The psychology of 'THAT' auction site

sparrow6224 said:
One thing -- obvious, I suppose, but it took me one round of sales to figure it out -- carefully clean your stuff, because the camera up close and adequate lighting will pick up way more dust and grit than you see holding the item in your hand. I cleaned the outer black portions of my cameras last time with a bit of WD-40 on a cloth and they really looked good, and bidding started earlier and faster as a result.
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WD40??? that's new to me.....You are absolutely right about cleaning, generally, but I'd prefer naturally dusty gear instead of contaminated with automotive products.

Years ago here in used car market sellers learned such trick: they spray washed engine and everything under hood, then went over water hoses with oily rag to make them looking "newer", sometimes even spray painted parts supposed to be black or silver. Women and sunday buyers just couldn't resist this "minty beauties" just to discover after buy they whave got a lemon.

Too perfect look of old things also means something.
 
very interesting advises all around.

May I ask for advises for a rare item?
One that will probably mostly interest collectors?
One whose value is unclear, and that you really want the relevant people not to miss...
Thanks
 
colyn said:
The problem you may face if you don't already have a fair amount of positive feedback is low ball bids. New sellers are not well trusted and you may end up having to sell well below market value as a result..

Also paypal may lock any money coming into your account till the buyer leaves positive feedback.
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yeah, the last time I used it was when they put a 3 week hold on the money for a scanner I sold. i.e. I'm expected to send goods and ebay keep the money for three weeks. Apparently that was for my protection. Go figure. Seems more like contempt for sellers to me.
 
sevo said:
Well, that is not really a decision of ebay, consumer protection laws brought it upon them...
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I don't think all of those were brought on by consumer protection laws. I sold a camera on there and it ended up the buyer had very poor communication. He never gave me feedback which meant my money was held for three weeks among other things. He complained about shipping costs after the fact, etc. As a seller you can't even leave neutral or negative feedback. It's a shame because you have no way of backing out of a sale or even warning others about buyers like that.

The worst part of it is, he could have received the camera, used and abused it for two weeks, and asked for his money back.
 
Tim Gray said:
As a seller you can't even leave neutral or negative feedback. It's a shame because you have no way of backing out of a sale or even warning others about buyers like that.
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This is something I've thought about the few times I've sold. Everything is weighted towards the buyer. I started to think that there should be two feedback scores: one for you as seller and one as buyer. As a seller you should be able to look over the bidders and simply block buyers with troublesome feeback from bidding.

Maybe too complicated, to problematic in its own right. But seems to make sense to me that it be a clear and full two-way street.
 
Paddy C said:
This is something I've thought about the few times I've sold. Everything is weighted towards the buyer. I started to think that there should be two feedback scores: one for you as seller and one as buyer. As a seller you should be able to look over the bidders and simply block buyers with troublesome feeback from bidding.

Maybe too complicated, to problematic in its own right. But seems to make sense to me that it be a clear and full two-way street.
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That's how it used to work.
 
tlitody said:
Seems more like contempt for sellers to me.
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The reason for the hold was because a number of new sellers were posting fraud listings, collecting the money then not sending gear.

They would transfer the money to their bank accounts then have the bank block any attempt by paypal to collect. Since paypal was refunding the buyer they were out the money if they could not collect from the seller.
 
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