eBay Battles Power Sellers

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.

Comments

Alternatives...

[i.r.id10t]

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.

Re:Alternatives...

[segfaultcoredump]

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.

Re:Alternatives...

[ftobin]

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.

Re:Ebay isn't the only player in that area

[Grishnakh]

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.