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eBay Battles Power Sellers

Posted by ryuzaki0 on from the something-to-think-about dept.

DigitalDame2 writes "eBay power sellers, angered by the recent eBay policy changes, have been hitting back the auction site with listing boycotts and now with accusations of fake listings and forum censorship. EBay admitted that a "bug" in its system had accidentally placed listings from eBay-owned shopping.com onto eBay.com late Friday night. A California-based seller's new eBay listings did not allow users to actually bid on his items. "This guy has over 35,000 items. And there is no button for a 'buy it now' and no button for making a bid." As a result, sellers are threatening to take their complaints to the Federal Trade Commission, but eBay is not backing down." Normally I wouldn't really care, but I think this is interesting because eBay is so dominant in their field, that there is no real alternative. Watching how things like this play out is interesting to me because I want to believe that the internet will require everyone to be more responsible or lose. But the real question for me is at what point does total marketplace dominance trump that.

17 of 370 comments (clear)

  1. Alternatives... by i.r.id10t · · Score: 4, Informative

    Alternatives exist. I like gunbroker.com (aka forthehunt.com if your workplace filters the word "gun" in a url).

    No restrictions on listings, other than legal things (body parts, slavery), no listing fees unless the item is sold, the costs are fair, and NO SNIPING - true actions. If a bid happens in the last 15 minutes of listing time, it automatically extends to 15 minutes.

    --
    Don't blame me, I voted for Kodos
    1. Re:Alternatives... by segfaultcoredump · · Score: 4, Informative

      Here is the issue with sniping:

      On the buyers side, it rewards the person with the best timing. On the sellers side, it keeps the price lower that it should be.

      We are not talking about 'max bid' entries where two interested folks tell EBay what their max price is and it automatically gives it to the higher of the two at a price just above the loosers price. That is more or less OK by everybody's measure.

      We are talking about software run on the clients system (or a proxy system) where the max bids are secret. The packages then try and out-time each other at the very end. In this case, the auction goes not to the person who is willing to pay more, but to the person who manages to slip their bid in at the last second.

      Example: Bob and Jane both use EBays max bid option and put in a max bid of $100, but Bob entered his bid first. If they both used ebay's max bid, the auction would go to bob for $100. Simple enough.

      Enter the bid software. The auction is listed at $10 starting price. Neither users software mades a move until the last second, slipping in a bid for $11. The first one in wins, and if there is not enough time to put in a counter bid, the selling price is $11. (in reality, the software often puts in a bid 30 seconds or so too soon just in case the clock is off, which gives a chance for 2 or 3 rounds of counter bidding till the time is up).

      To the buyer, this is great. They were willing to pay $100 but got it for $11. To the seller this is horrid, they had two buyers willing to pay up to $100. To the looser this is also not optimal, since they would have been happy to pay up to $100.

      It no longer becomes an auction, it becomes a lottery. Add in a 5 minute auto-extend and sniping becomes impossible.

    2. Re:Alternatives... by alan_dershowitz · · Score: 2, Informative

      You're totally wrong, sniped auctions do not benefit the seller or the buyer. From the buyer perspective, most everyone is out for a deal, and part of the auction is reacting to other bids to see how much OTHERS are willing to pay. Sniping eliminates that. From a seller perspective, I can tell you that sniping drastically reduces your final selling price BECAUSE of the fact that buyers can't react to those final bids. The selling price gets comparatively jacked up in a non-sniped auction because most people do not really put in the maximum they are willing to pay because, frankly, they don't actually know that until they size up the other bids.

      I have seen this in practice. I bid primarily on classic video games, and some of that stuff is prime sniper material. It just so happens that I lost out on a particular game with niche appeal, about five or six times. The game typically went for around 250 dollars. Out of frustration at being sniped on several other auctions of late, I set up a bid snipe program and got the game for 150. The seller got totally screwed. I started sniping more and consistently found that it significantly reduced the final selling price.

      So what happens in a sniped auction is that the seller sells at a lower price, and a bunch of typical, non-sniping buyers are pissed off because the item actually sold at a lower price than they were willing to pay. There is nothing unfair about that, but the situation is generally unsatisfactory to everyone but the single sniper who wins the auction.

      I actually prefer the uBid method, where any bids in the last five minutes extend the bidding another fifteen. This is like a real auction, buyers are happy, sellers are happy, the only people who are unhappy in that scenario are the people who can't game the system anymore. And I don't have any sympathy for them.

    3. Re:Alternatives... by EggyToast · · Score: 2, Informative

      Agreed. Those who complain about sniping are looking for "deals" and don't understand how eBay works. They're already proxy bids and will automatically adjust to "just barely winning" when a competing bid comes in. If you *would have* paid $80 if you had 15 more minutes, but only bid 50, whose fault is it that you lost?

    4. Re:Alternatives... by MBGMorden · · Score: 2, Informative

      No, it's you who doesn't understand the sniping process. I've used several sniping programs, and NONE check the current bid and bid up in minimum increments. Heck if the item was at $12 but the max bid was $125, how many times do you think it is going to increment it by $1 with 30 seconds left? All of them work WITH the proxy bidding system. If the item is at $10, a sniping program doesn't come along and bid $11, it bids the max amount that the user set it up to bid, which works just like in the normal proxy system.

      --
      "People who think they know everything are very annoying to those of us who do."-Mark Twain
    5. Re:Alternatives... by Maxo-Texas · · Score: 2, Informative

      I must be misunderstanding something...

      I have bought about 60 items.

      I put in the maximum fair bid I'm willing to pay.

      Sometimes I'm outbid in the last few minutes (sometimes grossly outbid when two or three others get involved).
      Sometimes I get it for way under my bid.
      Sometimes I get it for above my starting bid but below my maximum bid.

      I like the automatic bidding. I've never been "sniped" for 50 cents or a dollar. The bid is almost always a few notches above and at what someone else considers a "fair" price.

      --
      She was like chocolate when she drank... semi-sweet at first and then increasingly bitter.
    6. Re:Alternatives... by MBGMorden · · Score: 2, Informative

      You're misunderstanding the way their FAQ is explaining it.

      Previous bidder bid a max of $45. Current price is $12. Your set your max price to $75.

      Shortly before it ends the program bids $75, but because of the proxy system the final price is $46.

      That is exactly what they say in their FAQ: "Your bid will be adjusted one bidding increment above the previous high bidder. Bidnapper uses the proxy bidding system".

      It doesn't go back and forth - it bids one time and one time only, it's just that the bid doesn't come in until the last minute. This is EXACTLY proxy system in action. The only thing bid sniping does is prevent the original bidder from saying: "You know what. I know I put down $45 but I think maybe I'd pay $80 for it.". Too late at that point. The bidding is over.

      --
      "People who think they know everything are very annoying to those of us who do."-Mark Twain
    7. Re:Alternatives... by NMerriam · · Score: 2, Informative

      You still have a maximum price that you're willing to pay for an item. Why would this change based on someone else's behavior?


      Because, separate from the maximum you're willing to pay under any circumstances, is your desire to get it at the least possible amount. That means being aware of competitors and their activities -- if someone else lists the same item for less money, I'd prefer to buy the second one at half price than to pay the maximum amount for the first. In between the beginning and end of a single auction, other information comes into the possession of both the buyers and the sellers which can cause the perceived value of the items to change.

      If 20 different people are selling an identical item in auctions that close during the next 6 hours, it would be stupid to put in your max allowable bid on the first item and then let the 10th one expire with no bids because everyone who needed one already "won" an earlier auction at their max allowable amount.
      --
      Recursive: Adj. See Recursive.
    8. Re:Alternatives... by ftobin · · Score: 3, Informative

      I am not sure that your observations are correct. Possible explanations, though, are that there is only one sniper for the item, or if there are multiple snipers, the inferior one is bidding lower than the non-sniper Ebay bidder, and the higher-bidding sniper puts in his bid before the inferior bidder. Either way, the mechanics of how sniping works is fairly simple; it is simply a last-second bid. We know that EBay takes the best bid of everyone's out there. We do not have to speculate that it works some other way.

      Yes, I agree sniping does not provide benefits for the seller, because the buyers do not have to display their hands. But it is fair to the seller. Sniping benefits all buyers by keeping prices lower. For me and other snipers, sniping software prevents people from bidding "in response to" my bids. I bid what I am willing to pay when I snipe, and I am simply not showing my hand until the last second. Sniping also prevents having a shill test my bid max by driving up the price artificially. When playing poker, do you want to be the first or last person in a round bidding? I am not a poker expert, but I would certainly guess "last", because you have more information - the other persons' bids.

      In any market, there is a price to be paid for showing your hand (your asking or bidding price). Sniping allows a bidder to not show his hand.

      Like I said, I would like to see you actually try sniping software, instead of attacking it without using it or knowing how it works. Or, name one sniping piece software or service which acts in the "rounds" fashion you described. I doubt one exists, as it would be an inferior product to one that simply enters a last minute bid. There is no benefit to incrementally bidding using sniping software; it is better to simply let EBay perform that for you.

  2. YouTube vid of padded auctions by Average_Joe_Sixpack · · Score: 1, Informative

    Cap of "padded" buy.com listings on ebay.

  3. Re:Ebay isn't the only player in that area by Grishnakh · · Score: 5, Informative

    Oh, please. Craigslist is only useful for items in your city (if you even live in a city large enough to have a Craigslist site). If you're trying to sell some small $50 item and want a nationwide or even international audience, you have to use Ebay. No one is going to search the hundreds of different Craigslist sites for items.

    CL is good if you're trying to sell some big, bulky item like a piece of furniture, which people generally would prefer to buy locally and pick up themselves. Ebay is terrible for things like that. Ebay is where you go for things like electronics and other things which are fairly easily shipped.

  4. Re:Matter of Capital, Profit & Competitiveness by Brian+Gordon · · Score: 2, Informative

    Slashdot is too used to railing on the FCC :) The FCC isn't involved here, it's the FTC.

  5. Re:Why no solid competitors? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1, Informative

    Auctions almost absolutely require 'marketshare'. They need to accumulate a minimum amount of buyers and sellers. If someplace has more buyers, it would be better to go there since there would be more people who might buy your wares. This provides a cascading effect.

  6. Re:The internet doesn't mean you have to play nice by Grishnakh · · Score: 2, Informative

    Ebay is a public company, so even if there's some virtuous people running the company, there's still the interest of the shareholders.

    Ebay is NOT run by virtuous people; it's run by weasels. To see this, just like at their recent rate increases: they sent out emails to all their members loudly proclaiming their new, lower listing fees (which in reality were only lowered a few percent--BFD), and saying NOTHING about any changes to their final value fees, which make up the bulk of the fees sellers pay. To see that, you had to go to their site and read through all the fine print, to find out the FV fees had increased a whopping 60%.

    In addition, Ebay has repeatedly had the gall to claim that their rate increases were somehow GOOD for the sellers! Since when does anyone consider it a benefit to pay more for something?

    Ebay is run by evil, lying, despicable people, make no mistake.

  7. There are many alternatives by Andyvan · · Score: 2, Informative
    They're all much smaller than EBay, but many of them have been growing very quickly the last 1 1/2 months.

    A good place for general online-selling information is http://powersellersunite.com/. They have a nice chart showing the number of listings on various sites (click on Auction Site Count under Free Auction Tools).

    The top sites:

  8. Re:I'm still lost... by Andyvan · · Score: 2, Informative
    And anybody that sells things on EBay knows that:
    • *some* buyers are scammers (it never arrived!)
    • *some* buyers are hyper-critical (it's not new (duh, it said that in the listing))
    • *some* buyers abuse the system (I've changed my mind, don't want it any more)
    • *some* buyers apparently don't know how to use email to see if the seller can satisfy them
    There are reports on forums that some buyers have already started trying to extort from sellers; they're under the mistaken impression that the no-negative-feedback rule has already taken effect.

    -- Andyvan

  9. Re:I'm still lost... by enjerth · · Score: 2, Informative

    How about the window for leaving feedback as a seller is 30 days, versus 60 or 90 days for a buyer? A seller should know within 30 days if the buyer is a deadbeat. After payment is made and cleared the bank, there's nothing more that the buyer is obligated to do.