posted on June 25, 2001 10:49:15 PM
eBay's end of auction notices from earlier today are finally rolling in and I noticed they begin with a plug for BIN. Why are they doing this?
You have to scroll past the BIN ad to get to the relevant information about the transaction.
The exact text is:
*************************************
BUY IT NOW! eBay's new buyer feature
A NEW and EASY way to do all your shopping on eBay! With Buy It Now, you
can buy an item at a seller's specified price and immediately end an auction. To learn more, click here:
http://pages.ebay.com/services/buyandsell/buyitnow-buyer.html
**************************************
How about we finish this transaction before you send the buyer off to get something else?
Buried way down in the message is a by-the-way remark:
"Note to Bidders: If you're a winning bidder, send your payment to the seller." I mean, if you're not too busy reading our ads or telling your friends about eBay or anything.
Sigh. I suppose I should be grateful I received the EOA notice the same day.....or, at all. Hope the "winner bidders" can figure it out and not get so distracted by all the links that they forget to pay me.
posted on June 26, 2001 03:37:24 AM
i just noticed this with a batch ending tonight. seems like an odd time to tell buyers about bin, but whatever. as long as it's temporary, and as long as they don't replace it with *other* stuff and this becomes a regular 'feature' of eoas. i wouldn't particularly mind if they put it at the end, but i don't like it being the first thing in the email.
posted on June 26, 2001 04:20:54 AM
No doubt the eBay "bean counters" have said, "As soon as you get XX% of eBay bidders to use BIN at least once, you can get away with charging the sellers for the feature . . ."
posted on June 26, 2001 05:41:54 AM
ebay can include advertising in their EOA, but when a seller wants to let his buyer know about other items he offers, ebay gets its undies in a bunch.
