How do you explain EBay to a 6-year old? In the past, purchases have been governed by how much money you have and by priorities. For example, I have $10, would I rather have this crap or that crap?
From time to time we also have to deal with limited product availability. But that is, at least, a fairly discreet issue: it's in stock or it's not. If it's in stock you get it at the advertised price. If not, you don't get it.
But with EBay we introduce competition. It's in stock, but two or more people want it. How much is it? Wrong question. How much are you willing to pay?
Last night the object of desire was $19.01 and the auction was set to end at 8:17 this morning. This morning the new high bid was $22.50. He still wanted it, even at the higher price. So we bid $23 only to discover that the previous high bidder had an even higher maximum price.
Aside #Going once, twice, SOLD: A few years ago you had to manually bid up the price. But now it is automatic. You can still do it manually, or you can enter your the max you're willing to pay and let the system automatically increase your bid in response to competing bids.We played the manual bid process a couple of times until the new high bid was $25. 2 of 2 still wanted the item and decided that $30 was the most he could afford (plus $8 shipping was all he had in his piggy bank). So we entered a bid at $30.
CONGRATULATIONS! You have the high bid at $27.00
So now we were on pins and needles for the remaining 9 minutes and 30 seconds of the auction. Would anyone else bid? Would the person we so recently beat enter a new maximum bid amount?
We must have refreshed that screen a dozen times in those few minutes. But as with all things, it came to an end. And in the end we had "won" the auction.
I hope we haven't unleashed a monster.
2 comments:
Some manufacturers work really hard to keep the prices of their products high. To that end, they'll castrate a reseller who resells their product below List Price. I had a conversation with a furniture reseller in Mifipi who sayd his contract with Big Mumble Furniture was being cancelled because he had the audacity to offer their products on SALE. No matter that the next nearest reseller was 100+ miles away.
Anyway, I ran into that problem while seeking a pair of Bose Noise-Cancelling headphones last week. They're only available for one price: $299.99 .. unless you nose over to eBay where they can be had for a fraction (iff you consider 4/5 a fraction) of the price.
So, I played eBay voyeur. There were about a dozen auctions for that product at a given time, and maybe I'd find one for $49.95 when no one else was looking. Fat chance, huh?
Ah, but are the Bose noise cancelling headphones available on EBay the real McCoy?
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