irritating the buyer.
I think a lot of buyers would *never* be aware of BIN unless eBay did what they are doing--they can run pop-ups and banners out the wazoo and people will ignore them, but shove it in their faces with a closed auction on an item they really wanted, and all of a sudden it's "Hey, what's this Buy It Now?"
It's also important to show the effectiveness of the program to non BIN *sellers* by continuing to feature the BIN sold items on the search pages--otherwise, how would anyone other than the original seller know the BIN's are actually moving? We've heard tales of items being listed with BIN and being snapped up in under an hour--with an item coming and going that fast it doesn't even make a blip on the average person's awareness, but let it sit there for a full week showing that it sold real quick and all of a sudden a lot of people are going to be impressed (and maybe be willing to pay for it).
If I was eBay I would continue irritating the buyers for a little while longer, and then instead of removing the BIN sold items from active auctions searches I'd develop a THIS ITEM SOLD IN 2 HOURS WITH BIN!(or whatever) logo to post on the title line so that buyers and sellers alike will see how the program is working.
posted on December 11, 2000 11:45:17 PM
I agree that the sold BIN items are pain to see as a buyer of unique items. But, on the other hand, as a seller I like it. My widgets are about 10 million of a kind, and I've gotten several emails now asking if I have any more. So now I can make 2 or 3 sales off of one listing. If you're not shopping for anything too special, you can do the same. Never hurts to ask! (Unless the seller is a blazed fire prick, which I have been running into more and more in the last few weeks, but that's another topic entirely!)
posted on December 12, 2000 12:25:20 AM
This is an email I got this afternoon from the manager of the Buy It Now program - basically, BINned items are no longer supposed to be appearing in the active listings:
"We had our folks check on this. For the auctions they reviewed, ended BIN items are indeed disappearing from search results, although it takes a couple of hours for search to index so that closed BIN items disappear completely (as you're aware, we have this issue today w/ our regular auctions). Good news, however, is that ended BIN items are not hanging around search results for days like it previously did."
I presume that, since when I just looked, there are old closed items in the active listing, that there is some cutoff date and they haven't gone back and removed the old ones, but will be doing it "now."
[ edited by Glenda on Dec 12, 2000 12:41 AM ]
posted on December 12, 2000 02:33:22 AM
Glenda - that's interesting. I've been seeing them all over the place. I will check it out and see if I see any difference. Thanks for sharing!
