fluffythewondercat
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posted on March 22, 2007 09:54:19 PM new
Seriously. I wonder if some of my customers feel the same way.
Seems like every time I take the time to browse eBay and find something I want, it ends days and days from now. We all know there's no point in bidding NOW, and I actually have a life; I can't make a date with my computer to be there 2 days 8 hours 36 minutes from now. I missed out on five dresses in the last couple of weeks. And the sellers got less cash than they would have if they'd put a fixed price on each.
Cash to spend and no way to spend it. I'm not so much interested in getting a bargain as I am in finding the exact stuff I want.
Am I wasting my time shopping on eBay?
fLufF
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PIXIAMOM
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posted on March 22, 2007 10:44:08 PM new
You have plenty of options - you could shop in eBay express, or shop eBay stores, or click on the Buy It Now tab to exclude auction only items.
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fluffythewondercat
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posted on March 22, 2007 11:46:52 PM new
Those aren't options when the things I'm interested in only turn up in auction-style format.
Which is invariably the case.
I have a lavender Jones New York no-iron shirt that is the best shirt I've ever owned. Looks great. Comfy. Goes with everything. I'd like a half-dozen more. I don't even care what color. *Occasionally* one wanders across eBay. In auction format.
For many years my listings were all auction-style. Amidst "I missed the end of the auction" complaints, I added fixed price and slowly increased it until it is now about 50% of my listings. I'm not kidding when I say that a lot of money is being left on the table by auction-style listers; you wouldn't *believe* some of the prices paid me by people who were just thrilled they didn't have to wait for the end of an auction.
I don't get it. If things are tough in the clothing category (and I've no reason to expect otherwise), why not list fixed price and enable best offer?
fLufF
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mingotree
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posted on March 23, 2007 12:23:14 AM new
Why not just put in a bid for the highest amount you're willing to pay?
Then if you win you get an email. Surely you must check emails every day?
I don't get
""I missed out on five dresses in the last couple of weeks. And the sellers got less cash than they would have if they'd put a fixed price on each.""
How do you know they got less? Why would they be assured that the fixed price item would sell? Or sell for more?
Why didn't you bid higher?
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PIXIAMOM
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posted on March 23, 2007 02:17:48 AM new
For unique, or hard to find items, I agree. I had to pay over $300 for a had-to-have stainless silverware set which should have sold for $75. Somebody else felt nearly as strongly as I did, which is the glory of auctions.
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northwoodsguy
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posted on March 23, 2007 05:18:24 AM new
Fluffy, you could use a sniping service,
such as www.esnipe.com . You wouldn't have to be at your computer when the auction ended....you could be asleep, at dinner, or literally half way 'round the world.
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photosensitive
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posted on March 23, 2007 05:56:00 AM new
I LOVE eSnipe. Never bid before the end of auctions. Set my top bid and let it go. It is well worth the fee not to get up at 3:00 a.m. as I once did to bid on an international auction.
-----o----o----o----o----o----o----o----o
“The illiterate of the future will be the person ignorant of the use of the camera as well as of the pen.”
Maholy-Nagy, Vision in Motion, 1947
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ladyjewels2000
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posted on March 23, 2007 06:57:16 AM new
Yes if you don't want to bid early use e-snipe. It's great and I think they give you a free trail too. Even if they don't - it's cheap and very easy to use. I used it twice day before yesterday. Won one lost one but I got the one I really wanted.
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PIXIAMOM
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posted on March 23, 2007 07:06:13 AM new
I added a buy it now to 50 auctions on 20 cent listing day. I lowered the starting price by a dollar and set the BIN at $1 higher than opening bid. Disaster! Sold one of the 50. The other auctions without BIN did better.
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fluffythewondercat
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posted on March 23, 2007 07:40:29 AM new
I don't use automatic sniping services because in four days I will have forgotten about it altogether.
Really, this isn't so difficult, folks. Ideally I want to purchase something, pay for it, and several minutes later have some expectation it will arrive at my house in a reasonable period of time. Actually, it can take a couple of weeks in transit; I don't care about that. Just as long as I know it's coming. I am probably the only person buying on eBay who has never sent off a whiny Where Is My Item email.
To the person who said I should have bid more: You misunderstood. I didn't bid ANYTHING on those five dresses. There wouldn't have been any point. I'd bid and I still wouldn't have the thing and there'd be a low probability of securing it because now the bid is out there. If you're saying I should make a stupidly-high bid... Am I willing to bid $100 on a dress that retails new for $40? No. I don't think anyone would.
On the other hand, as a fixed price item it would have sold because I would have bought it instantly. If you're listing the kind of dress I'm looking for and it's in my size, I'll pay you faster than you can say "Meg Whitman's gazillion-acre ranch in Colorado."
I'm a busy person. If I go to all the trouble of searching for stuff and acting on the few results that match my parameters, I want that effort to pay off. I don't have a job where I can sit at a desk and check eBay every 15 minutes while I'm pretending to be working.
What REALLY doesn't make any sense about how many clothing sellers list is that they're starting stuff typically at some price between 99 cents and $30, so it's not like they're saving a bunch of money on fees by doing it auction-style. And that difference could be more than made up for by pricing the item a bit higher and offering Best Offer.
Look. By listing something auction-style, you are saying, "I don't want to cap the upside potential of this piece." That's fine, but do you really think everything you list is going to ignite a bidding war? List it FP, take your profit and move on.
fLufF
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[ edited by fluffythewondercat on Mar 23, 2007 07:41 AM ]
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neglus
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posted on March 23, 2007 07:48:20 AM new
I agree..tell it to Meg. She seems to think the essence of ebay is the magic of auctions. There are items that fit the auction format, but there are items that do not.
I'd say clothing,jewelry, and new personal, household and electronic items are items that are best suited for the FP format. I think that's where they were going with Ebay Express but screwed it up.
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http://stores.ebay.com/Moody-Mommys-Marvelous-Postcards?refid=store
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mingotree
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posted on March 23, 2007 08:04:56 AM new
""To the person who said I should have bid more: You misunderstood. I didn't bid ANYTHING on those five dresses. There wouldn't have been any point. I'd bid and I still wouldn't have the thing and there'd be a low probability of securing it because now the bid is out there."""
(well, you can't win anything if you don't bid????)
""If you're saying I should make a stupidly-high bid ""
(no, I said the highest amount you're willing to pay.)
""... Am I willing to bid $100 on a dress that retails new for $40? No. I don't think anyone would.
On the other hand, as a fixed price item it would have sold because I would have bought it instantly"""
(no matter what the price???)
Then there's BIN, Ebay stores and doing searches using "Ending soonest".
There's also stores where you buy instantly and take home instantly.
There's also non-ebay online stores where you pay instantly.
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hwahwa
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posted on March 23, 2007 08:07:34 AM new
Well,if Ebay makes BUY It NOW free instead of nickel and dime us to death,even the trolls will go for it.
*
Lets all stop whining !
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amber
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posted on March 23, 2007 08:13:12 AM new
There are some items I sell that I prefer to sell in an auction format. I listed a knitting magazine 3 times at $4.25 on special listing days, no takers. I was so sure it was a good magazine. Listed it on the last 20 cent listing day, and it sold for over $20. If I had done a BIN I would have put it at $4.25, and lost a lot, especially as I had 2 copies, and sold the other one with a second chance offer.
I have a lot of regular buyers, and having to wait for the auction to end doesn't seem to bother them at all, and it means I usually sell for a better price.
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fluffythewondercat
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posted on March 23, 2007 08:14:49 AM new
in general I think clothing is more suited than jewelry, though both should do well. If a pair of earrings are post-style and I have pierced ears, I (and about 100 million other American women) could wear them. If a necklace is 18 inches long, there's a similarly-huge subset of the population that can wear it.
But if a shirt is one size smaller or one size larger than what I usually wear, it's useless. The dresses I shop for typically come in a size range of S, M, L, 1X, 2X, 3X. Which, on average, means five out of every six dresses I can't wear. And that's not even taking into account color and style.
I think I'll get out of the house today and go to Talbots. At least I have half a chance of finding a no-iron pinpoint Oxford shirt there in my size (and of paying through the nose for it).
flufF
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fluffythewondercat
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posted on March 23, 2007 08:23:43 AM new
I really should stop feeding the troll, but it's my day off, what the heck.
The problem with off-eBay shopping is that search engines are lousy for this kind of thing, worse even than eBay's Search.
Example:
I'm looking for a Jones New York Signature (that's the brand) no-iron cotton long-sleeved shirt. When using a search engine you're pretty safe putting the brand name in double quotes:
"Jones New York Signature"
But you can't be sure that no-iron or cotton or shirt will be the next word on a results page, so your query looks like this:
"Jones New York Signature" no-iron shirt
What you get, typically, are pages where there is one JNYS item (not a shirt) and a shirt in another brand (not no-iron or JNYS) and a no-iron item (not a shirt or JNYS).
Pointless.
fLufF
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hwahwa
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posted on March 23, 2007 08:43:20 AM new
a kinder and gentler troll!
I would exercise buy it now anyday!
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Lets all stop whining !
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sthoemke
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posted on March 23, 2007 11:21:17 AM new
Just use Proxy Bids!
http://pages.ebay.com/help/buy/proxy-bidding.html
Then you won't have to be there in 2 days 8 hours 36 minutes to make your bid.
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fluffythewondercat
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posted on March 23, 2007 12:20:59 PM new
Oh, for heaven's sake, Steve. I've been on eBay since it was AuctionWeb. I certainly know what a proxy bid is.
As a buying strategy it doesn't work. If you bid early, you're just driving the price up. Why would you want to do that?
Can you really tell me you haven't noticed that there's no point in bidding until the end of the auction? We had a thread about this just a few days ago.
fLufF
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jtomp
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posted on March 23, 2007 01:19:13 PM new
Hi Fluffy,
I don't get it. If you put a bid in for as much as you wish to spend when you find the item, you have a chance of winning it. If you don't put a bid in - no chance in He!!.
Guess it depends on how much you want that bargain.
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PIXIAMOM
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posted on March 23, 2007 01:44:59 PM new
I'm with Fluff on buying non-collectible stuff on eBay, I prefer BIN. If it's something I really need or want, I can rarely sit around waiting for an auction to close. Sniping is great but I don't want to put snipes on several comparable auctions in the hope I will win only one. Computer gear and scanners are especially hard to buy in auction format unless you want to collect the stuff!
[ edited by PIXIAMOM on Mar 23, 2007 01:46 PM ]
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ST0NEC0LD613
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posted on March 23, 2007 01:56:53 PM new
Why not just put in a bid for the highest amount you're willing to pay? Then if you win you get an email. Surely you must check emails every day?
I don't get
""I missed out on five dresses in the last couple of weeks. And the sellers got less cash than they would have if they'd put a fixed price on each.""
How do you know they got less? Why would they be assured that the fixed price item would sell? Or sell for more? Why didn't you bid higher?
This is the first thing that mingopig has posted all year that actually makes sense.
Personally, fluffy's original post makes her look like a bottom feeder. "I wanted the items, but they costed too much for me to place a bid. Why didn't the seller put it as fixed price at a much lower cost so I could buy them?"
[ edited by ST0NEC0LD613 on Mar 26, 2007 01:40 PM ]
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fluffythewondercat
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posted on March 23, 2007 02:12:42 PM new
Whee! That was fun. $137.48 cash to Talbots and I walked out with a bag full of beautiful shirts.
Not one penny to eBay sellers. Too bad, so sad.
And I even got to pick the colors I wanted. Wonderful spring colors, not last season's leftovers.
B&M shopping looks pretty good from where I sit.
fLufF
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fluffythewondercat
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posted on March 23, 2007 02:15:32 PM new
I agree..tell it to Meg. She seems to think the essence of ebay is the magic of auctions.
Actually, to be fair, it was auctions and fixed price listings that were creating the (don't hit me) vibrancy in the eBay marketplace. That's what Bill Cobb said.
fLufF
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PIXIAMOM
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posted on March 23, 2007 02:33:06 PM new
Out of curiosity and to aid in my procrastination of household chores, I cut and paste the search criteria (cut out the no-iron part) into Google Base and found three items
http://tinyurl.com/3x3ed3
[ edited by PIXIAMOM on Mar 23, 2007 02:33 PM ]
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fluffythewondercat
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posted on March 23, 2007 02:42:35 PM new
Bless you for trying, but they're all the wrong kind of shirt and none are in my size, anyway.
But you were sweet to look.
I think the answer to my original question:
Am I wasting my time trying to shop on eBay
..is, for many things, yes. It's a waste of time.
fLufF
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[ edited by fluffythewondercat on Mar 23, 2007 02:43 PM ]
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hwahwa
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posted on March 23, 2007 02:57:04 PM new
Now we have Kwan Yin,the female Buddha of Mercy on our forum.
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Lets all stop whining !
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Damariscotta
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posted on March 23, 2007 05:45:34 PM new
"...Seriously. I wonder if some of my customers feel the same way...."
You mean the demanding, PITA ones who can't understand why everyone can't cater to all their whims? Probably.
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fluffythewondercat
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posted on March 23, 2007 06:22:46 PM new
Interestingly, a seller in Florida just listed a dress I wanted. Auction-style, of course. I sent her email and said I'd buy it if she put a BIN on it. She did. I did.
I was surprised that she set the BIN at only two dollars more than her opening bid on the dress. I would have charged me more.
So I guess somebody doesn't mind dealing with PITA buyers, as you call me. It's just horrible what I'm trying to do to sellers: send them money.
fLufF
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deichen
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posted on March 23, 2007 06:40:21 PM new
Damariscotta:
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