Re: I don't understand your distinctions Message #18 Posted by Steve (Australia) on 17 Feb 2001, 6:56 p.m., in response to message #17 by Jim L
Put it this way. If someone asks $20 for an HP16C and I accept that price, and later they find they could have sold it for much more, then tough.
But if someone has an HP16C in their hand and they ask me what I'll pay for it, I would feel very uncomfortable offering $20.
They might just laugh and go away (because they wanted *at least* $40, or maybe they knew it's true worth). And if they gladly accept, they might go away hapy until they find out that a collector who *knew* what the calculator was worth just offered them peanuts.
My ethics are that I would far prefer to pay a fair price and have the seller remain happy with me than scam a really good deal and leave potentially bitter feelings.
My method of dealing with "best offer" and the like is to ask the seller what they were expecting (or wanting) to get for the item. If I'm prepared to pay that, then that's what I offer. If not I walk away. I suppose the only time I haggle is if I've bought a whole stack of things, but then many sellers have offered that to me anyway (if you buy this and this I'll throw in that).
Maybe that means I have paid more than some others when buying directly from people, but I feel good about the purchases, and for me that counts for a lot too.
An auction allows me to bid low without ethical concerns, because the seller has placed the item in an open market, and others are free to bid higher if they please.
On another topic, the simple answer to the "why do people bid low and never bid again", e.g. $4 on an HP41 (knowing they'll never get it for that) is simply so that they can have ebay "remember" the item for them. If they come back near the end of the auction and find the price is too high for them they don't bid again. I find that the number of low and/or early bids is a good indication of how much excitement there will be at the end of an auction. I tend to keep away from items that were listed for 1c and now have 10 bids on them after 1 day, but the price is only $20, and I would expect the price to be far higher. Typically nothing much happens for 8 days, then on the last day/hour/minute the price spirals upward to unimaginable heights as 2 or 3 of these bidders come back.
|