Posting eBay auction links: what's your opinion?

[artificer]

I think it is a good thing.

I was an eBay vendor for four years and like to think that I know a bit of how it works.

It is an auction and if you didn't win it is because at that time, at that place, for that sale someone wanted the goods more than you did. If it is only worth £50 to you and someone else bids 60, you really can't get upset - they wanted it more. People call themselves, serious bidders, but truth be told, all they were after was a bargain and they themselves were part of the process of running up the price when they gave up.

At this moment an eBay search for 'kilt' brings up 30,274 separate sales. That is without searching for 'highland', Celtic, Scotland or Scottish. Who is going to sit down and post all those sales for us - nobody. But the odd sale, that rare tartan kilt, that unique jacket, a particularly fine kilt pin - there is nothing wrong with bringing those to the attention of the membership.

Because there is no cabal, no dark underclass, no necromancers waiting to pounce on the good sales and steal them away from us. Just people who want them more than we do.

Regards

Chas

Here, Here!
People always rage and rail against "snipers" but the simple fact is THEIR bid, in the end, was higher than yours.
I simply don't have time to trawl the entire world's ebay auctions, and I rarely bid on things, but I DO like to see them.

Can a posting boost up the price of something that an xmarks member was potentially interested in? probably, but with thousands of members spread all over the world, we're probably already in a bidding war with our fellow forumites anyway.

I went with "depends/ circumstances"

Fakes and so on, I would like to see. Say someone sees a - a - a sgian, and the seller claims it belonged to King Aurthur, but one of our very knowledgeable members can tell it was made about the time of George the 8th (I am making this up), well, great, educational, I wasn't going to bid on it anyway, but I'd learn a bit about antique sgians.

...

As a bit of a forum hanger outer, if you don't like them, don't follow the links or don't open the threads. There is plenty of dreck on the internet, get over it.

***,

Again, fakes especially should be brought to light. There is a lot of mis-(or DIS-) information out there, and unscrupulous (or clueless) vendors cash in.

The one area I feel somewhat reluctant about is the "questionable craftsperson" type listing. Usually a sporran, almost always road-kill, frequently looking like an extra from a Mary Shelley book.
I'll admit that I have occasionally partaken in a laugh or two and some odd pieces, but I think it is beneath us to trash the work of others, whether we know them or not.

ith:

[Panache]

I think it is a good thing.

I was an eBay vendor for four years and like to think that I know a bit of how it works.

It is an auction and if you didn't win it is because at that time, at that place, for that sale someone wanted the goods more than you did. If it is only worth £50 to you and someone else bids 60, you really can't get upset - they wanted it more. People call themselves, serious bidders, but truth be told, all they were after was a bargain and they themselves were part of the process of running up the price when they gave up.

At this moment an eBay search for 'kilt' brings up 30,274 separate sales. That is without searching for 'highland', Celtic, Scotland or Scottish. Who is going to sit down and post all those sales for us - nobody. But the odd sale, that rare tartan kilt, that unique jacket, a particularly fine kilt pin - there is nothing wrong with bringing those to the attention of the membership.

Because there is no cabal, no dark underclass, no necromancers waiting to pounce on the good sales and steal them away from us. Just people who want them more than we do.

Regards

Chas

I agree with Chas. I have looked on E Bay for one of those wonderful old antique brass cantles among other highland kit and in general just give up. Too much stuff. I do appreciate those X Markers that spot something that I and the rabble might appreciate that would have gone unnoticed among the thousands of other offerings.


Cheers

Jamie

[English Bloke]

... I was an eBay vendor for four years and like to think that I know a bit of how it works.

... People call themselves, serious bidders, but truth be told, all they were after was a bargain ...

I bow to your greater experience Chas. I am far from a serious bidder but in regards to bargains, I thought that was the whole point!

[ForresterModern]

I voted good, despite the fact that I regulalry troll eBay for all manner of things, kilt related and not. I do come across some decent items and some crap, some stuff I may want to buy or at least attempt to, and others that I personally don't want but know someone else might be interested in and recognize it either has the potential to be a good deal or is simply something unique. Obviously if I am bidding on it I am not likely to post about it for fear of increasing the bidder pool and likely end price (duhhh), but in many ways that is the selfish way of looking at things. If someone else posts about it and "spoils" my find and chance for a "steal" then so be it. As others have said, it is an auction afterall, and may the highest bidder win. I have also sold items on ebay, and obviously as a seller would appreciate the increased exposure such a forum posting might bring.

But, dodgy ebay practices are out there as well, too many to really list. I have been schill bid up on a few items, only to stop bidding and let someone else win the item, and then get the "second offer" from the seller when the first bidder backs out or the seller finds an identical second item. I almost never bite on this as this is how the schills work----they have a second account bid you to your max and then the seller account gives you a "second chance" at the item at your max bid. Beware the practice. After I refuse I have seen the relisted item then sold for a lot less than my original max bid, even won a few that way at a better price. Definitely caveat emptor.

As far as trashing someone's artistic product is concerned, ebay is an open market and people can and will sell what they make whether it be quality, interesting, authentic or not. I think exposure to larger numbers of potential buyers and increased scrutiny, whether that comes with praise, questioning, or outright debunking, can only be a good thing for truth and honesty. As an artist of a sort myself I must be willing to accept critical observances along with the praises. And doing so on the forum also brings with it an educational factor that other less knowledgeable on a subject might benefit from and learn from if such criticism or acclaim comes from a more trusted source or authority on the forum. In doing so ti helps the forum members in general. And afterall, everyone has a right to his/her opinion----we are not, in ebay at least, restrained by the grandma rule # 1---if you cannot say something nice don't say anything at all.

[OrneryPiper]

Good, if it's a quality item, at a good price...I want to know about it!

[Chas]

Shill bidding has been mentioned as being rife on eBay. This might be so, although I doubt it. If it happens, it is committed by the small vendor. The person, who is selling one or two articles a week. Never by the big vendors - they have too much to loose.

eBay goes to great lengths to protect its integrity, because that is all it has. They rely on the millions of good sales and reputations to make their own profit.

A person may only have one (or control one) eBay account. An example - a man and a woman are both eBay vendors, they meet, they either marry or move in together, without warning eBay will close the newer account or both accounts. Why? Because it is reasonable to believe that two people who are co-habiting would have access to each other's accounts.

As far as eBay is concerned, there is a whole list of people who may not bid on your auctions:

Relatives, friends, anyone who lives in your house, anyone who lives in or on property you own, employees, co-workers (anyone who works for the same company at an equal or lower status, anyone who lives in your street (primarily your immediate neighbours) and anyone else they care to add to the list.

eBay retains information of every property you have ever lived in since you registered. If someone from a house you moved out of ten years ago bids on one of your auctions, that's shill bidding as far as they are concerned.

They retain information of every bid on every sale you have made. If a bidder regularly puts low bids in on your sales, they think it is shill bidding. This is sometimes used as a form of commercial sabotage. Someone pretending to make shill bids on your sales to get eBay to close your account.

If they believe that shill bidding has taken place, they slam your account shut with a bang. No communication, they don't tell you, they just do it. It is like being a ghost, you can wander round eBay, but you can do nothing - no bidding, no bookmarking, no updating status, no contacting winning bidders and no contacting eBay.

Depending on the size of the vendor (small, medium or large) is the length of the punishment time. When you realise that something has happened and email eBay, you will receive a very terse reply. They tell you that you have been shill bidding, that it is against their rules (in the UK they will also tell you that it is against the law) and that they will not discuss the matter for 7 days (small), or 14 days (medium), or 28 days (large). All of those punishment times are a minimum. They also say that if you contact them or anybody else, it will result in a lifetime ban and they will report the matter to the police.

While the punishment is happening, your buyers have paid PayPal and are waiting for their goods. 7Days, maybe OK, but 28 days and counting and eBay has not released the names and addresses to you yet - that's your reputation disappearing.

All your current sales are gone, but also your shop is emptied. Some large vendors have 10,000 different lines. There are vendor tools which allow you to populate a shop very quickly. You have 500 widgets, just set the quantity to 500 and press GO. Job Done. After the punishment, each of the 500 would have to be re-listed by hand, individually. No vendor tools till they can trust you again.

But far and away the biggest punishment is eBay fees. All new vendors start by paying the same percentage of final value as a fee. As time goes by and number of sales increase, as your reputation improves and the number of different lines you sell increases, that percentage comes down. After punishment time, the percentage is set back to square one, or at a higher level till such time as eBay trusts you again. It might take over two years to get back to original levels. For some large vendors this could amount to thousands of pounds a year. As I say the big vendors have too much to loose.

Regards

Chas

[be da veva]

I admit that I don't report back on ebay. But the classified adds are something else. No bidding, just contacting the vendors.
Be it kijiji, gumtree, etc.... First come, first serve.... That I don't mind.

[ForresterModern]

Chas, I am not sure anybody used the descriptor "rife" with regards to schill bidding practices (I believe I said a few times), and I recognize that ebay over the years has become much more sophisticated, but only because either they or the customers (who reported it) realized that they were being duped ort the system manipulated. I have been on ebay for over 10 years and this has been a slow evolution, so my experiences may no longer be the case, but that does not mean they do not still happen. Rules get set, people figure out the loopholes in the system and exploit them, then rules get changed to force compliance, then new loopholes are discovered. It is far from a perfect system, albeit getting to be a very complicated one to navigate as a seller anymore.
But I definitely remember one bicycle I was bidding on several years ago where after the first few bids by various members it came down to myself and a johnny-come-lately bidder the last 24 hours, parrying back and forth with the price of the bike going up from that point at around $400 to a final win price of over $800 by "johnny". The very next morning I get a notice from the seller that the buyer "johnny" had reneged and I got the "second chance offer" to buy the bike at my last bid of somewhere in the high $700 range. After thinking about it, and reviewing the bidding, I refused the offer and countered with an offer of what my first bid was after "johnny" entered the fray, somewhere in the mid $400 range, and I explained why, but the seller refused that second chance reply. Within 48 hours the bike was back up for auction again (it was a very unique bike and the same vendor), johnny showed up again and placed one late bid a few hours before the item closed but no more, and the item actually sold for less than what I had offered as my "second chance" price. Turns out that the seller had filed a "non-paying buyer" claim against the johnny in order to get out of the sellers fees from the first failed transaction and to list the bike again for free but then went back and dropped the complaint against johnny before the re-list auction was finished (otherwise johnny would not have been able to bid again on much of anything, let alone this same seller's same item). I let ebay know and they investigated and responded eventually to me that it was in their opinion a schill bidder although they could not verify a direct link between the two, other than the fact that johnny was bidding on a lot of items from that particular seller and not on much else, and that despite at least one other reneged auction payment to the same seller johnny had not gotten negative feedback on either of the two auctions. Needless to say, johnny disappeared shortly thereafter, although the seller maintained his membership at least for a little while longer. So eBay has had a long learning curve and things were not always so perfect.

I still shop, seek, and buy things off ebay regularly, mainly because with name brand items the quality is known and standardized and you can often get the same thing cheaper than retail or even online stores using a price-based search engine. One-off and used items, however, can be a crapshoot based on the honesty of the seller and description of the item, as even photos do not always demonstrate the true condition or value of many items.

But I certainly do not have any problem with people posting a thread about something they saw on ebay in some forum whether I am bidding on the item or not. I know what value I would place on the item, and if interested I bid that amount, but if it is valued by another bidder at a higher price and I lose the auction, I am rarely disappointed.