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E-Bay Going After Offline Deals
bmongar writes: "It seems that eBay is going after sellers that make contact with people who bid on their items who were not the winners. They want those companies to sell only to those people through eBay. ZDNet is running the story It seems to me that is only likely to discourage their best customers their powersellers. I think they may lose more money from this than they loose from offline deals." Sites like eBay operate on a surprising amount of trust -- I've had happy deals there, and an unhappy scam experience, too. Raise one pinky if you think they can really do much about offline sales, though.
If you've got an item for sale, build your customer base from people who bid on eBay auctions, and sell direct instead of via auction, then guess what? EBay doesn't get any money!
I've heard a few tales recently of sellers who were warned by eBay for listing their websites in their auction listings. They were allowed to link to their own sites, but disallowed from tagging the link with anything that mentioned that merchandise was available for sale on the site. So, "Visit www.junkforsuckers.com for more SUPER-RARE L@@K! trinkets!" at the end of an auction garnered a warning.
It's the same story as a lot of web companies: make things free/cheap/easy at first, to gather a userbase, and then crack down on the rules. Now that eBay is the most popular auction site around, they can afford to do this. I'm not saying that it's wrong either, but it's certainly not about decreasing online fraud -- rather, it's about increasing the bottom line.
Although the measures restricting sellers from contacting non-winning bidders probably have some profit motive behind them, there ARE potentially good reasons to advise against it. However, I don't feel its Ebay's place to restrict what two different people do offline. If fraud is rampant between non winning bidders and sellers, a warning to all bidders should be sufficient. This can be displayed whenever a bid is placed. I know, people probably won't read it, but when the call comes in to the fraud dept, Ebay can end the conversation quickly, alhtough they're still not liable for offline transactions anyways.
However, there is no reason a losing bidder can't contact the seller offline, especially if the seller is a legitimate business thats just selling for the purpose of drawing in new customers or selling off surplus/older equipment and features newer equipment offline from ebay. Auctions are very much a buyer beware excersize, but if the buyer is the one inititating the contact, thats good for them, good for the seller, and GOOD FOR EBAY as the seller will keep selling products on ebay because now not only do they pick up the top bidder as a customer, they will also drag in a number of potential customers as well.
-Restil
Play with my webcams and lights here
I can understand why ebay want's to do this. I've always had good experiences with ebay, but I've gotten emails for "offline" items myself. While I may not blame ebay for getting scammed in an unrelated offline item, the niave may, and it could greatly hurt ebay's reputation - even though they had nothing to do with it.
The only way I can see ebay pulling this off is by hiding all emails except for the highest bidder. If the other bidders have questions for the seller, it would have to go through a web-form that anonymized everything. This, of course, has it's own set of implications.
There is no longer anything that can be done with computers that is nontrivial and clearly legal. -- Paul Phillips
Is to decrease fraud in offline sales. It seems that a lot of fraud is hapening in these sales, because there isn't the whole post a comment thing. This gives them a way to deal with it. If someone does something that someone thinks is fraud in an offline sale, they can crack down and tell that person not to sell offline any more. It's really just fair warning. I think they know they shouldn't (and won't!) do anything about the majority of offline sellers who don't commit fraud and won't be complained about. Though I still don't think they should do it, I believe it is just standard legal cover-your-ass move.
eBay can't stop private individuals from completing private transactions, regardless of how they came into contact with each other. What if I meet some guy on eBay, we become friends, and two years later he sells me a car. Are they gonna want a cut then?
However, if a seller cancels an auction shortly before the close, then sells the item to whomever was the top bidder, thus bypassing eBay's fees, I think eBay has a right to go after him.
-- russ
-
The IHA Forums
Natural != (nontoxic || beneficial)
geez guys, isn't the point of EBay to give people a forum to sell things?
... oops!)
Personally, I think they could take advantage of this: Why don't they add a feature to sell to one of the loosers of the auction?
Here's a really simple example of how to do it: both the seller and the bidder click a little button that says "defer to next highest bidder."
Solves a bunch of problems actually (but will, of course, create new ones). The thing is, I believe that a step in this direction would impress the customer base of EBay and help them greatly. Good PR and all ya know. And I personally think it would be easier to work out the possible problems of this sort of innovation than it would be to go about things the way they are...
JDW
(I accidentally put this in the wrong place the first time