Ebay AU no longer allowing reserves. Should it happen here?

DHeath

Sometimes I browse foreign Ebay looking for US coins as darkside. Tonight, on the homepage of Australia's site, they made the following announcement:

"No more Reserves!

On Tuesday 10th August, 2004, eBay.com.au will be removing the ability to use Reserves for all categories except Cars, Motorcycles, Boats and Other Vehicles. The changes will start being implemented at 12:00:01am AEST, Tuesday 10th August, 2004.

Research has shown that sellers who don't use a Reserve on their listings experience a 34% higher sell-through rate than those sellers using Reserve, so here's your chance to be more successful!"

The seller can still set the opening bid, but reserves are going away. Pretty interesting I think.

stujoe

I think this would be a good thing for buyers...don't know about sellers. I think you would see a lot more higher starting bids.

kryptonitecomics

It should be left up to the sellers to decide not Ebay.........I agree opening bids will increase so that sellers don't have to stick their necks out to far. Seems like another way for Ebay to make money since....more auction will end with a winner.

relayer

Yep - either open it at your selling price, or no reserve and let it rip

Myqqy

I could see how sellers would be angry if it ends up costing them more money on listing fees for high end items. But personally, as a buyer, it would be much nicer to not have to deal with reserve auctions......

braddick

No! There are still too many Sellers who list with reserves and that's a good thing for the rest of us who don't!

Robgetty

It really won't matter. If they remove the use of reserves, then people will just
end auctions early if they aren't getting the price that they want. Until the auction
is required to run to completion, there will still be ways for sellers to scam out of
fees.

stman

<< <i>Sometimes I browse foreign Ebay looking for US coins as darkside. >>



Good ol' DHeath. The above quote wouldn't mean you're looking for a "Rip" would it? Got to hand it to ya, you're creative.

northcoin

About time. As far as early enders, all EBAY has to do is make a rule that any seller who ends his auction early is responsible for the fee as if it had sold at his listed price. With reserves gone they will be able to do this. Perhaps this is the intent. As an ebay stockholder I applaud efforts to make EBAY profitable.

Gonfunko

Yes, it should happen here. I hate bidding on an auction with a reserve and almost never do. If the sellers want to guarantee themselves XYZ amount of money, they should start the auction at that amount. What would be really awesome is if the opening bid was set at $1 - that way, the true value can be definitely set, unaltered by anything, and give those of us on limited budgets more chances to get coins.

krazyace5

I do not know why sellers use reserves for most things, same with starting the auction out at
a high price. I start most all of my auctions at .99 with no reserve.

Here is an auction I had a yr or so ago. I was selling a tent new in box, started auction out at .99 no reserve. I happened to notice the same tent being sold by some guy with a starting bid of $69.99.

His tent sold for $69.99, my tent sold for well over $100 and well over retail.

I think starting it out low you get more people to bid on it, more people get that little outbid email, and that is how you get bidding wars.
And those are always good for the seller.

keets

hey Don

i like stman's reply and i too applaud your creative use of those boring......hours!!! give a PM with any nice "rips" you've made.

as for the removal of a reserve, it'll affect how we all use eBay and it'll effect some major listing changes, drive some sellers/items off the air and probably result in higher prices and more revenue for eBay. it's easy to figure out. they'll lose some small listing fees for the reserve but more than make up for it with higher price realized fees. imagine it, eBay catering to their stockholders instead of sellers as is usual.

now, if we can just get them to do something about all the other listing fraud crap that goes on we might be able to call it progress.

al h.

bushmaster8

This will lead to a sizeable increase in schilling.