Would you like the OPTION of "Best Offer" available on eBid?

[theweaverboy]

Blah blah blah

[deltadelta48]

Despite all the sometimes heated discussions by da boys, the fact remains, changes are made via a process, which I am assuming Weaver will follow after his poll has ended.

Seems to me the best suggestions for changes are made by users, and no user needs an advanced degree to use this site to buy and sell. We all come from very diverse backgrounds, which gives us enormous strength and wisdom in many many areas. This is definitely a positive not a negative. So instead of finding fault with those making suggestions, an effort should be made to add useful ideas to the suggestions to improve them instead of trying to shoot them down because something is "wrong" with the suggester.

Remember, this thread is gathering information for Weaver to submit to ebid when the time is right, not a demand for immediate change, etc. People seem to forget that and take every suggestion for site changes as a personal insult.

[raindropsies]

Despite all the sometimes heated discussions by da boys, the fact remains, changes are made via a process, which I am assuming Weaver will follow after his poll has ended.

Seems to me the best suggestions for changes are made by users, and no user needs an advanced degree to use this site to buy and sell. We all come from very diverse backgrounds, which gives us enormous strength and wisdom in many many areas. This is definitely a positive not a negative. So instead of finding fault with those making suggestions, an effort should be made to add useful ideas to the suggestions to improve them instead of trying to shoot them down because something is "wrong" with the suggester.

Remember, this thread is gathering information for Weaver to submit to ebid when the time is right, not a demand for immediate change, etc. People seem to forget that and take every suggestion for site changes as a personal insult.

However, this is not the 1st poll/thread from him on this subject

[nobrassband]

Perhaps eBid will make a decision on this before too long. The topic has been raised quite a few times over the years. Personally, I would welcome an option such as this.

However, with only 62 voters in total, it might not be top of the company's list of priorities.

[marschenegger]

I sincerely doubt it will ever be the priority of eBid.net to provide sellers with enough rope with which to hang themselves. Giving bad sellers the Best Offer option will just embolden them with the temerity to inflate their asking prices. How are higher up-front asking prices supposed to bring more buyers?

[booksforsale]

I sincerely doubt it will ever be the priority of eBid.net to provide sellers with enough rope with which to hang themselves. Giving bad sellers the Best Offer option will just embolden them with the temerity to inflate their asking prices. How are higher up-front asking prices supposed to bring more buyers?

No ebid won't be providing anyone with a rope to hang themselves.

The only people providing the rope to hang themselves are those themselves who don't know how to properly use the selling facilities available to them.

Ebid would be providing a valuable sales tool in the form of Make Offer.

A tool is only of any real use in the hands of someone who can use it well.

I would say the majority of sellers are quite capable of putting the tools they are given to good use - what makes you so certain that adding Make Offer to our repertoire of selling tools will suddenly have sellers bursting out in a frenzy of overinflating prices.

If this was the case, surely this gives you a competitive advantage:

i.e. same item sold by two sellers YOU and A.N. OTHER.

YOU: Item priced at known reasonable market value

AN OTHER: Item way overpriced but with Make Offer available.

I am savvy enough to know what AN OTHER is up to, and you get the sale.

I can accept that you are against the Make Offer facility, what I find unnacceptable is your treating your fellow sellers as if they are all idiots incapable of going about the business of online selling with established tools and methods.

[sidthelamp]

"If this was the case, surely this gives you a competitive advantage:

i.e. same item sold by two sellers YOU and A.N. OTHER.

YOU: Item priced at known reasonable market value

AN OTHER: Item way overpriced but with Make Offer available.

I am savvy enough to know what AN OTHER is up to, and you get the sale."

so why let buyers see overpriced items in the first place, why let sellers overinflate prices then offer make an offer i see no sense in this, looks really unprofesional

[marschenegger]

No ebid won't be providing anyone with a rope to hang themselves.

The only people providing the rope to hang themselves are those themselves who don't know how to properly use the selling facilities available to them.

Whether the sellers hang themselves of not, the rope has to come from eBid for them to do it.

If this was the case, surely this gives you a competitive advantage:

i.e. same item sold by two sellers YOU and A.N. OTHER.

YOU: Item priced at known reasonable market value

AN OTHER: Item way overpriced but with Make Offer available.

I am savvy enough to know what AN OTHER is up to, and you get the sale.

My short-term gain would be exactly that, short-term. Buyers will not stick around a site where the up-front asking prices are high. Buyers run away, and we all lose.

I can accept that you are against the Make Offer facility, what I find unnacceptable is your treating your fellow sellers as if they are all idiots incapable of going about the business of online selling with established tools and methods.

I've seen the consequences of unbridled seller "professionalism" and access to seller tools; it's called eBay. 'Nuff said. (P.S. This isn't an endorsement for eBay. Quite to the contrary!)

[booksforsale]

"If this was the case, surely this gives you a competitive advantage:

i.e. same item sold by two sellers YOU and A.N. OTHER.

YOU: Item priced at known reasonable market value

AN OTHER: Item way overpriced but with Make Offer available.

I am savvy enough to know what AN OTHER is up to, and you get the sale."

so why let buyers see overpriced items in the first place, why let sellers overinflate prices then offer make an offer i see no sense in this, looks really unprofesional

You've quoted me out of context - my statement wasn't in support of overpricing items, just pointing out a quirk that a competitor overpricing his stock is advantageous to you - this is true whether or not make offer is attached to the listing.

To answer your last paragraph though, why deprive sensible sellers of a good selling tool, just because a minority of sellers do not know how to offer reasonable and attractive prices to start with.

Sellers do currently overprice with the Buy Now option. Does that mean we should remove Buy Now from ebid?

[booksforsale]

Originally Posted by booksforsale
No ebid won't be providing anyone with a rope to hang themselves.

The only people providing the rope to hang themselves are those themselves who don't know how to properly use the selling facilities available to them.

Whether the sellers hang themselves of not, the rope has to come from eBid for them to do it.

We can go round in circles with blame and metaphors. At the end of the day a seller who prices himself out of the market only has himself to blame.

Originally Posted by booksforsale
If this was the case, surely this gives you a competitive advantage:

i.e. same item sold by two sellers YOU and A.N. OTHER.

YOU: Item priced at known reasonable market value

AN OTHER: Item way overpriced but with Make Offer available.

I am savvy enough to know what AN OTHER is up to, and you get the sale.

My short-term gain would be exactly that, short-term. Buyers will not stick around a site where the up-front asking prices are high. Buyers run away, and we all lose.

Buyers might very well run away, but this is based on your assumption that a sizeable majority of sellers will overprice their goods the minute Make Offer is unleashed upon us. I have noticed some sellers who have wildly overpriced Buy Now prices - does this mean we should remove Buy Now? There are other sellers whose auction start price is stupidly high, and others where it is too low (i.e. too good to be true - I lean towards the thinking that a low start price on certain goods can make the buyer think they are getting tat) - with those highs and lows in mind should we get rid of auction style listings?

Originally Posted by booksforsale
I can accept that you are against the Make Offer facility, what I find unnacceptable is your treating your fellow sellers as if they are all idiots incapable of going about the business of online selling with established tools and methods.

I've seen the consequences of unbridled seller "professionalism" and access to seller tools; it's called eBay. 'Nuff said. (P.S. This isn't an endorsement for eBay. Quite to the contrary!)

Again you make this sweeping insinuation, which boils down to all sellers except for yourself, are incapable of wisely using the selling tools available to them.

You don't seem to indicate any sort of figure anywhere just how many bad sellers exist, or how many sellers incapable of using a selling tool it takes to have an impact (whether real or imagined) on an auction site. Any chance of you giving us a percentage as to how many of these unworthy sellers there are on ebid?

I kind of get the point that a number of sellers don't really get the idea of what selling is about, call them 'bad sellers' if you will.

Adding Make Offer isn't going to turn all of ebid's resident sellers into bad sellers overnight and I firmly believe we won't get a rush in price-hiking to any noticeable extent and certainly not to the point that it will scare customers away.

I only wish we could stop all this dancing around and for someone to admit they don't want Best Offer:

• because they perceive it will bring prices (i.e. values) down
• because they could get undercut by a competitor who allows buyers to make offers
• because it could cause the price guides to be worthless.