has Ebay killed the Auction?

[craigstevensstudio]

i sold here on ebay for over 16 years,   (i loved auctions!)   but in ebay trying to be like amazon they have destroyed  "THE AUCTION"      people can get returns for up to 6 months,   people "just dont pay"  for items ....  i say ebay has killed the one thing ebay had that amazon and other companies did not.   it was why so many people LOVED EBAY.     they have  destroyed that.    very sad.

[mam98031]

Ebay didn't "kill the auction", the lack of interest from buyers did.  Buyers changed over the years.  More and more of them want things right away.  Somewhere around 2014, auctions just died off for me.  I use to run them every week.  But buyers just lost interest in them as they wanted to just purchase stuff and move on.

[soh.maryl]

Sorry -- don't understand your message.  Can you explain it further to me? Give up what? True to what form?

[baydistributionllc]

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@cajun*martini wrote:

It’s not eBay that killed the auction format to try and be more like Amazon, it’s buyers who don’t care for auctions anymore, especially for mass produced stuff. No one wants to wait 7 days to see if they’ve purchases something or not.

As for being able to return for up to 6 months after the sale, you need to take that up with the credit card companies who have had that policy for decades.

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YES! Never heard anyone realize this. If you buy something with a credit card (especially American Express) you can just mail it back and call the card. All the generous return garbage is born from the credit card companies. Its just backcharge prevention. 
    I tried to setup a merchant account and they told me I had to have a return policy and I couldn’t refuse American Express.

    I didn’t get a merchant account.

[reallynicestamps]

@baydistributionllc 

American Express is horrible for merchants.

We just refused the card at the cash register, along with Discover*. Most holders would just give us a different card.

They charge merchants more and pay out very slowly. And they are willing to do chargebacks on anything. Although to be fair, Amex customers are slightly less likely to be scamming, providing it is the cardholder doing the purchasing and not a thief.

But that's hard to do online. We had to take it on mail order/auction /eBay sales. 

*Discover cards are not accepted outside of the USA, so refusing them was not a problem.

[cards_coins_collectibles]

Right On! And it's getting worse - I noticed in the sports cards that in just the past 6 months auctions that used to start at .99 cents are much fewer and because the seller would end up losing the product to a low bid and those trying to stay alive in auctions are raising their starting bid above .99 cents which defies the underlying auction principle I believe.

It's like the stock market - there is no liquidity maybe the FED can save ebay :(.

[coolections]

No Ebay did not kill the auctions. Sellers decided they want inflated prices and stopped starting auctions at a normal low cost to allow bidders to decide the final cost. More and more kept doing that until the start prices of auctions are equal to the other sellers' using BIN. Blame the sellers not Ebay as they had nothing to do with it.  With that said I do almost exclusively auctions and do fine. I believe you just do not understand how auctions work.

[sapphire_studio]

I think it became more of an issue that sellers COULDN'T start the prices low anymore and know that the item would get bidded up to what it was worth.... buyers stopped showing up for the auctions and so they were forced to start the auctions at a higher price or change to buy it now.

 People don't have time for auctions these days

[coolections]

@sapphire_studio   Correct, for those sellers trying to sell low demand or common items just don't understand auctions. They would start an item at $4.99 and expect $44.99 when a buyer could easily just BIN from another seller or snag the one for $4.99. You have to know your product if you really want to do auctions. Like the post before yours that said they could start a card auction for 99 cents and only get on bid. Try starting a Tom Brady rookie for 99 cents. I guarantee you will get easily over $100 every time.

[sapphire_studio]

Do you think that you will get more auctioning off that Tom Brady card than selling BIN?

 I tend to think that  If the auction ends at around a $100 you probably could have gotten a $150 selling it buy it now

[mam98031]

IMHO no seller in any category should ever start a listing for 99 cents.  They should never start the bids for LESS than the item costs them to sell it, including fees and shipping.  But just my own opinion, one I stick to for myself.

[mam98031]

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@coolections wrote:

No Ebay did not kill the auctions. Sellers decided they want inflated prices and stopped starting auctions at a normal low cost to allow bidders to decide the final cost. More and more kept doing that until the start prices of auctions are equal to the other sellers' using BIN. Blame the sellers not Ebay as they had nothing to do with it.  With that said I do almost exclusively auctions and do fine. I believe you just do not understand how auctions work.

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Inflated prices didn't kill auctions either.  It is the lack of interest that buyers have that killed them in most categories.  In a handful of categories they still do nicely as buyers are willing to go through the process.  But in most categories buyers simply don't want to go through the bidding process anymore.  They want to purchase what they are looking for and move on.

[anjofak]

Auction everything all the ⏲️ ⏳️ 🕐 🕙 🕚 🕑 ⏲️ ⏳️ time...

If it doesn't Sell set the buy it now..while running it in a Auction elsewhere. 

[moondogblues]

I still remember Yahoo Auctions....there were a ton of incredible things there.

[mam98031]

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@anjofak wrote:

Auction everything all the ⏲️ ⏳️ 🕐 🕙 🕚 🕑 ⏲️ ⏳️ time...

If it doesn't Sell set the buy it now..while running it in a Auction elsewhere. 

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Elsewhere???  For most auctions ran on Ebay, Ebay is the only game in town.  While there are lots of similar sites to Ebay, most if not all don't have auctions.  There are specialty houses, but that is about it.

[mam98031]

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@moondogblues wrote:

I still remember Yahoo Auctions....there were a ton of incredible things there.

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And they died off from a lack of buyers.