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E-Bay Going After Offline Deals

Posted by ryuzaki0 on from the hey-you-come-back-here-with-that dept.

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.

2 of 76 comments (clear)

  1. Private Individuals by rabtech · · Score: 5

    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

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    The IHA Forums

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    Natural != (nontoxic || beneficial)
  2. Why not change the system? by jdwilso2 · · Score: 5

    geez guys, isn't the point of EBay to give people a forum to sell things?

    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 ... oops!)