Is eBay Trying to Kill Auctions with Make Offer?

by: The End

This question is a re-tread from the long-ago past.
Ebay is stale. I haven't bought anything there in way over a year.
One time, long ago, I bought ALL of a particular item offered by several different accounts. Auction, buy it now,...every which way....Turns out, it was a team of people working in concert. There's no more of this item to be had. It's dry. Nothing good on the horizon.
If a new, fantastic venue came along......
But we know That will never happen......because the diseased corporate culture has a strangle hold on absolutely everything "money". So it's a dead end for us. A cul-de-sac of opportunity. It's O.K. if the world ends now. It's all re-treads from here on out.

by: Ming the Merciless

@ The end

"diseased" is exactly right, but I would add more.

Silicon Valley suffer from a trifecta of diseases: arrogance, omnipotence, and greed.

Social media, e commerce marketplaces, and all self described "tech" companies NEED to be regulated to protect consumers. We're seeing the results today of precisely why these bullies are inherently incapable of "self regulation."

by: Tiffee Jasso

Ebay's price suggestions do not work. Often I am told to reduce my price because such and such sells for so and so price. When I look at what they are suggesting I am generally in the middle of what is stated. The other problem is the suggested pricing does not take into consideration of whether it is a set or one item or the item that sold for $2.95 was glued back together. This past week I was told to lower a price on the a book because the highest one sold was $9.99. I thought that odd as it is a leather bound reference book. When I went on Ebay and took a look the cheapest one up for sale was $22.00 and so where did they get $9.99?  

by: LasVagueness

More 'hand-crafted by Millennials in a lab' digital detritus to ignore.

by: imbloated

I received an email from eBay today telling me my "buy it now" listing had few views and that the price was more than the average selling price. It said to lower the price to a certain amount. It included examples of similar listings that had lower prices. These were clickable so I clicked on each one. Each one led me to a totally blank page. I had researched the completed listings prior to listing, which is how I determined my price, so I was suspicious about their examples because it didn't match my research. The fact that they sent me FAKE examples amazes me.

by: Barbbie

If I do a bid, I would prefer to watch it to see where I am and attempt to fairly win it.
To me, this is just a way for an early end should the seller deem it necessary, I thought that was bad.
So I guess you also need to make a best offer if you make a bid? Sounds like a bunch of BS.

by: smallstuff

I relisted some fixed price listings and switched them to auctions on Monday or Tuesday.  The Best Offer option was automatically added in the relist window (yes, I am still using the old bulk relist function, not seller hub).  What used to happen was the best offer would go away and I would have to separately add a buy it now.  I was convinced this was a bug in the function, because the form wouldn't let me have both buy it now and best offer.  It took some work to get rid of the best offer function, but I was able to do that.  I'm not convinced this is a new feature ... but the best way to prevent it from happening is to offer buy it now for an auction.

by: Chicago48

This is another beta test by Ebay.  They're throwing everything up against the wall to see what sticks.
I haven't seen the Best offer YET in my auctions.  I'll take another look.  No other auction site does this crazy sh*t.  

by: Chicago48

It seems to me that the reason they're doing this is because with auctions we/they have to wait for the payment, which can take up to 7 days for the buyer to pay.  They're trying to figure out how to get people to pay immediately.  The only way is do away with auctions. Period.
Maybe Ebay should have a special and separate Auctions Site.  Only auctions.  Goodwill stores is ONLY auction.  Top Hatter is only auctions.  

by: Rexford

Pace post starts with "a bird in the hand is worth 2 in the bush" - thats why they did it.

I'm selling my birds for asking price on other sites and not dealing with the nonsense.  Also not dealing with the constant changes and disruption on those sites.  They are stable selling platforms.  Those sites feel like a partner, something that eBay haven't felt like in over 10 years.

by: frustrated

Race to the bottom.  Race to the bottom. Race to the bottom.  Race to the bottom. Race to the bottom.  Race to the bottom.

They should change the name of the site.

by: Whatever

"Sellers are losing more and more control of their businesses on eBay which is why they are flocking elsewhere."

And just exactly where would that be? I mean a place where your could actually sustain yourself? It's not like I haven't tried. I have. There is no other place to go if your locked out of Amazon.

Here's the problem - regardless of what the government says - people are still broke with the exception of the higher-ups who have money to spend. Or their dead broke and want to buy "chinese" priced american stuff.  Ebay's biggest mistake is flooding the site with chinese crap - 10 -20 -50 listings of the same item from the same seller who has hundreds of negatives. It's turned off too many people. Once ebay gets it into their thick heads and kicks them out they possibly might woo back the sellers with the truly unique items that made the site in the first place.

by: Chicago48

@Whatever, there are some new sites around but they're struggling to get eyeballs & sales.
Prairie Grit.  I was on the site for about a month, very small site, and they're now doing monthly subscriptions.
Artyah is like Etsy.
Everything but the House is an estate seller online.
Top Hatter.  
They're all fairly newer sites, and I've tried a few and got nowhere.  Incidentally, down the street the Plato's Closet  is going out of business, 70% off, selling out, so that tells you a lot about competition and race to the bottom prices.

by: Chicago48

Here's what Prairie Grit is charging to have a store & listings.  For $19 a month, 10 listings, which isn't anything near what Ebay offers.

Monthly Subscription Level # Listings
$19.99 (1st month free) Dabbler 10
$49.99 Hobby Junker 40
$69.99 Junker 80
$99.99 Wheeler Dealer 150
$159.99 Certified Picker 750
$199.99 Junk Drunk Unlimited

by: toolguy

I'm still a very happy eBay seller!

I LOVE MY JOB

by: RKTOYS

"Here's the problem - regardless of what the government says - people are still broke with the exception of the higher-ups who have money to spend. Or their dead broke and want to buy "chinese" priced american stuff."

That's been my take on it as well.  Alot of the stuff eBay does doesn't help, sure, but I've been seeing the same trend at conventions too.  At the convention level, we're being killed by rentierism.  There's show out in Pittsburgh that I had to stop attending because they raised booth fees (and ticket prices) by 90% in four years while sales fell 50%.  There's another show in Jersey that I've probably been to my last one because they've gone to a two-day format and tripled my costs overnight with no corresponding improvement in meager sales.  There's another in Harrisburg that I never even got to go to because they came out of the gate at top dollar and actively drew attendees away from the dealer room with sponsored events.  And so on.

What's sad is that I knew I could never open a physical storefront because of rentierism and had to settle for conventions and e-commerce.  You have to sell an awful lot of Batman figures to pay some greedy landlord to hold out his hand and take $8K+ every month.  Now that mentality has infected everywhere else and it feels like I work harder and harder for a smaller and smaller piece of the pie.  I can barely be bothered to list online and will be down to just one or two shows next year.  No idea what I'll do with the leftover inventory but I'll be damned if I keep subsidizing moneyed takers.

by: JWsax

Weapons grade stupidity yet again.

by: lindysthings

By definition an auction is: Common name for several types of sales where the price is neither set nor arrived at by negotiation, but is discovered through the process of competitive and open bidding.  

It seems Ebay is trying to rig the pricing, or at the very least interfere with it in this latest un-asked for Best Offer addition. And the fact that you can't opt out of it changes the landscape of a true auction.

by: toolguy

@lindysthings

"And the fact that you can't opt out of it changes the landscape of a true auction."

You can "OPT" out by starting your auction at a lower price!

by: ccstreasure

I read a few comments on people complaining, no thats to harsh and critical and can be taken offensively and i do not want to offend anyone so ill say people were "venting their frustrations on how they felt" about how this will effect someone watching an auction and they were going to wait til the last minute to place a bid and now it'll be more frustrating if said auction is gone before the end time because someone accepted the offer someone put in?  That's kind of a too bad for you, you should have put a bid in when you saw the auction to begin with then, make sense? As a "buyer" yes its frustrating for you BUT think about the SELLER in that case, now the seller can sell his item quicker and be happy he or she made some money.  Lets think back to how auctions used to work, you saw an auction you placed a bid, someone else placed a bid over yours and so on, making the SELLER very happy to watch the price of his item grow higher and higher while knowing at the end of the auction will have the most bidder fighting it out for the winning bid.  Fast foward to the point where now people think if if i dont bid and wait til the last minute maybe ill be the only bidder, or if i put in the most im willing to pay ill still win without being outbid, etc...MEANWHILE the SELLER sits there watching his auction have ZERO bids and starts to think no one really wants his or her item and maybe they should take it down and trash it or give it to goodwill. NOW enter ebays best offer , well now the seller has more of a chance to sell his item quicker so good for him or her. Why should the average "buyer" complain about this feature? Its not your item being sold right? Let someone else make their money, if you wanted the item bad enough you should have placed a bid during those days leading to the end.   and ""watchers" means absolutely nothing anymore. I have sold jackets worn by characters on tv and movies and i have had up to 27 watchers on auctions that ended with no bids what so ever. so people arent watching to buy anymore, they watch for other reasons such as to see what the item price will end at, or to see if they can find it cheaper at a later date, etc. Point being this feature can only HELP the seller. Should it be forced upon us? Absolutely NOT! This should be an option of our choosing. We pay enough in ebay fees, store fees, payapl fees, picture fees, i sneezed fees, etc, we should have the option to choose this feature