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Ebay reserve policy doesn't help anyone
I am sure you will receive lots of feedback following your eBay article in July 2006 PCW, but I have a strong objection to eBay’s policy on reserve prices.
When I first started using eBay, it was possible to set a reserve price for any item you were selling.
About 18 months or so ago, ‘to improve service to all our users’ eBay changed its policy and now you cannot impose a reserve price lower than £50 for any item. The only other way to control the price of an item you list is to set a minimum starting bid.
That imposes a big risk on sellers of lower-priced goods. If I have an item that I want (say) £20 for, I have to either
(1) take the risk of being forced to sell for 99p if I follow eBay’s recommendation of setting a low starting bid, and get no higher bid, or (2) dissuade bidders (and show my hand) by setting a starting bid close to my ‘reserve’ price.
I cannot see how this policy helps eBay, and it certainly has dissuaded me from using it to sell modest items. If eBay found the service was uneconomic on its old terms, the answer should have been to raise the fee for reserve price auctions, not eliminate them.
Needless to say, when I emailed eBay about this issue, I was fobbed off with irrelevant automatic replies and was never able to communicate with anyone who understood or cared about my issue. Maybe you might have better luck.
Tony Cater
May 19, 2006 in Vent your spleen! | Permalink
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Comments
I agree completely. With the old reserve rule you could at least stand the chance of getting someone to keep bidding until you reached a reasonable market value. Now cheap buyers are having a field day of it. I may stop selling on ebay soon. After a year of this my profits have dropped.
Posted by: David | 16 Mar 2008 07:33:06
