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eBay hurts my caveman brain
Just took everything but the Wii game down from eBay. In the early part of the decade I was quite comfortable with eBay but I clearly don't understand this system any more; after four days my PS2 games each had zero bids but several "watchers". I am not sure what that means - I assume they were using an internal bookmarking service? - but whatever these "watchers" were doing they couldn't be bothered to make a $1 opening bid on any of the games, and that's just odious. No game for you. (Present company excluded, of course.)
The Wii game has nine watchers but three bids so that's OK. Seriously, though, is it just sniping? Has it advanced to such an art in the last few years that nobody bids like normal anymore?
This system would be less broken if any bid extended an auction's cutoff by an hour. I have been saying this for years. Bah.
The Wii game has nine watchers but three bids so that's OK. Seriously, though, is it just sniping? Has it advanced to such an art in the last few years that nobody bids like normal anymore?
This system would be less broken if any bid extended an auction's cutoff by an hour. I have been saying this for years. Bah.
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I agree and have advocated it myself -- extending the end time to 5 or 10 minutes after the last bid would totally kill the concept of last second sniping. I don't know if it's true (i haven't looked and really don't care) but I suspect there are people out there with special 'snipe-bot' programs so they don't have to be at their computer to snipe.
Somewhere I heard that the 'ideal' starting bid for an e-Bay item is about 60% of what you wish to sell it for. I don't know if this is true but this is generally the philosophy I take.
Another thing that bugs me about eBay is their association with PayPal. The rules are set up really flakey for sellers using PayPal when it comes to regular vs premium accounts. The problem goes something like this:
Regular account:
- You can receive money via PayPal WITHOUT a fee .. up to $500/month
- You can only receive money if the other PayPal user has their account directly connected to a bank account. If the buyer attempts to pay via credit card you can accept but ONLY if you upgrade your account to premium.
Premium account:
- You can accept payments via credit cards.
- ALL money received encounters a PayPal fee, not just money from credit card payments. (no limit per month)
eBay rules regarding receiving payment via PayPal:
- If you use the built-in 'accept PayPal' options you're supposed to accept all incoming payments, credit card or not.
- You're not supposed to state in your description that you won't accept credit card payments if using PayPal.
...
-- In short. you CAN use a regular account to accept bid money via paypal but it's impractical to do so because if some schmuck breaks out his credit card you're supposed to upgrade to premium.
-- Loophole. don't state you can pay via PayPal until AFTER the auction is over.
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Personal checks aren't very trustworthy and besides, who uses checks anymore (I pay most of my stuff on line or via debit card and maybe use about 5-to-10 checks PER YEAR).
Bank Checks and Money Orders are more trustworthy (unless they're from Canada) but people are lazy and they'll wait until you complain about nonpayment to drag their ass to the bank or post office to get one. You won't get your money until about a month after the auction. You also have to put up with lying excuse after excuse about little Timmy needing an operation and how you can trust them because they're so Christian.
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Other than that, I've had a few "I'm sorry I hit the bid button by mistake!!!!" people (yeah right) who want to back out. What can you do? You risk getting a false bad recommendation otherwise.
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