[Coco] Re: Barden's Assem book

[John R. Hogerhuis]

[OT ebay stuff]

On Mon, 2004-07-05 at 15:02, Roger Taylor wrote:

> Ah, ebay, the online rummage sale.
> ...making 50% of the people smash their screens in.
> ...making 50% of the people laugh on the way to the bank.
> 

That's how I felt until I figured out how it all works... you tend to
get burned once or twice at least before you get the hang of it. Moral:
don't buy anything big ticket while you're figuring ebay out.

> I realized that ebay's proxy bidding scheme is actually quite logical even 
> though it's not always fair to the bidder.  Because everybody bidding on 
> the auction will most definately NOT be at their computer for 3, 5, 7, or 
> 10 days straight, proxy bidding is the only fair way for 
> everybody.  However, I think every bidder should get to see what the 
> highest bid is just like you can hear it if you're at a real auction.
> 

They could do that, but they would somehow need to figure out how to
scale the delta for the next allowed bid up as the price rises. When the
unit is at a price of $50, the next higher bid should be, say $60, not
$50.50

> actions, they join in with the scam.  For instance, there's a LOT of ebay 
> sellers that purposely charge WAY too much for shipping and "handling" so 
> that they will come out smelling like a rose most of the time.  Like, a 

Yeah when I figure out my target price for an item I want to buy I
always include the shipping/handling cost. That's probably the only
place these sellers can really factor in an extra "profit center." I
personally don't consider it outright dishonest, just more of something
bad that happens to the newbies. Even today though I sometimes overpay
for shipping, but since I factor it into the price I'm willing to pay it
works out...

My bill rate as a software contractor is $80 an hour. If I take some
time to sell some of my junk on ebay, how should I value that time? It's
going to take me a half hour at best to come up with a good ad, take
photos, list the item. Then to ship it say I spend 15 minutes packing it
up, printing an invoice, another 15 minutes to take it to the post
office to weight and ship it... that's not to mention taking time to
answer a lot of questions from buyers (will you ship to BFE? Does it
(blah blah I can't read blah blah) ? Will you combine shipping? What is
your return/warranty policy? etc.)

Add on top of that paypal credit card and ebay seller fees...

So are you really surprised the sellers try to recover some of that?

> Is there a solution to this ebay chaos?  Yes, everybody needs to get off 
> their butts and go down to their LOCAL businesses and support them by 
> buying whatever you need that they offer.
> 

Well... the only thing I buy off ebay are things I can't get elsewhere
on the net or locally. You just can't buy vintage computer equipment
locally.

I tend to only buy things locally that I might end up taking back to the
store. Sorry, I have no incentive to pay for the retailer to maintain
huge property rents and pay lots of employees to ring up my measly
order. This is all stuff more efficiently handled by online retailers.

I think ebay is the best thing vintage computer users could ask for.