posted on October 22, 2006 10:06:18 AM new
I'm about to leave here to go to the last day of an estate sale. We were there yesterday -- bought nothing -- daunted by the sheer size of the place. It was like trying to hold the ocean up to your lips and drink from it.
To begin with, there were at least 10,000 books. Not crappy books either; nearly all were non-fiction and about specific subject matter. Lots of dust jackets. Lots of books that looked like they'd never been cracked open. The bookies were going nuts trying to get through it all. Doubt any of them succeeded.
One bedroom was filled with nothing but Christmas villages. You know, Dept. 56 and that nonsense. They all had their boxes.
The house itself was truly bizarre, a monument to excess. Three huge Sub-Zero refrigerators. One in the kitchen, of course, but one near the garage and one (incongrously) near the bedroom wing as well. It was as if the occupant wanted to never be out of sight of food.
Racks of new-with-tags garments and maybe-worn-once garments. A definite fondness for Jaeger.
Unfortunately (and this is the bad part), almost nothing was priced, and the line was fifty people long since the organizer of this event had to price everything one by one.
You dream of finding a house full of gems, and when you do, an idiotically-designed checkout system keeps you from buying. We figured the wait was at least an hour for the folks at the end of the line. Many were giving up, just as we did after being in line for 10 minutes without moving forward one step.
Lessons learned: Don't YOU succumb to some stupid checkout system that keeps bidders from buying your stuff. Do big sellers use third-party checkouts? Yes, many of them do. Is it a poor idea, does it tee off buyers, and do many of those buyers leave, never to return? Yes, yes and yes.
fLufF
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[ edited by fluffythewondercat on Oct 22, 2006 10:09 AM ]
posted on October 22, 2006 10:27:09 AM new
Amen to all that, Fluffy. We had two estate sales here that still stand out in my mind for their awfulness:
One was a widow who'd been a compulsive shopper, buying every new gadget she saw, in triplicate, many clothes with tags still on them, AND the whole house smelled of an Estee Lauder perfume that was horrid. Every item in the house was permeated with that favorite smell of hers. I bought two reams of blank stationery to use in my printer. Even those sheets, two years later, carry the faint scent of that perfume.
The second was a sale like the one you're describing. We had to wait in line to get in, and there was a lot of old china and pottery, among many other things--and no prices! And when we learned the prices, they were asking triple what they should have, if they wanted to move the items. Those people continued their danged sale all summer, every weekend, hoping to sell the stuff and NEVER LOWERING THE PRICES.
I learned later that the owner of an antiques shop had told them how to price the items, and, you guessed it, anything not sold ended up in his shop. . . for less than those prices.
posted on October 22, 2006 11:05:53 AM new
And yet eBay sellers, even some of the biggest ones, do the same stupid things. Apparently big does not necessarily mean smart.
I bought a pair of Frye boots (tragically misdescribed, so went for cheap) from the biggest shoe seller on eBay. Went to pay for them and guess what? I couldn't. They run some kind of batching operation once an hour that prepares their Checkout. The message I got was something like "We're not ready to have you pay. Try back in an hour."
WTF? Wanna guess how many people back out at that point?
Hey guys, ever hear of the term "impulse purchase"? Why would you keep people from doing that?
It's just insane.
I go to Best Buy and if I have to wait in line for more than 60 seconds with my purchase, I start thinking about putting it back.
posted on October 22, 2006 12:39:25 PM new
When I buy something on eBay, I hate being redirected to a third party checkout. I don't use them on my auctions. Never will. I'm with you, fluffy, on the standing in line thing. I avoid shopping during the Christmas season like the plague! I do all my shopping on line.
posted on October 22, 2006 06:57:31 PM new
I'm with Fluff too - just paid for a number of eBay purchases. Ten of them had been paid immediately because the sellers allowed their invoices to be included in 'PayPal Payments to Multiple Sellers'. Six were paid when I felt like going through the hassle of logging into PayPal for each seller and following their checkout routine. The 2 who don't accept PayPal - well, I'll do my best -- I usually try to filter non-PayPal listings out of my searches.
posted on October 23, 2006 08:00:35 AM new
Yes I know her. She IS really sweet. Now my son is into estate sales because he found a cool picture. She's really nice to him too. He'll be in school. Yeah, I hope I see you there. I haven't seen you in so long.
