Thread: Interesting Attempted Deal

"To me, any price lower than the final price of a fair auction is ripping the seller off. Expecting someone to sell something for less than it is worth is a form of greed.[/QUOTE]"

If an auction never comes to fruition how would you know if the amount is higher or lower than the auction would have produced. Answer; You don't. I sure don't.
But I have a pretty good idea what razors are worth and make offers accordingly. Sometimes I offer more than value because I want to secure the deal.
Many times I have had offers get turned down, and the item sold under my offer. Why? Because the seller, who probably never held a straight razor before, saw a Filarmonica bring $600, and figured they could do better with grandpas Imperial.
Other times my offer is accepted and both buyer and seller are happy.
Ed
quicknicker

eBay set the rules for their business, just as sellers (except for eBay policies they undertake to observe) would like to do for theirs. The real problem comes when there are already bids on the item, for their policy on cancelling bids is:


You can cancel a member's bids in the following cases:


The bidder contacts you to back out of the bid.
You can't verify the identity of the bidder after trying all reasonable means of contact.


Do you meet one of these requirements?
Yes
No

The last two are links. If you click on "no", it tells you in polite eBay language to go away and not be so silly. If you click on yes, it will lead to a bid cancellation page, where you have to declare which of these reasons applied.

It doesn't sound like the way to find a trustworthy deal.

I snipe by means of the Auctionsniper website, and am sure I have saved many times their very modest commission. The use of a website also cancels out the vagaries of your connection, being in a different time zone, etc. eBay say that sniping is part of the eBay experience, which is a lot better than they say about rejecting bona fide bidders in the hope of getting more money.

Remember that eBay uses a proxy bidding system, in which it is the second-highest bidder who determines how much you will pay, and whether your maximum will ever be known. Bricks and mortar auction houses often have unknown telephone bids on the table too, and if something is in the rules, it is permissible.

I've been thinking about this and it's probably different because I'm somewhat familiar with what a lot of razors will sell for (and many sellers are not). If I have an offer around the price I want to receive, I'd take it. There are many factors on ebay and there is a chance the item can sell for more or less than the offer. I'd feel better about the auction knowing I got what I wanted and the buyer got what they wanted. If I wait and sell the item for less, that sucks. If the item would have sold for more because someone has slightly deeper pockets... I can live with that because I know I won't get rich selling a couple razors here and there. A deal for + or - $20 won't hurt anyone... the bad part is when someone tries to steal a Filly or Puma for $12 when it would probably sell in the hundreds.

On the original question you can check when there were revisions to the item. I think if there are already bids ebay doesn't allow the description to be changed, only additional information can be provided. This should avoid any questions as to what was the description at the time when a bid was placed.

As far as the other issue, there's the option to end a listing early if the item is not available anymore, which cancels all bids and the seller is only liable for the insertion fees (these days usually zero). It's sufficiently vague that I doubt anybody will get penalized for doing it, unless they're told by ebay not to.

Whether it's ethical, or not depends on the person who makes such determination, but it seems to me that most of the time there's a significant slant of self-interest. From a free-market perspective if a seller and a buyer agree to a price then whether any of them is uneducated/lazy/etc doesn't really matter.

I haven't sold many razors on ebay, but when I have I've only occasionally gotten offers and there was only one single case when the offer was reasonable and so I sold him the razor for a little less than his offer. In another case the prospective buyer told me that the razor isn't worth what I told him the reserve is so he passed yet 2 months later I saw him selling the exact same razor in a little worse condition for more than that.

I've offered few times to sellers to buy their razor on buy-it-now, but my offers are always a little more than what I'm going to bid if I end up bidding (and sometimes I don't because by the time the bid is due I have found something else). Obviously buying the razor immediately is worth to me more than waiting for the auction to end, so I figure a little premium is in order. Plus the seller has a little extra incentive other than just getting paid few days earlier. Usually I get the razor for less, sometimes much less than my offer too, but that's the life. If a seller is willing to take a gamble that's perfectly in their right.

Originally Posted by ats200

I still think that isn't true. If you enter in the most you are willing to pay.. isn't that the maximum amount? I don't mean that I have to enter in every single dollar to my name. We may be on different trains of thought here but I simply meant, if the most I'm willing to pay is (for example) $100. Why not try to negotiate for less?

Edit: Sorry for the "hard headedness." I completely understand what everyone is saying and on some level I do agree but I think it comes down to the old saying "agree to disagree."

I believe we're discussing two different concepts here. I think there is a "maximum" that is the most that an individual is willing to pay at any time as in "I would NEVER pay more than $20 for that." Then there is the moment by moment "maximum" that is constantly changing. Say I'm looking for a particular razor like a Clauss. This week money is tight and the pic isn't great so my maximum is only about $12. I get outbid. No big deal. Next week I work some overtime and I spy a razor on Ebay like the one I saw last week only this one has much better pictures and now I've got extra money. I don't mind bidding $25 this time and I win. The razors may be identical but my maximum still changed from one week to the next. Even if I won the lottery I don't think I would ever have a set maximum that I would be willing to bid every single time. Just because I could afford to spend to $5000 for a $20 razor doesn't mean that I would.

Shilling isn't a way to bid to win. Shilling is bidding to drive prices up. Sometimes it's done by a friend of the seller and sometimes it's done by a different account belonging to the same seller. A shiller isn't going to bid a ridiculous amount like $5000 hoping to win. The shiller actually wants to lose. The only purpose is forcing the legitimate bidders to spend more than necessary. Sniping is a way of limiting how much shilling is done before the end of the auction. That keeps prices down for the buyers. Sniping is generally frowned upon by Ebay but shilling is a big no-no.

Lori

As a snipe bidder on eBay, I have one major reason for my actions- if I bid at the end, I don't have to look at the auction every day, all day. I will, indeed, only bid up to my max regardless, but it gives me peace of mind to simply do it at the end and not dwell on it until it ends.

As far as the edited listing goes, that's just plain shady. It hasn't happened to me, but I could see it. Kudos to you for noticing it prior to paying!

And here is a perfect example of a buyer low-balling an offer and an uninformed seller accepting the price. I had this on my watch list and probably would have bid $80-90 for it. Granted, it is the sellers fault for being uninformed on an items worth, but buyers who do nothing but go around and submit lowball offers to sellers irk me just as much.

VINTAGE STRAIGHT RAZOR George Wostenholm & Sons IXL old | eBay