eBay errors
spelling
this week i watched a guy throw away $150–$200 because he misspelled the product he was selling, a vintage music gizmo called an MXR auto flanger. he listed it as “MXR Auto Flange”, with no “r” on the end of flanger.
calling it a flange isn’t so crazy if you’re just talking to somebody — it’s acceptable slang, and the effect was derived from a physical tape reel flange — but you have to be nuts to put this vintage piece on eBay with a no-reserve starting price under $20 (as this guy did) and the term “auto flanger” nowhere in sight. i’m all for starting multi-thousand dollar auctions at $1, and have done so, but have your goddamned spelling straight so the power vintage buyers can find your ass! unbelievable. well, at least he categorized the thing correctly (Musical Instruments > Guitar > Parts, Accessories > Effects Pedals > Flangers).
he threw away most of his market with that error, and it ended up getting sniped for $250.50. really hosed himself. he was asking $950.00 for it on his business site, and should have picked up at least $450 if he’d done the auction better. only reason i found it was because when i set up my stored search for these things years ago, i put in many different spellings. as many have noted, you can make a living on eBay just capitalizing on spelling mistakes. this is a great example, if you feel like fucking with the pins to verify the piece works before reselling.
runaround
i emailed this same guy before auction end and asked some specific questions, including the explicit request that he verify whether he’d tested the piece despite the unusual power and audio connection requirements. his reply was a glib dodging of the question, bordering on snake oil territory. may have been innocent, but i immediately decided to not fuck with it. painful getting straight answers from some sellers.
nibbling
the biggest eBay buyer error? IMO, it’s failure to snipe. generally (there are rare exceptions), anybody placing a bid on eBay before the last minute of the auction is not fond of his wealth. if you’re bidding at eBay other than as a sniper, you don’t have much of an economics brain in your skull. sorry, but that’s the truth of it. so many people hear “auction”, then do their best to recreate their favorite movie scenes of live auctions, even though eBay auctions are entirely removed from this archetype. hell, even in a live auction ya gotta wonder what people are thinking placing a bid on an item early on. i’ve seen some bidders with hundreds of feedbacks getting into nibble contests on items. unbelievable.
i wonder how many people spout “supply/demand” bullshit in conversation, then go on eBay offering unnecessary visible evidence of demand for an item they want at the lowest price possible. if you’re one of those people, thank you; you make eBay a fun place to destroy the mentally retarded. done it many times.
but “giving back to the community” (ha!), i’ll try to help the retarded with this post. the correct bidding method (the one i’m going to describe) requires more soul searching and future projection before auctions than you may believe, but it’s how it’s done by men. you have to imagine before the auction how you would feel after the auction, given any specific price; you have to cover the range and find your magic number. and if you don’t understand eBay’s proxy system, bone up, hoss. otherwise, snipers will continue to own you. if you don’t understand that you can bid $72,000 on an item and win it for $6, you have no business bidding at eBay. i’m just not fucking around.
generally (again, there are rare exceptions), here’s how you bid on eBay if your head isn’t implanted in your ass. and if you haven’t figured it out yourself, it’s more than you deserve. givin’ ya pearls here:
pick the highest amount you’d be happy winning the auction for, then bid only once (<<< yes, that's the word "once"), using that amount for your one bid, and only in the final minute of the auction — one number, one bid, in one minute. period.
that may not sound like such a big deal, but finding that number is tough. you have to imagine you really lost the auction, and imagine you really won it (including after shill bidding by others — which is always a possibility, but lessened by sniping). when you find the one number where both of those possibilities leave you at peace, you’re ready to snipe. sniping with the correct number, you finish the auction with joy (no buyer’s remorse) when you win, and respect for the market and whoever beat you when you lose. what you don’t have is second guessing and wondering if you should have bid just $20 more, blah blah blah bullshit on and on.
in the eBay world, there’s probably no sadder creature than the supposed sniper who snipes with 40 seconds left, immediately gets countered, then starts nibbling frantically at the number. except in rare cases when done intelligently, if you nibble at the number, you’ve fucked it. may as well put an “i’m a stupid pussy” bumper sticker on your car. there are exceptions for the super-proficient sniper, but that gets into complex issues regarding bid priority under eBay’s proxy system, and is highly related to bid increments (which become significant for high-priced items). outside of just fucking around, it’s about the only good reason for not bidding as late as possible (i’ve won many items with a snipe in the last 5 seconds), but generally not worth worrying about if you don’t understand it.
the ultra-bitching snipers have many tricks. a hard core manual sniping session (there are tons of programs, desktop and remote, to snipe for you automatically if you wish) uses multiple browser windows (not tabs), a stopwatch, recent speed tests, and sometimes the temporary disabling of pictures in the browser. or you could get a reliable snipe program and internet connection (or use a remote service), then just lowball the fuck out of auctions while you sleep or do other stuff. you’ll lose most of them, but when you win, you normally win big.
proxy ignorance
many eBay newbies assume that the number they were beaten by was the high bid of the winning bidder. nope, doesn’t work like that. again, they need to understand the proxy system before wasting more bids on eBay. proxy bidding drives everything at eBay.