The censoring system on the BBS is wacked I think ... It just lopped off a huge amount of my comment. Oh well.

So I'm bidding on a laptop, and it's running a good $400 under retail near the end. Suddenly an eBay user with 0 history that is like two days old runs my bid up and it ends up at my max bid. Then another user that is older but only has two purchases ever (in over a year of existence) bids another $25, becoming the highest bidder, then within less than a minute retracts his bid (with the reason of "unable to contact seller" -- a retraction in less than a minute for that??). It could be totally innocent, but it certainly seems pretty darn suspicious. Fortunately someone legitimately outbid me -- I was glad to be out of it ... Last thing I want is a seller that might be pulling some crap receiving $1600 of my money. I just don't know that the risk of eBay is worth the payoff for big ticket items. How frustrating. For as popular as eBay is, it really is a lame system ... It could be so much better.

My biggest beef is the feedback system...I have seen many so called big dealers with hundreds of positive feedbacks...and so many seem so phony and obviously faked...someone must have a method of hacking/adding in a bunch of feedback from non-existant genuine users...

It seems to me that Ebay doesn't want the system to be better.

They should just make everyone use the "I'm willing to pay X" and the current max bidder knows that they are currently the highest bid and could have to pay up to the "X" value. They also need to limit the # of bids per day and remove the seller from knowing how much the current high bid is.

That 2 day old 0 feedback bidder sounds like a shill. I'm guessing the later bidder realised that, hence the retraction. Couldn't you have retracted your bid?

The only stuff I buy one there are items that I cannot but anywhere else (like on videogames) or if there is a buy it now with a good price.

When I sell on Ebay I have been setting the buy it now and starting bid price the same so if someone wants it they just pay the price and it's done.

I think the best thing Ebay could do is to make it harder to sign up and make people verify their info somehow to prevent people from signing up more than once.

Fortunately someone legitimately outbid me -- I was glad to be out of it ...

I must confess to being confused.

You placed a maximum bid amount of $1600 (?) and now you're upset because ??

It sold for more than you were willing to pay?
Somebody out-bid you?
Somebody bid and then changed their mind?

It's an auction. No guarantees. If you wanted it really really badly, then you should have made your max bid $2000. Looks like somebody wanted it more than you.

I have been using eBay pretty regularly for just about as long as they have been around, and am always baffled by the people who think it is being done all wrong. I think it's being run pretty damn well. People who don't like uncertainty should go down to their local retailer and just buy the stuff they want retail.

That said... I do have one idea for a change in eBay procedure that could work very well. A lot of people seem to be upset about the idea of bid sniping (not me -- I do it myself in an attempt to minimize the amount I pay. Sometimes I get out-sniped, and when that happens I have been known to send a congratulatory e-mail to the successful sniper. Hey, it's part of the fun and he beat me at my own game -- excellent!) Anyway, I have a simple method of stopping sniping: indeterminate auction end times. I do NOT advocate extending the auction as long as new bids come in. Instead, make the auction end time be a fixed time, give or take 5 minutes.

Simple, it would end sniping, and encourage people to make their maximum bids a reasonable amount right up front.

tanstaafl.

I think he is mad because it looks like the seller bid on their own item to run the price up.

I have to agree that I feel eBay is probably being misused. Some people make their living off eBay, just like some make their living off spam and spyware. They know the system and they know how to beat it. Stinks for the rest of us. Like every other facet of the Internet, eBay was so nice before it started being (potentially) abused by greed.

They should try to eliminate fake accounts, like msaeger said, but that may drive away potential buyers and sellers, which hurts their business.

And ooh, I hate electronic sniping (bids placed at the last millisecond by paid websites). Sure, if a human wants to schedule their day so they're in front of the computer for the last 5 minutes, then fine. I do that all the time. But tanstaafl's idea for variable ending time seems great to thwart "eSniping". Ah, but esnipers will find a way around it; it's their business, after all.

And a "weighted" feedback system would be great, like mschrag said. I hate checking someone's feedback to see that they sold hundreds of key chains to score that high feedback. And is it out of the question to assume people are selling items to themselves; to their alternate accounts? Why not. I'll bet that big eBay scammers have a massive web of buyer and seller accounts, giving eachother feedback to prepare for "the big hit" where they Dutch a bunch of plasma TVs. Seems the same concept as a single "company" registering thousands of "spammy" websites, all linking to eachother to increase their Google rateing. They know the system, and they know how to abuse it.

So, I just do what I've always done on eBay: Never buy anything I could get in a store, and only buy from "the normal guy who's been the only owner and now he's selling it to free up space in his basement." I have pretty good luck with that (yet keeping my fingers crossed that my $10 DSL modem comes in so I don't have to pay evil Sprint $200 for one).

Don't confuse problems of society with those of eBay the corporation. You'll find the same people there as you will everywhere else. Some of the suggestions, like random end times would be detrimental to sellers. And yes, a lot of people make a living form eBay. Honest livings. eBay has turned into an enormous global marketplace. It is not just a place to hock surplus or used items. Having a business of any size that dealt with commercial product, I would definitely have a corproate eBay account. If for nothing else than for the convenience of a few consumers - but certainly to get rid of refurbished goods returned from the channel, etc. HP does this, DELL does this, etc...

The last time I heard, the biggest money-maker on eBay was bringing in USD$100 MILLION *NET* per year. Has anyone looked at eBay's financials to find out how much they were making?

I believe auction extensions would be a good way to make things "fair" in light of sniping. I think a 2 minute extension would be fine. As a seller, this would be welcomed because it might lead to slightly higher bids. As a buyer... Well, I like to snipe a last minute bid to minimize the amount I'm spending. The key to buying on eBay is to only bid the maximum you're willing to pay. If you get the item, then congratulations. If not, then you didn't want it as badly as someone else - better luck next time.

Bruno

Basically, both people should have to submit feedback before either can see it.

What an excellent idea!

The only downside I can see is that eBay gives both the buyer and the seller the opportunity to respond to negative feedback - to explain whatever misunderstanding might have caused it. This would need to be accommodated somehow.

My primary reason for not advocating keeping the auction open as long as bids are coming in is one of logistics, both from the seller's and the buyer's point of view. As a buyer, I need to know when the auction ends -- maybe I'm looking at another auction as a fallback in case this one doesn't go my way. As a seller, I want my money at a reasonable and defined time.

I really don't feel that people are abusing eBay and taking advantage of loopholes. I see something I want, I bid on it. If I get it that's great. If not, oh well... Life goes on.

I like eBay!

tanstaafl.

I hate checking someone's feedback to see that they sold hundreds of key chains to score that high feedback

I think you're being overly paranoid here.

*I* think that somebody who made hundreds of people happy by selling, packaging up, and delivering on a timely basis hundreds of anything has earned my trust.

The amount of time and effort involved in accomplishing that is not such that it would be thrown away in the hopes of making a "big score."

If you're in doubt about a seller's character, read his feedback. Don't just look at his feedback score. Read the feedback. When you see over and over people saying things like "Great communication, fast shipping", and "Item arrived broken in the mail, and he took care of it, sent another immediately" you know you're dealing with a good person.

[brag] I have 100% positive feedback, and at least 105 of the 109 feedbacks I have mention "Fast pay" or "Instant payment" or "Lightning fast pay." On the basis of that feedback, I am considered a pretty good risk. [/brag]

In all of my transactions on eBay, I have only been burned one time. A seller stole his boss' user account, and sold the same $60 DVD player to half a dozen people before skipping town. Truth be told, I got more enjoyment out of bitching about being ripped off, writing threatening letters, commiserating with friends, etc., than I ever would have gotten from the DVD player itself.

So, don't worry so much about eBay things. I save so much money buying things on eBay that even if I did get cheated on some things, I'd still be 'way ahead of the game. And that's what you have to do: treat it as game and enjoy the experience as well as the merchandise.

tanstaafl.

Quote:
And ooh, I hate electronic sniping (bids placed at the last millisecond by paid websites).

I have to admit, I don't really understand the problem people have with 'sniping', e- or otherwise. Surely, if the auction ends at time X, any bids placed up to X are as valid as any other? It doesn't matter whether they were placed 5 days or 5 milliseconds before the end of the auction, they are all legal and the highest one wins. What difference does it make if the winning bid was placed by a proxy twice removed (once removed being the ebay system itself, of course), unless you're sitting there trying to outbid the current winner by the smallest possible increment, manually? Use the system, that's what it's there for

The only strategy that makes sense to me is simply to bid whatever you feel the item in question is worth to you, then go away and do something else until the auction ends. You can of course use minor psychological tricks like bidding odd numbers of pounds (or dollars, yen, whatever), not multiples of 2, 5, or 10, and add odd fractions. For example, $197.23, rather than $195. It works surprisingly often.

Bear in mind that even if the winner has used esnipe or something along those lines, they have still at some point decided the maximum price they're happy with and punched it in. In fact, they probably do exactly what I'm advocating, except they're using yet another machine to do it and paying two sets of commission!

The real problem I see with ebay nowadays is simply the overwhelming number of people who are happy to pay over the odds for something, assuming that because it's on ebay it must be a bargain. I've lost count of the number of things I've seen sell for more than I know for a fact they cost in the shops or online, just because the buyer couldn't be bothered to research their purchase properly. Good for sellers, bad for (sensible, ie cheap) buyers

pca

In general I find eBay useful for things no longer available retail, and almost useless for anything you can still buy elsewhere. There are probably still some bargains but generally it's not worth the time to look (for me).

Ah yes... the plasmas which had logos burnt into them from being left on all day with a nearly static image

When you say that you save money on eBay, is that from buying things listed as "new"?

Never.

I buy used stuff on eBay at a fraction of the price it cost new. I don't mind that someone else has used it before me. I mean, how worn-out is a Wilson Jones 3-hole model 314 "Hummer" paper punch likely to be?

Ummmm... bad example. I had to go to the hardware store and purchase a spring to replace a broken one. I had to make a drift to drive the punch out of the punch holder, then take a round file to repair the damage caused by driving it out, and then carefully file the spread-out end of the punch that caused the damage so I could reassemble it with the new spring.

But... I got a 3-hole punch that you can't buy new any more (I bought a new one back in 1980 and it cost nearly $70 back then, would no doubt cost twice that now) and my total expense for hole punch, shipping, and spring was $33 plus about 40 minutes of my time.

So was it it good deal? A lot of people would say no -- they expect to buy something on eBay and always have it be perfect. These people would resent having to overhaul the three-hole punch. On the other hand, I expect to have to work on stuff I buy on eBay.

It's all a matter of how you look at the world.

tanstaafl.

What, is this the Cadillac of hole punches?

Must be the red Swingline hole punch.

What, is this the Cadillac of hole punches?


Absolutely.

Those stupid little black narrow things they sell as hole punchers today are ridiculous -- maybe you can get six sheets of paper into them, but there is no adjustability for depth, and when you try to actually make the punch it skids all over your desk and the paper gets crooked and...

The Wilson Jones hole punch weighs 8 or 10 pounds, has a large no-slip footprint, will take 30 sheets at a time, has a long lever for, ummm... leverage, and the one on my desk has been in use now for 25 years, probably averaging several hundred sheets of paper a day.

When I went to work for the company before the one where I work now (it is sort of the same company, I guess -- my present company bought the previous one) one of the conditions of my accepting the job was they had to buy me that paper punch. It is that good.

tanstaafl.