posted on December 4, 2001 09:04:50 AM new
Just curious if this was against ebay's TOS - contacting a seller, 2nd hi bidder, etc through their easily accessible email addresses. This week I bot a cable modem (to replace the soon-to-be-late-lamented-Excite) and also sold a second copy of a spendy paperback to the second hi bidder, who was only too happy to send me a MO.
Is there an underground market in selling to people of OTHER auctions, etc. I'm sure ebay would froth at the mouth at the thought of loosing a comish, but what can they do?
Terry
posted on December 4, 2001 09:54:07 AM new
> 2nd hi bidder, etc through their easily accessible email addresses.
If you look under your successful auction after 7 days, you will see a link called "See more options". Follow the link to sell to the second highest bidder. I think its a waste of time try to contact second highest bidder, but if you got time to waste...
posted on December 4, 2001 10:12:37 AM new
I'm puzzled why it's a waste of time... I sell used books one at a time. Sometimes I have more than one copy in similar, but not identical condition. I get a nice high bid and sell one copy to the high bidder, guy #1.
Guy #2 has bid at a buck less, which is still a perfectly ok amount. I contact guy #2 and sell to him, too. Double my sales and halve my ebay payout, no AW image hosting fee, since it's a MO there's no Paypal charge either. Actually I get more out of guy #2 than guy #1. Win-win. If I had three of 'em it'd be win-win-win.
posted on December 4, 2001 10:21:01 AM new
Wait until some bidder turns you in for spam (or some eBay violation) and your account is suspended. Then you'll be making NO MONEY. If you sell unique items contacting the second bidder may work for you. But it is a waste of time for me since the buyer has already bid on a similar item elsewhere if they really want it.
posted on December 4, 2001 10:29:25 AM new
It's a violation of several ebay rules. First of all it's fee avoidance which includes "Items offered for direct sale (not through eBay)" Secondly, any unsolicited sales offer violates ebay's anti-spam rules. Third, if you contact any bidders on an active auction, it's considered auction interference. Any one of these are risky for two reasons: a) Violations that lose fees for ebay are taken very seriously by them and b) Sooner or later you'll contact the wrong person who will turn you in.
The worst they can do is suspend your account, temporarily or permanently. That's why some people who do this simply do it without any ebay account at all - ebay is pretty much powerless against them. Other folks seem to enjoy reinventing their ebay accounts over and over. Ebay has been making changes over the years to block this sort of "fee leakage." As you discovered, it's still pretty easy to get around. It just depends on how willing you are to live with the risk and potential consequences. Speaking for myself, it's not worth the aggrevation to save on a few listing/final value fees.
posted on December 4, 2001 10:36:16 AM new
Terry, if what you said in your second post is what you're talking about, then that's not as risky. Selling a duplicate to the second highest bidder of your own auction - while technically against ebay's rules - is something that you can probably get away with. Of course if you have multiple copies of the same book in the same condition, why not just run it as a dutch auction?
Your first post implied that you might be thinking of expanding your operations to soliciting other ebay members outside of your own auctions - that's when it gets very dicy.
posted on December 4, 2001 01:53:11 PM new
Use a second email address to email the offer to the other bidder.
By-pass eBay at every opportunity if you want your small business to survive. eBay's rules are designed to serve ebay and their shareholders, not small business owners.
If you lose sales opportunities and revenues due to following ebay's rules it's your own fault.
Ebay will do nothing for you if their site changes put you out of business or eat more of your profit. eBay will not help you if your business fails.
It is YOUR business and YOUR customers, not eBay's.
posted on December 4, 2001 02:04:29 PM new
REAMOND is 100% correct. ebaY is out to enhance ebaY's bottom line, not yours. I grew tired of ebaY's rules and restrictions. I dumped them altogether a while back and my net profits are up roughly 35% since then. DO NOT let the fear of losing the almighty ebaY hold you back from enhancing YOUR bottom line.
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posted on December 4, 2001 03:36:34 PM new
Terry,
If your profit margin is so small that you are worried about the ebay fee then you must be working for pennies. Just find a better book to list and quit trying to beat the system for a few cents.
Jim
posted on December 4, 2001 06:35:37 PM new
freyj,
What I did was avoid a second auction fees on a $35 paperback that I bought for a couple bucks. Not a bad profit margin when you think about it, not that that matters a bit. But it seems to me that the freely available information is there to be used and I've done it both as a seller this week and as a buyer for an item that was badly listed and did not get a bid.
I frankly doubt that my *seller* was going to turn me in unless he had stock in ebay because his profit was increased. My costs were what the opening bid was plus shipping.
As a seller, why bother to relist when you have a perfectly good buyer hot for something sitting on your shelf gathering dust.
Or why complain to ebay if someone offers to buy what you were selling but didn't get a bid on?
Second, I also seriously doubt that my book buyer was going to turn me in for spam for a single email offering to sell him for his bid a product I owned that he wanted very badly.
Finally, I doubt very much that ebay wants to boot off someone who's generally paying fees to them. True, not as much as they could get if we all lined up like good little boys and girls and ponied up our bucks.
Terry
posted on December 4, 2001 06:59:10 PM new
Ebay will likely suspend you if they find out you email losing bidders with offers.
eBay doesn't suspend the seller because they will miss the fees from one sale, they are dearly afraid that everyone will start doing it and realize that eBay is just a venue for sellers to obtain buyers without paying fees for subsequent interaction.
eBay wants to be like the weigh stations on ancient trade routes. If you pass through their terrority, a tax must be paid.
So what happened to the weigh stations on these trade routes ? Most of them are now covered by sand. The wise ancient merchants by-passed these weigh stations as soon as they could figure out a way to do it.
