Ebay strikes again!

[blacksheep]

So, I found a new Lincoln welder on Ebay today. So, I placed my bid with only a few hours left. Now, I figured I would be out bid ,but it seemed like a really low starting bid. With just minutes left, I was about to win a new 230 amp mig welder for $375. Nothing doin. I got a message from Ebay saying that all bids were cancelled and the item was no longer available. I was a power seller on Ebay for 6 years with several thousand feedback. Now, I only buy instead of sell there. Now, I'll only buy items that have a buy it now instead of the bidding process. That has turned out to be a joke.

 

[Tripper]

Now, I only buy instead of sell there. Now, I'll only buy items that have a buy it now instead of the bidding process. That has turned out to be a joke.

You got that right!!! I love lookin' because u never know what you might see but I'm sick of their whole routine!

BoB

 

[cantwell.colton]

You got that right!!! I love lookin' because u never know what you might see but I'm sick of their whole routine!

BoB

ive never had any bad luck or experience with it -- buying or selling -- hope it stays that way.

 

[blacksheep]

ive never had any bad luck or experience with it -- buying or selling -- hope it stays that way.

I think I might be a little jaded because I was a seller for so long. The fees got so high it just wasn't fun anymore. But , what happened today was the last straw for me.

 

[51FordF1]

Yeah...its Ebays fault that some goofy seller backs out of the auction at the last minute

Well, maybe it is Ebays fault......they should tell Mr Goofy Seller to take a hike and that hes not selling there anymore

 

[Gastrick]

It's possible that it was a scam that was discovered and the auction was pulled.

 

[TiredIronGRB]

I love ebay, it's so easy to find things that used to take months to find...I remember when I would call phone numbers in various car magizine ads (when they had personal classified ads) and ask the guy if he know where I could find this or that...surprisingly that usually worked pretty good.

 

[blacksheep]

It's possible that it was a scam that was discovered and the auction was pulled.

I checked the seller, and he has been a seller for a long time on ebay.scam was ruled out.

 

[militarycckw]

i hate the last minute bidders on ebay ,some goverment auctions add time to the end if a bid comes in near the closing time i prefer that,i also dont like the fees from ebay or paypal seems you get charged multiple times on one sale

 

[TiredIronGRB]

On a side note about PayPal...when sending money on a regular non-auction payment you can choose "Personal" and "Payment owed" there are no fees deducted.

 

[Crossfire]

welder

Don"t worry the same item will be there again in a couple of days.E-Bay doesn"t give a crap about the people that made them rich,all they worry about is the more money they can make,to dang many commercial ads there now.New nickname is E-gay and their best buddy Pay-Gal are slowly but surely ruining themselves. And lets not forget the great Western Union money -gram to.[cl

 

[donsrods]

i hate the last minute bidders on ebay ,some goverment auctions add time to the end if a bid comes in near the closing time i prefer that,i also dont like the fees from ebay or paypal seems you get charged multiple times on one sale

See, I'm on the other side of the fence on that one........I ONLY bid in the last 10 seconds. I can't understand why anyone bids early, all it does is run up the price. I'm there to win, not for any other reason. If I really want something I put in a higher than normal bid in case someone else sneaks in a bid later than me.

I just won a Model A rear crossmember. I WANTED that crossmember, and the price at the last few minutes was only about $ 50. I thought it over and decided I wasn't going to let $ 20 or $ 50 bucks keep me from having it, and I noticed the other bidders were putting in 99 cents on the end of their bids. So, I put in $ 126.01. RIght after I bid some other guy was scrambling to try to win it, and he finally died out at $ 107.99, so I won it for $ 109.00.

I know it PO's the other bidders, but like I said, I am there to win the item. All is fair in Love and Ebay.

Don

 

[Gastrick]

I live in the "land of no swap meets" so ebay has helped me find some parts that I would not have been able to find elsewhere. Sometimes I have to rely on ebay for old car parts. There is just almost nothing to be had locally. Hey Don, Whatcha doin with that Model A cross member?

 

[donsrods]

It is going in my new project, Bill. I just scored a stock 34 axle and am going to try to make this one look like it has been around for a while, rust and all. I'm using the body Dan put so much work into and then cast off when he bought the Brookville one.

I'm just like you, no parts over here to speak of, so Ebay has been a great way to find hard to find stuff. Plus, when I need some extra money to buy more stuff, I sell off some of my unneeded parts. I've had very few problems on Ebay.

Don

Here is my new project:

 

[Willowbilly3]

Sellers can't back out with less than 24 hours to go. Ebay must have pulled the auction.

 

[Torch]

Bidsnipers....I hate em and I'm one of them.
Shill bidders. i aint never been one and I hate em
shill bidding is when people have their buddies bid up the auction against you.
it used to be easy to call them out when ebay allowed you to see who the other bidders were and you used to be able to research if the same bidders always bid on the same sellers but seldom win.
researching other bidders also let you knwo what you were up against.
I could tell by the user's other bids if say for example they were in a classic car or junkyard business (lots of car purchases bidding concurrently) or if they were a hobbyist ( lots of things like shirts candles baby toys and a couple recent losing bids on several cars of a similar type bid in sequence)
By researching the other bidder it gae me a feel for what they were looking to spend and how seriously they might want what I was also trying to buy...or sell

I like ebay since they dropped their fees
I was off it for a couple years but I'm back now same user id
Sometimes I bid like I want it but instead of putting in the high bid and letting the "wishy wanters" spend the rest of the auction running my bid up on a no reserve auction I use bid sniper.
bid sniper runs on ebay's servers..very low lag. It puts in a winning bid at the last couple seconds...There is no time for a manual bidder to counter.

Now... a lot of bidders will poke around at the beginning of the auction and then not bid till the end. Me included...You can't tell if they want it or if they are just poking the bid button because they are bored.
As a bidder It helps your case to make contact with the seller and find out about what he wants to get out of the item and let him know your watching the auction till the end.
otherwise he is liable to pull the auction for lack of interest if it has no reserve.

If I'm trying to sell a car and I want at least $4,000 out of it and the bidding with 2 days left is still at $750 and everyone is bidding up only $20 a time I'll definitely pull the sale...It's mine...I am not obligated to sell it for less than I want to sell it for.

I prefer to use reserve, set it on the high side of what i think I can get and let it run out. if I have a serious bidder with a good track record who sounds like they will follow through I will lower the reserve and let them kill it.
It doesn't guarantee they will take the winning bid but it gets them invested in the game.
if they get beat out by a deadbeat bidder you can still offer it to the good bidder, just keep them on the line.
You also need to transact your business quickly. That interested bidder with cash burning a hole in his pocket who got outbid by the deadbeat is going to probably spend it on something else in about a week.

Make them pay a minimal non refundable deposit like $100-200 on a car and require settlement within 7 days.
I have backed out on a bid myself and there is alot of goodwill gained in sending them 10%-20% of the sale price over the cost of the listing for their troubles.
if you bid and don't follow through , you just cost them money... Pay them back plus a little extra so they don't get screwed.

I don't have alot of transactions on ebay.I did have over 500... some apparently have dropped off the record over time... I have been on ebay since they started and I have maintained a 100% positive rating from my ebay friends....
Except for one clown

This punk bum up near Hermiston or Yakima going by "Jolly 396" was selling off his grandpa's watch collection and a few cars. He had his head up his pipe when he set the auction up he was expecting 100% payment by paypal within 24 hours....and he had absolutely no contact info listed with ebay other than his email.
He did not reply to my dozen messages until 3 days after the auction ripping me a new one for not paying him immediately. he told me He would not sell me the car for my winning bid. It was $750 or $950 for a wrecked 66 amc 770 2dr
My bad.. I did not research the guy...he had problems with other bidders on other items. I got in touch with a guy who bought a 55 chevy pickup off him who lived near him. He told me he knew the guy and had the same problem. the guy was just using ebay to get a price on the car then sold it locally slightly higher.

You know... just a generation or two ago it would have been socially appropriate to drive all the way up there just to give the guy a fat lip. He might have been able to kick my ass I don't know..never met him but kick my ass or not he would have gotten a fat lip.

There wouldn't have been any cops, courts or law involved...and there wouldn't have been any sticks bats billyclubs, kung foo kicky-chop horse crap, knives or guns involved just 2 boxers settling it like old world gentlemen. Chivalry ain't dead it's just mostly illegal. But I guess it has to be that way because of all the people with no honor would do anything in a fight. So when the people fail to be gentlemen it falls to the "kings peace" to keep order.

 

[Willowbilly3]

I've said it before, hidden reserves are pointless, all they do is turn people off. If you have a bottom, start it there and let it go. Just watch a dozen items with hidden reserve and see how many actually sell. In the past I have pulled auctions with no activity, I'd never pull an auction that had bids. I don't sell much anymore but mostly just use buy it now when I do.
Snipe service is the only way to bid on something you want.
You can still follow bid history and see patterns, like shill bidding. I turned in a knife maker because he had the same 2-3 people bidding but never winning and their only bid history was with him. The only thing anonymous is their identity, you can differentiate each bidder and look at their bid history with the seller.

 

[blacksheep]

Sellers can't back out with less than 24 hours to go. Ebay must have pulled the auction.

I also know this, but as you may know there are still very easy ways to remove the bids even with an hour left. You just have to know how, and this seller evedently knows how.

 

[TiredIronGRB]

I've said it before, hidden reserves are pointless, all they do is turn people off. If you have a bottom, start it there and let it go.

Exactly, I have never understood the reason for a reserve....start at your bottom line, then one bid buys it. I have always done mine like them adding about 20% as a "Buy it now".

 

[donsrods]

Again, I am on the other side of the fence on this one. On a pricey item, I always use a reserve, but start the bidding off low. For example, if I have a set of valve covers I want $ 100 for, that becomes my reserve, but I put a starting bid of $ 10 on it. Why?? Because it gets people starting to bid. When I see a starting bid of what the guy actually wants I shy away because mentally it seems like a big step for me to take. He should have just done a Buy it Now price. Once people start to bid they get caught up in the frenzy and the price goes up from there.

I got away from Ebay for a while because they got too big for their britches and started imposing rules and high rates that I didn't like. I still don't like the fact they make you pay through their PayPal system........seems like a monopoly to me. But recently I have started buying and selling there again. I just bought an A rear crossmember and a 34 Ford original axle, to use on my current project. The crossmember was a bidding situation but the axle was a Buy it Now.

I guess we all have our views and ways of bidding and selling on Ebay, but I have always done it the way I describe, with a reserve and low entry bid. I literally have done hundreds of transactions, on both sides of the buying/selling table, and have always gotten more money than I would have if I sold in any other manner, and gotten some great deals and parts when buying there.

I've sold 3 of my own boats on Ebay, about 6 or 8 brand new inflatable boats, and a similar number of brand new outboard motors, plus more car parts than I can recall. What I would do is dump a lot of stuff just before Turkey Run every year and that would be my mad money to have a good time and buy more parts I don't need. So, the system I use works for me and has put a lot of money in my pockets over the past 6 or so years I have been an Ebayer.

Don