Extended Time Auctions. Good or Bad For eBay? Would you use them or bid on them?

[*help_no_brakes*]

I have accepted the challenge to post this topic.

It was suggested that a Fire Truck be on standby.

I live in a remote location with a volunteer Fire Service...however here we are...

[lookng2015]

[pikabo-icu]

You're a brave man...       

I say NOOOOO! No, no and NO!

Verizon just shut their auctions down.. Almost all of those that had extended endings have closed.

Most of that type charge per bid-  

It's a bad fit for eBay! 

[*help_no_brakes*]

"the person willing to pay the most wins. "

Correct if I'm wrong...sounds just like the way eBay Auctions work...without the need to be glued to the computer wondering if the "bleep" auction will ever end.

[threshold.sales.group]

A successful snipe **increases** the sale price for the seller.  IMO, sellers should be all for sniping.  

As for the soft close, imo ordinary buyers would hate it - takes up way too much time. Requiring folks to sit around for 10 or 15 extra minutes while the bid clock resets and resets is not going to appeal to many people. The hardcore auction buyers sure, but that's a really small group, imo.  

[pikabo-icu]

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@lookng2015 wrote:

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It's not No Brakes fault... It was a long & arduous discussion on the Bid/Buy Board and Trinton popped in and said :"This sounds like a good idea", he plans to suggest it to TPTB.

Brakes volunteered to do the dirty work and bring it here for MORE feedback- OMGOSH I said Feedback.. SSShhhhhhhhhhh

[*help_no_brakes*]

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@pikabo-icu wrote:

You're a brave man...       

I say NOOOOO! No, no and NO!

So do I.

I only accepted the challenge to start the thread.

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[*help_no_brakes*]

@pikabo-icu

It's all good...Ican defend myself...I did have 99 fights for 99 knockouts!

never won any of them...

[muttlymob]

Brakes volunteered to do the dirty work and bring it here for MORE feedback- OMGOSH I said Feedback.. SSShhhhhhhhhhh

Actually, you said it twice.

Whatever you do, DO NOT REPEAT IT FOR A THIRD TIME.

[lookng2015]

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@pikabo-icu wrote:

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@lookng2015 wrote:

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It's not No Brakes fault... It was a long & arduous discussion on the Bid/Buy Board and Trinton popped in and said :"This sounds like a good idea", he plans to suggest it to TPTB.

Brakes volunteered to do the dirty work and bring it here for MORE feedback- OMGOSH I said Feedback.. SSShhhhhhhhhhh

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Why am I NOT surprised?

[yuzuha]

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@*help_no_brakes* wrote:

"the person willing to pay the most wins. "

Correct if I'm wrong...sounds just like the way eBay Auctions work...without the need to be glued to the computer wondering if the "bleep" auction will ever end.

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I was going to say.  If people can't decide on a maximum bid in seven days, I doubt adding more time is going to help them make up their mind.

[lookng2015]

Of course, if they want to kill off the auction format here for good.......

[castlemagicmemories]

I see no point in extending auction times. 

All you're doing is giving more time to for bidders to figure out what their max is, and that is not needed.  Seven days is more than enough time.  If you bid your max at the end, which is what you should do, there is no reason to have to nibble again and again to try to win.  If you need the extension to go up incrementally, I think there is more of a possibility of buyer's remorse.  And you can always go up incrementally in a regular 7 day auction.  

I also think have a fixed time offers the opportunity to realize greater profits for both the seller and ebay because the ability to drag it out and nibble bid is removed.  You HAVE to bid your max if you want to win the item.  If the auction keeps extending, that is just nibble bidding.

All extended time does is give you more time to postpone making a decision as to what you want to pay.  

[omgitlightsup]

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@threshold.sales.group wrote:

A successful snipe **increases** the sale price for the seller.  IMO, sellers should be all for sniping.  

As for the soft close, imo ordinary buyers would hate it - takes up way too much time. Requiring folks to sit around for 10 or 15 extra minutes while the bid clock resets and resets is not going to appeal to many people. The hardcore auction buyers sure, but that's a really small group, imo.  

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This is an obviously misleading and invalid argument. Yes, every bid increases the selling price. But the issue here is not that a bid was or was not made.. it's that further bids are prevented by the ending of an auction. 

If you ever watched a "real" auction, you understand that every time a bid is placed, everyone is given an opportunity to counter that bid. Never in the history of auctions, except here on eBay, has an auctioneer stopped the bidding suddenly while several bidders have had their paddles in the air.

We all realize that the sniper raised the selling price of the item from $50 to $55. That's never been in question. The question is, had the rest of the active bidders seen the item go up to $55, would any of them have said to themselves, "oh, heck, what's another five bucks," and bid $60? And then, seeing that the bid was yet just another five bucks more, would someone else have bid $65?

We never really know, because eBay stops the bidding at the "stroke of midnight," just when the auction was scheduled to end.

Everybody who knows anything about selling on eBay knows you should never list items at 2AM on Monday, because people won't be up watching it when it ends... because they have to work that morning. You always get better sale prices if you end items late on Saturday evening, or late Sunday morning, than you do if you have them end at 4:35 on a Thursday. 

The "hardcore buyers" may constitute a bigger population than you're aware of. 

And sure, you might have plans.. maybe you want that auction to end before 4PM on Friday so you've got time to box it up and get it to the UPS counter before they close at 7... but these "soft endings" aren't going to add hours or days to the auction. Again.. anyone who's ever been to an actual auction sale knows that it takes minutes for the bidding to reach a final price on any one item. 

If you absolutely need that sale to be over at 4pm on Thursday evening no matter what, I'm sure eBay would leave the "hard ending time"  option available to you. Or you could simply close the bidding once the time has ended for you.. because of course, you know better and you are confident that noone else will be placing any meaningful bids.

I for one think it's preposterous that any seller would interrupt a feverish bidding war because he needed to get that thing to the post office right this minute. But people have other stuff to do, right?

[castlemagicmemories]

I don't think the ending time of the auction interrupts a feverish bidding war.

Fixed time endings make the bidder know you have to bid your max NOW, not 15 minutes or whatever down the road.  And I think sellers and ebay would realize MORE profit this way.  Bidder HAS to go in or lose the item.  

They are really a more efficient way of ending the listing and giving the person the incentive to bid their true max if they want to win, because they don't have the luxury of dragging it out and seeing what if anything the other bidders will bid, one bid at a time until everyone gives up.  Knowing the listing will end at such and such a time, bidders know it's your absolute, unredeemable LAST CHANCE so may actually bid MORE in their attempt to get the item, rather than having the security of NOT bidding as much because they know they can just get more time added.

[mr_lincoln]

@*help_no_brakes*  I would be fine with a "Soft close" auction which extends the time by a programmable amount (per other Auction software packages).  However, the time would only get extended IF the bid is higher than a previous bid.

The software I am familiar with, used for online Estate Auctions, has a number of different settings.   It can:

1. Space the closing time between items

2. Add additional time for a new highest bid

3. Add additional time for the next incremental bid even it is not the new highest bid

4. The amount of time added for each bid can be set to different amounts.

One of the companies I know said the longest they've seen an auction run with the soft close feature is 29 minutes after the original ending time.  Most end sooner as the highest amount any bidder is willing to pay comes out with the soft close approach.  This approximates a live auction.