@the*dog*ate*my*tablecloth wrote:
Live auctions last for minutes and usually take place in a physical location. Do you think whe should all have to fly to San Jose and bid with paddles?
How can anything shortchange both buyers and sellers? Most bidders know how to bid already and don't need the system to be changed. Most sellers know that snipers bid high and usually know what they want and pay quickly. Why would you want them to stop buying here? They're not going to put up with that change to the system
Ditto auto-payment. I'm not giving Ebay permission to charge my credit card. Many auction buyers would walk and Ebay sellers would lose millions of dollars.
Who said anything about having to travel to a live auction? Many auction companies are using internet bidding, so you can bid from halfway across the country. No need to travel. And the ones I'm seeing have a week or so for people to put in maximum proxy bids, which are then treated like absentee bids during the live auction. You can put in a max bid just like you do on Ebay - there is nothing to stop you.
The important part is that all potential buyers have an opportunity to place their bids until no one wants to go any higher. That important aspect is what ebay is missing due to the rigid timing structure of their auctions.
Yes, it short changes buyers and sellers. Bidders can put in a max bid 7 days before the end, but that eliminates the emotional bidding that often happens. Auction bidders get attached to items they are bidding on, and if an auction is ended prematurely (before the bidding would naturally end on its own), you eliminate a lot of that emotional bidding and hence items will sell for less. There are a lot of competitive people out there who bid, and you want to stoke that competitive nature, not stifle it, and ebay's auction structure stifles it.
Buyers on the other hand get short changed by not being able to reconsider their maximum bid in light of the competition, because there isn't time. I don't know how many times I've put in a bid that was the going rate plus an extra 20-30% for good measure only to have it bid up and over that. You just never know what items are going to go for and you can miss out if you aren't in there at the end. And even if you ARE there at the end, you still might miss out due to the auction ending while there are still willing bidders.
Nobody would walk if Ebay required auto payment. Do you know of any online sales venues that don't, besides Ebay? I can't think of any. People are used to it. I don't see places that DO require immediate payment seeing an absence of bidders. It might chase away non payers, but since they don't pay anway, who cares?
