eBay The eBay Official eBay Thread eBay 33 33

[1Cool]

38 minutes ago, manetteska said:

Correct; but you can't take your situation (or my situation) and say that's the "average" person. It's a sample of 1. Without data from eBay, I don't think we can say how many times the "average" eBay buyer/seller/looker visits the site.

Back to the "worth" example...

If that $1,000 worth book sells for $600 at a recent auction, and the "average worth" is now $975, what do you price yours at -- if you want to sell it?

$600 is the "got to have the money now price" similar to if you walked into a pawn shop and said what will you give me for this item.  Auctions on e-bay right now will give you a price that a couple to a handful of people are willing to pay for it (with most being flippers in my opinion) at that given time.  The $1,000 price is the "sitting in a showroom waiting to find the right buyer" price and there seems to be a lot of people window shopping in the example you guys are using.  The average price is $975 so the average going price for the book can be quoted at $975 and most people will price it at $975 to $1,000.  Now if the only time the book starts selling is in the "need money now auctions" since demand tanks then the price will drop and the price may get down to $600 after awhile especially if there is a bunch of people that really need the money.

[evilskip]

21 hours ago, Number 6 said:

Well, I think this morning eBay May have finally pushed me over the edge. 

My computer has been down so I’ve been forced to use my phone to get things done. Since eBay is heck-bent on pushing people to their app, eBay through an internet browser on my phone is pretty much unusable. The app is simplified and lacks many of the features that I need on the full site. 

But I’ve been getting by with it fairly well until I went to relist some items today. 

I just happened to notice that on about every other item I relisted eBay tried to switch the duration to Good ‘Til Cancelled instead of 30 days (which is what the previous listing was). Had I not caught this, eBay would have kept my listing going and, if I was out of free listings, would have started charging me listing fees. 

That raised a red flag, so I double-checked listing that I had relisted within the last month, and sure enough, a bunch were Good ‘Til Canceleld. And you can’t edit those once they’re listed. The only option is to cancel, revise and relist. 

What’s more, I found that some of those listings had the Best Offer option enabled (which I don’t want).  But what’s more, they were set to auto-accept any offer over 50% of my listed price. 

Some of this is on me I guess. I clearly have to be much more diligent about checking the details when relisting. Thought I was doing a pretty good job of that but it’s bit harder on the app. 

But at the same time, should I really have to?  If I’m relisting, shouldn’t I reasonably expect that the listing would be the same as before? Should I really have to be constantly vigilant to make sure eBay isn’t trying to slip something in?

This coupled with their constant e-mails with “selling tips” - which all basically boil down to me drastically lowering my price and taking less - I feel like I’m just about done with eBay. 

I know it’s been lamented here before, but I really wish there was a better venue. 

I ran into this a few days ago as a buyer. There was an item that had a starting price and a make an offer button. So I made a reasonable offer and the seller got back to me with a declining message stating they wanted bids on it.(Now I know why). Anyway, I bid on it, got outbid and then there was a bid retraction which temporarily put me back as top bidder. I'm not going to win this thing, but it has been interesting so far.

[manetteska]

1 hour ago, 1Cool said:

2 hours ago, manetteska said:

Correct; but you can't take your situation (or my situation) and say that's the "average" person. It's a sample of 1. Without data from eBay, I don't think we can say how many times the "average" eBay buyer/seller/looker visits the site.

Back to the "worth" example...

If that $1,000 worth book sells for $600 at a recent auction, and the "average worth" is now $975, what do you price yours at -- if you want to sell it?

$600 is the "got to have the money now price" similar to if you walked into a pawn shop and said what will you give me for this item.  Auctions on e-bay right now will give you a price that a couple to a handful of people are willing to pay for it (with most being flippers in my opinion) at that given time.  The $1,000 price is the "sitting in a showroom waiting to find the right buyer" price and there seems to be a lot of people window shopping in the example you guys are using.  The average price is $975 so the average going price for the book can be quoted at $975 and most people will price it at $975 to $1,000.  Now if the only time the book starts selling is in the "need money now auctions" since demand tanks then the price will drop and the price may get down to $600 after awhile especially if there is a bunch of people that really need the money.

So if you want to sell your item, you price it close to what the last sale was, ignoring the "calculated worth".

A comic in 8.0 sells for $200 for years. All of a sudden it begins selling for $400; the new calculated/average worth is $250. Do you price it at $250?

Seems like this calculated worth is just a number and worth is what someone is willing to pay for that item at that time.

[1Cool]

17 minutes ago, manetteska said:

So if you want to sell your item, you price it close to what the last sale was, ignoring the "calculated worth".

A comic in 8.0 sells for $200 for years. All of a sudden it begins selling for $400; the new calculated/average worth is $250. Do you price it at $250?

Seems like this calculated worth is just a number and worth is what someone is willing to pay for that item at that time.

My example was the price difference between a BIN and auction.  If you have a book sky rocketing or dropping like a rock you do have to watch out to see if the single high/low sale is an abnormality but in general if you see 10 sales over 3 months at $1,000 and then an auction at $600 you typically throw that one out (or factor it in a bit into the average price).  There will always be books that are special cases but in general pricing books based on auction results will leave a bunch of money on the table compared to if you have some patience.

[RockMyAmadeus]

4 hours ago, manetteska said:

Correct; but you can't take your situation (or my situation) and say that's the "average" person. It's a sample of 1. Without data from eBay, I don't think we can say how many times the "average" eBay buyer/seller/looker visits the site.

Sure I can. We're not running a statistical analysis, after all. It's perfectly reasonable to extrapolate that, if a situation happens to one person, and that person is average, and that situation is average, it's bound to be true of others as well. 

No stats necessary in that case. I guarantee you, I am not the only person in the entire world with that type of general experience with eBay. 

We're quibbling over unimportant details.

4 hours ago, manetteska said:

If that $1,000 worth book sells for $600 at a recent auction, and the "average worth" is now $975, what do you price yours at -- if you want to sell it?

That's not the question.

We're talking about sellers who DO NOT want to sell it, and forcing them to accept "the highest offer", whatever it may have been, to "clear out the clutter."

[RockMyAmadeus]

2 hours ago, manetteska said:

So if you want to sell your item, you price it close to what the last sale was, ignoring the "calculated worth".

A comic in 8.0 sells for $200 for years. All of a sudden it begins selling for $400; the new calculated/average worth is $250. Do you price it at $250?

Seems like this calculated worth is just a number and worth is what someone is willing to pay for that item at that time.

That's not how the market works. First, "calculated worth" is not a term that I would use to describe market value. These are actual sales, actual transactions; they represent what people were actually willing to pay for the item. Second, the market is obviously shaped by external events. If a comic "all of a sudden" begins "selling for $400" (what does that mean? 1 sale? 3 sales? 10 sales? You don't say), then there are obviously external factors that have to be considered.

Barring external factors, a market value can be determined based on past sales, especially when there's a lot of data to draw from.

A book sells 10 times for around $1,000, once for $600, and then another 10 times for around $1,000. 

All other things being as equal as they can be in a market like this, if the last sale when you list yours is the $600 one, and you price yours accordingly, you would not only have seriously undersold yourself, but you would have had a ripple effect down the line, and the next 4-6 copies may only have sold for $800-$900, because those buyers might have been hoping for another fire sale. Sure, there's a substantial amount of "what if?" going into these scenarios, but pricing items for less than the market will bear...as wonderful as that may be for the buyer...is often as much of a problem as pricing it for more.

[RockMyAmadeus]

2 hours ago, 1Cool said:

My example was the price difference between a BIN and auction.  If you have a book sky rocketing or dropping like a rock you do have to watch out to see if the single high/low sale is an abnormality but in general if you see 10 sales over 3 months at $1,000 and then an auction at $600 you typically throw that one out (or factor it in a bit into the average price).  There will always be books that are special cases but in general pricing books based on auction results will leave a bunch of money on the table compared to if you have some patience.

Exactly. And very, very rarely, in the history of any tangible good, does the price drop like a rock. It would have to be an exceptional case to do so. Nearly all of the time, the price can shoot up rapidly, and then it descends back to earth in a gentle incline.

[1Cool]

Every seller has this debate with themselves especially when the 30 day is done for a group of books and you start the process of relisting.  Should I drop the price?  Should I do the auction route for this batch?  No one likes to list hundreds of books and having very little sell but then along comes a great month with a couple big multi book buyers who clean out 100 books in a month at the prices you wanted (maybe 10 - 15% under but close enough) that it makes you reconsider the blow out the clutter mentality.  If E-Bay forced me to accept best offers at the end of the month I would end all my items a day before this rule went into effect and then simply relist them at the price I want them at.

[manetteska]

43 minutes ago, RockMyAmadeus said:

5 hours ago, manetteska said:

If that $1,000 worth book sells for $600 at a recent auction, and the "average worth" is now $975, what do you price yours at -- if you want to sell it?

That's not the question.

We're talking about sellers who DO NOT want to sell it, and forcing them to accept "the highest offer", whatever it may have been, to "clear out the clutter."

But that is what I'm talking about and how this started: List items to sell them. If you don't want to sell (or sell in a "reasonable" amount of time [not to be defined here]), don't list the item on a site which was explicitly created to sell items.

Pretty simple to me.

[RockMyAmadeus]

2 minutes ago, manetteska said:

But that is what I'm talking about and how this started: List items to sell them. If you don't want to sell (or sell in a "reasonable" amount of time [not to be defined here]), don't list the item on a site which was explicitly created to sell items.

Pretty simple to me.

That's the beauty...and price...of freedom: people are going to do things in ways you don't approve. 

I don't like wading through mounds of overpriced garbage, and have said as much, many times here. 

But forcing people to sell for prices they won't accept isn't the solution. The solution is to bother eBay until and if they do something to address the clutter, that doesn't involve forcing sellers to accept prices they don't want. 

A solution, albeit probably an entirely unworkable one, would be to limit sellers to the amount of times they can relist an item without a sale. This can be easily sidestepped, but it is an idea.

[the blob]

49 minutes ago, 1Cool said:

Every seller has this debate with themselves especially when the 30 day is done for a group of books and you start the process of relisting.  Should I drop the price?  Should I do the auction route for this batch?  No one likes to list hundreds of books and having very little sell but then along comes a great month with a couple big multi book buyers who clean out 100 books in a month at the prices you wanted (maybe 10 - 15% under but close enough) that it makes you reconsider the blow out the clutter mentality.  If E-Bay forced me to accept best offers at the end of the month I would end all my items a day before this rule went into effect and then simply relist them at the price I want them at.

Yup, ebay is a shoot. How many times have you listed a book with, let's say, a $24.99 starting price to protect yourself. No bids. Stick it in your store at $45 and in a month or two it sells for $35. Ebay needs to get out of this micromanaging, particularly if you are paying for a frigging store!

[the blob]

A solution, albeit probably an entirely unworkable one, would be to limit sellers to the amount of times they can relist an item without a sale. This can be easily sidestepped, but it is an idea.

-------------

Putting aside the 50 free listings, if someone is paying, via a store or otherwise, to relist over and over, why is ebay getting involved?

[1Cool]

23 minutes ago, the blob said:

A solution, albeit probably an entirely unworkable one, would be to limit sellers to the amount of times they can relist an item without a sale. This can be easily sidestepped, but it is an idea.

-------------

Putting aside the 50 free listings, if someone is paying, via a store or otherwise, to relist over and over, why is ebay getting involved?

I do see where he is coming from just because I remember a time when you didn't need to use BINs on E-Bay and things sold for top dollar via auction.  $0.99 auction almost everything and you would get 3 or 4 guys getting into a bidding war for even the most common book.  $5 books didn't go for $50 but you could list up a $20 book and could expect $20 let along the occasional $40 bidded up item.  People stopped bidding on books (except a couple low ball flippers) so things went dirt cheap and sellers moved over to BINs in droves.  I loved looking at upcoming auction books to see if I needed anything and it was even more of a thrill to watch your items get bumped up at the last second of the auction.  But I also remember listings be more expensive if you didn't use $0.99 auctions which kept the clutter to a minimum.  If people want to keep clutter down on E-Bay then buyers should bid up every auction book and the sellers will go back to auctioning books off again lightning quick.

[1Cool]

33 minutes ago, the blob said:

Yup, ebay is a shoot. How many times have you listed a book with, let's say, a $24.99 starting price to protect yourself. No bids. Stick it in your store at $45 and in a month or two it sells for $35. Ebay needs to get out of this micromanaging, particularly if you are paying for a frigging store!

Even better is the books that i have up for sale in a BIN for 2 months with a few low ball offers.  Put the whole store up for set auction and 20 books sell for my asking price and a few get bid up a bunch.  All of these books could have been bought for 10% under my BIN with a bit of negotiating.  Some people only look at auctions - some people only look at a BINS - best to have both and pull in both parties.

[the blob]

33 minutes ago, 1Cool said:

I do see where he is coming from just because I remember a time when you didn't need to use BINs on E-Bay and things sold for top dollar via auction.  $0.99 auction almost everything and you would get 3 or 4 guys getting into a bidding war for even the most common book.  $5 books didn't go for $50 but you could list up a $20 book and could expect $20 let along the occasional $40 bidded up item.  People stopped bidding on books (except a couple low ball flippers) so things went dirt cheap and sellers moved over to BINs in droves.  I loved looking at upcoming auction books to see if I needed anything and it was even more of a thrill to watch your items get bumped up at the last second of the auction.  But I also remember listings be more expensive if you didn't use $0.99 auctions which kept the clutter to a minimum.  If people want to keep clutter down on E-Bay then buyers should bid up every auction book and the sellers will go back to auctioning books off again lightning quick.

Folks stopped bidding except on hot items because everyone started listing stuff. While I do remember most things getting bids and being able to put a lot of up and it selling back in 2000, etc., I don't remember necessarily getting such strong prices. Usually a fraction, under half, of guide. Obviously some exceptions. Indeed, from 2000-2002/3 or so, on the buying front. I actually put together a pretty nice collection of GA slabs, some SA keys in slabs too, making sure to never bid more than 50% of overstreet for them. Did I lose tons of auctions? Sure. I bid on a lot of "VF" "NM" SA books without scans or with terrible ones, but making sure never to bid more than OPG G/VG - VG. Most came back in nice shape.  

[the blob]

Rermember all the 99 cent auctions with $1 extra per item shipping? (Neatstuff!)  Buy 15 crappy books, get an invoice for $18 or $19 shipping + $14.85 for the books.

[Wall-Crawler]

Looking for advice on this one...I will "out" once everything is resolved.

Low feedback (5) buyer bids and wins a book.  Cost of book + shipping from Canada to the USA is $13.55 - It has been a few days (more than 48 hours) since the auction closed so today, I send a friendly payment reminder message.

This is what the buyer writes back:

"yes i know sending payment out 11/1/ 18 thank you"

I reply:

"2 weeks to pay for a $5.55 book? I will be on vacation and away then not able to ship within my stated 2 - 3 business day time frame of receiving payment, which then effects my rating. Can you not do any sooner?"

Buyers response (full message):

"No, sorry. and yess i know its 5.55 for a book and yor mailing is 8.00..i live in Indiana not like i live next door.. give me a break.... i deal with higher price on books ...my point on this trust me.."

Deal with higher priced books but need two weeks to pay $13.55? 

At this point,  I want NOTHING to do with this buyer. Is there anything I can do cancel or to possibly avoid a negative feedback scenario here? I was thinking of just ignoring everything and just asking the guy to send payment on the 5th and ship it when I am back and then block.

Thoughts?

Edited October 25, 2018 by Wall-Crawler

[skypinkblu]

16 minutes ago, Wall-Crawler said:

Looking for advice on this one...I will "out" once everything is resolved.

Low feedback (5) buyer bids and wins a book.  Cost of book + shipping from Canada to the USA is $13.55 - It has been a few days (more than 48 hours) since the auction closed so today, I send a friendly payment reminder message.

This is what the buyer writes back:

"yes i know sending payment out 11/1/ 18 thank you"

I reply:

"2 weeks to pay for a $5.55 book? I will be on vacation and away then not able to ship within my stated 2 - 3 business day time frame of receiving payment, which then effects my rating. Can you not do any sooner?"

Buyers response (full message):

"No, sorry. and yess i know its 5.55 for a book and yor mailing is 8.00..i live in Indiana not like i live next door.. give me a break.... i deal with higher price on books ...my point on this trust me.."

Deal with higher priced books but need two weeks to pay $13.55? 

At this point,  I want NOTHING to do with this buyer. Is there anything I can do cancel or to possibly avoid a negative feedback scenario here? I was thinking of just ignoring everything and just asking the guy to send payment on the 5th and ship it when I am back and then block.

Thoughts?

File a non paying bidder notice with eBay, he can't wait 2 weeks unless you agree.

[Wall-Crawler]

19 minutes ago, skypinkblu said:

File a non paying bidder notice with eBay, he can't wait 2 weeks unless you agree.

I thought about that...I was just a little worried about him paying and getting "revenge negative"

[kav]

1 hour ago, Wall-Crawler said:

I thought about that...I was just a little worried about him paying and getting "revenge negative"

I think they cant leave FB or you can get it removed if they do that.