E-bay tips (seriously)

[WezV]

Wez, I doubt someone would use another account to push the price up £6 mate.

that was my initial reaction as well.... but lets not forget that they only stopped when they had reached my maximum bid, whose to say it wouldnt have been more money if my maximum had been higher.   if they hadnt emailed me straight away with a second chance offer i dont think i would have been suspicious.  Hard to beleive that someone bids 3 times in the last hour of an auction then straight away turns around and says they dont want it.

but anyway, i won an auction on another pedal i was looking at so i will just go with that.  I still think i should report the incident to ebay and let them make the decisions

[sambo]

^Ah, I suppose.

Yeah handing it over to Ebay can do no harm really. And if something doesn't feel quite right then no point in taking the risk.


And Dave, you can simply ask the seller what the reserve price is. It says in the ebay FAQ or whatever that there is no problem doing that, and sellers are surprisingly willing to tell you in my experience. :)

P.S. Phil; Cannot emphasise enough how much I agree on the subject of early bidding. It annoys me SO much!  :twisted:

[dave_mc]

Yep, when you bid on a reserve price, if you bid below the reserve it registers your bid but says "reserve not met".  But if you bid over the reserve - say £500 when the reserve's £350 - your bid will register equal to the reserve price of £350.  Until someone else bids.

Bidding on a reserve is just a shot in the dark really - if you reckon something's worth £350 but currently standing at £100 with the reserve not met, then try, say, £250. An amount you'd be absolutely happy to pay if you had to.

I say it's worth sounding out reserves because a lot of people have very high reserves, which is dumb because they may receive no bids high enough (if everyone bids late). And having a reserve costs a fortune for the seller in listing fees, because they're based on both the reserve price and the final selling price.

I don't like reserves, as either a buyer or a seller.  I think it's better to just set your starting price as the minimum you'd accept, then hope it goes higher.  Unless you're brave enough to go the "99p starting price" route, which guarantees some bids but it's too risky for me.  :lol:

Thanks philly, great help as usual.

So basically when sounding out the reserve, you could bid pretty low (but higher than the existing bid) several times to try to get close... until you actually either unearth the real reserve price, or the price gets higher than you want to pay.

Correct?

^Ah, I suppose.

Yeah handing it over to Ebay can do no harm really. And if something doesn't feel quite right then no point in taking the risk.


And Dave, you can simply ask the seller what the reserve price is. It says in the ebay FAQ or whatever that there is no problem doing that, and sellers are surprisingly willing to tell you in my experience. :)

P.S. Phil; Cannot emphasise enough how much I agree on the subject of early bidding. It annoys me SO much!  :twisted:

thanks sam. i'd thought of that, but presumably there's nothing to stop them telling you a price higher than the actual reserve? then again, if no-one outbids you, you'd get it for the actual reserve price anyway, presumably.

bit late though, i already messaged the dude, don't like to message him again until he answers. :)

thanks guys, i appreciate this. You're definitely helping me a lot so far, i feel now i have a rough idea as to what's going on.

just one last thing (i think!)... suppose the price stays static for several hours (or days)... does this mean no-one has bid higher, or does it mean that someone may have entered a higher price, but it just hasn't shown up yet? do bids always show up, basically? (that made more sense in my head... hopefully you understand what i mean)

:)

[noodleplugerine]

Bids allways show up.

The auction would normally state the current highest bidder - and if you are a bidder, it would certainly tell you if you were outbid.

if it didn't - Then nobody would ever bid more than once :P

[sambo]

^Yup.

Automatic bids work just like manual ones, in that they will show up as the highest bid in exactly the same way.

[dave_mc]

ok, thanks guys. That helps a lot. :)

[Philly Q]

So basically when sounding out the reserve, you could bid pretty low (but higher than the existing bid) several times to try to get close... until you actually either unearth the real reserve price, or the price gets higher than you want to pay.

Correct?

Correct!  :D  

And as Sam said, you can always try asking.  I quite often end up having long email exchanges with prospective buyers asking loads of questions - then they don't bid.  :lol:  :roll:  The only thing I can't stand is when someone asks to end an auction early.

[WezV]

 The only thing I can't stand is when someone asks to end an auction early.

I find it even worse when they ask me to stop a BIN auction early - sure, pay the buy it now price!!!

[mikeluke]

Back to the pedal question - lowish value item - suggests to me that the seller got a mate to bid it up a few ££ in the hope that the last minute bidders would come in and top the price - then when it didn't happen the seller needs to take the hit and offload it to the next guy in the queue.

(Of course this 'getting a mate to bid it up' is based on a hypothetical scenario that none of us who sell on eBay will have ever used in the past.. Honest! No, really....)

 :D

On the last minute bidding issue - let's face it - why do folk bid at the last second? Because they are hoping to get the item for a 'bargain' price - we all like a good deal!

[dave_mc]

So basically when sounding out the reserve, you could bid pretty low (but higher than the existing bid) several times to try to get close... until you actually either unearth the real reserve price, or the price gets higher than you want to pay.

Correct?

Correct!  :D  

And as Sam said, you can always try asking.  I quite often end up having long email exchanges with prospective buyers asking loads of questions - then they don't bid.  :lol:  :roll:  The only thing I can't stand is when someone asks to end an auction early.

thanks!

things are looking not too great, though... one of the guys said he'd prefer to sell to someone with higher feedback (how the heck do i get feedback if no-one will sell to people with no feedback? buy loads of cheap things I don't even want?!?!   ) and also that postage to northern ireland would be extra (despite saying he'd ship to the UK, and last time I checked northern ireland was in the UK, that's the whole reason it's called the UK FFS!    :x ), while the other guy (with 0 feedback) hasn't even replied to my message, so i'm not chancing it.

Sorry for the rant, i was ill this morning, and now this. Not terribly pleased, you could say.  :lol:

[Philly Q]

Sounds like you're dealing with numbskulls, unfortunately, Dave.

I bought a guitar from Norn Iron just a few weks ago, and they got it to England next day with Parcelforce 24 (my local Parcelforce depot didn't actually succeed in delivering it to me that day, but that's because they're mindless lazy dolts...).

[Kilby]

The problem is that in NI almost every mainland UK (read English) supplier hits you with a huge extra charge, and the wierd thing is that they all use Parcelfarce who don't charge extra !

[dave_mc]

thanks for the commiserations, philly and rob... i guess they feel if they don't make so much profit on the item, they can make it on the postage. annoying, though.

I guess I'll wait a few days... been looking at second-hand tokai fender copies, they seem to come up reasonably frequently. so i'll not get too annoyed just yet. :)

[dave_mc]

haha, the guy who didn't answer me didn't get his reserve price. serves him right. and i'd have definitely paid more than the final (unsuccessful, i assume, since it didn't reach the reserve) bid.

schadenfreude is awesome.  :twisted:

[mikeluke]

Is that Gaelic?

:-)