Starting price

pseudopensioner

Peter_Lanky wrote: »

IMHO the 10% Final Value Fee is more than adequate compensation for facilitating the sale. The listing fee is just a little extra money-grabbing for the hell of it.

The choice to continue using eBay is yours, but like so many other disenchanted eBay sellers, you cannot find a decent alternative.

I'm afraid it is Hobson's Choice, pay the eBay charges and sell your items, or use an alternative shop window and probably sit on your stock, paying nothing out, but bringing nothing in.

TurkishDelight

Peter_Lanky wrote: »

To avoid unnecessary fees. If Ebay didn't charge a listing fee, which is effectively a fee for doing absolutely nothing, then I and no doubt others would start auctions at a realistic price.

Sorry, but that made me :rotfl:
Even I with my small amount of website knowledge know that the servers for ebay must be well on the large size shall we say.

Plus there is those who break the rules, they have to be investigated by people, who have to be paid a wage (okay, they appear to be roped in from the local school/foreign language learning centre/lunatic asylum, but I'm sure they still have to make them sandwiches or something. ).

Apart from that I can only echo Soolin- we need an insertion fee otherwise ebay becomes unusable.

Peter_Lanky

Peter_Lanky wrote: »

I'm also a little confused at the process. Suppose I start an auction at 99p but I have a price in mind that an item will sell for if somebody doesn't want to wait 7 days, so I add a BIN at this price. As soon as somebody bids, the BIN disappears. Why? I have lost the chance to sell early to somebody prepared to buy at this price. It makes more sense to have the BIN remaining. In fact, it is almost certain that somebody will bid before a BIN comes along, so this type of listing is pointless.

Quoting my own posts now; need to bump it.

I was looking through a few completed listings when I saw one that had a couple of bids on it, and then it was later won with a BIN. How can this happen, as whenever I have started an auction, as described above, the BIN disappears as soon as the first bid is made.

soolin

Peter_Lanky wrote: »

Quoting my own posts now; need to bump it.

I was looking through a few completed listings when I saw one that had a couple of bids on it, and then it was later won with a BIN. How can this happen, as whenever I have started an auction, as described above, the BIN disappears as soon as the first bid is made.

If there was also a reserve the BIN doees not disappear until the bids exceed the reserve. Could it be that?

Although I have noticed that some listings on the US site have BINs in place even after bids and it says nothing at all about a reserve, I recently got an official ebay second chance offer where none of the bids ever reached the BIN but the auction had been won.

Peter_Lanky

soolin wrote: »

If there was also a reserve the BIN doees not disappear until the bids exceed the reserve. Could it be that?

Although I have noticed that some listings on the US site have BINs in place even after bids and it says nothing at all about a reserve, I recently got an official ebay second chance offer where none of the bids ever reached the BIN but the auction had been won.

Possibly, but there's no way of knowing from looking at it. The item in question proves to me that a BIN is still useful even when bids are made as the seller eventually got the price they wanted.

soolin

Peter_Lanky wrote: »

Possibly, but there's no way of knowing from looking at it. The item in question proves to me that a BIN is still useful even when bids are made as the seller eventually got the price they wanted.

The US system certainly worked for me. Her BIN was 99 dollars and I spent two weeks putting in bids no higher than 35 dollars and kept getting outbid, the usual end price was around 80-90 dollars. I eventually got a second chance offer at 35 dollars so I was well pleased.

I was even more pleased when the item arrived without attracting customer handling charges!

In the UK though i have never seen a bIN remain once there is a bid that meets reserve.