EBAY BLUES: Back in the mid 1990s, it was hip to say that the Internet was going to change our lives. The big money men on Wall Street even believed it for a few years (but then the bubble burst in 2000). The Internet has turned out to be a real convenience, but it hasn\u2019t changed my life. However if I had to name one institution on the web that did have some effect on the way I live, it would have to be Ebay. But the effect of Ebay isn\u2019t always positive.<\/p>\n
Ebay amounts to a world-wide bazaar where you can find an amazing variety of stuff for sale. You can easily find things that you otherwise wouldn’t know where to look for. You can also sell stuff that you need to get rid of. All in all, Ebay can be quite a resource.<\/p>\n
But it can also be quite a frustration. Back in the old days, you would see something for sale in a store or shop with a price tag. You could buy it right then and there, or you could haggle a little with the seller and maybe get a better price. But on Ebay, it\u2019s mostly the opposite. You see an item and a price; perhaps it’s a good price, but you\u2019re probably gonna pay more if you really want the item. The Ebay bidding system is designed to goose up the prices that sellers get. Most of the time, the initial price that you see listed is a decent price, maybe even a bargain. (But always beware of the shipping cost and consider the total price with shipping; some sellers tempt you with a low price but charge much more for shipping than the cost of a box and the UPS or USPS fee). <\/p>\n
So you see something you like and put in a bid, then wait a couple of days. You also entered a \u201cmaximum price\u201d, the most you\u2019d be willing to pay. If someone else bids, then your price will go up to match it, but no higher then your maximum. If the other bidder goes over your maximum, then you don\u2019t get it — unless the idea of being outbid drives you into a rage and you try to get even by throwing more money at the product than your competitor. Ebay sends you an e-mail as soon as you are outbid, and there\u2019s something about it that seems to encourage rage. <\/p>\n
This can be especially frustrating if you\u2019ve bid on something early on, say six days before the end of the auction, and in the last five minutes or so someone outbids you. They call this \u201csniping\u201d. It\u2019s totally fair on Ebay. But it\u2019s certainly not pleasant. Ebay\u2019s official comment? Just make sure that you set your maximum high enough so that no one else will outbid you. <\/p>\n
Well sure, that\u2019s great if you\u2019re making lots more money than you know what to do with. And there are a lot of people out there like that these days. Unfortunately, the rest of us who have to watch our budgets must compete against such people on Ebay. So, perhaps you see something you like and put in a bid with a maximum price that you feel is on the high end — good protection from being outbid. Then along comes someone for whom money is no object, and you\u2019re bumped. <\/p>\n
It never fails to amaze me how high some people bid for relatively simple items (like the stuff that I\u2019ve bought, e.g. small kitchen utensils, essential oils, CDs, Roman coins, old railroad timetables). Ebay is clearly not the place where you always get a bargain. Only once in a while, clearly less than half the time, do you bid a low price and actually get to buy the thing at that price. More than once, I\u2019ve seen an Ebay price zoom up past what you could pay by doing some minimal search engine research to find a regular seller for the same item. For example, there was a CD on Ebay that was listed at auction for $6 with shipping. I saw that Alphacraze was selling the same CD for $8 with shipping. So I put a bid in on “the Bay” with an $8 maximum. Well, wouldn\u2019t you know that someone bid $9; I thus went to Alphacraze. Another time I was outbid on an item where the seller had the same item listed on the \u201cbuy it now\u201d pages (which is a fixed price option that some Ebay sellers use). The person who outbid me paid more than if they bought it via the fixed price offer, right there on Ebay. After I was outbid, I proceeded to buy the fixed price item, which had a fair price although not a bargain.<\/p>\n
There\u2019s nothing much to be done here, no great injustice. Ebay is just Internet capitalism at work, with all its glorious possibilities and all its incredible frustrations. Ebay is basically a game that you play<\/span>. Even if you play smart, very often you lose. The only way to make things better would be a code of courtesy amidst Ebay users; i.e., unless you really need the thing in question, you refrain from outbidding the person who got there first, even if you figure that it would still be worth it to you if the price were a few dollars higher. Thus far, I have adhered to that code (except in one instance where the bidding was so competitive that it was clear that you just couldn\u2019t buy anything unless you joined in on the game). Unfortunately, we\u2019re living in a gladiator world, a world of people acting like rats trying to tear little crumbs away from each other. Until and unless that mentality changes, Ebay is going to continue to be a ratty experience.<\/p>\n Rat-World Footnote:<\/span> Another example of rat-world mentality is the growing frequency here in Northern New Jersey of drivers zooming around you on the right when you\u2019re ready to pull away from a stop light that has just turned green, even though you\u2019re not making a left turn. It\u2019s tempting sometimes to floor the pedal and race the right-lane rats; let\u2019s see who turns chicken first. But I don\u2019t do that, as it could be dangerous. However, twice in the past few weeks I pulled away from a light at regular speed, and the right-lane rats just ran out of room and had to stop and pull in behind me (parked car ahead). Yea, I get a little rush when that happens, but it also makes me realize just how nutty people are these days, lunging for a right lane pass where there clearly isn\u2019t enough space to comfortably do it. It\u2019s rat-thinking such as that which causes the high accident rate and high car insurance rates that we have here. And which makes Ebay such a nice little opportunity for two-bit capitalists.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" EBAY BLUES: Back in the mid 1990s, it was hip to say that the Internet was going to change our lives. The big money men on Wall Street even believed it for a few years (but then the bubble burst in 2000). The Internet has turned out to be a real convenience, but it hasn\u2019t […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/jimgworld.com\/blog1\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/472"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/jimgworld.com\/blog1\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/jimgworld.com\/blog1\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jimgworld.com\/blog1\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jimgworld.com\/blog1\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=472"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/jimgworld.com\/blog1\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/472\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/jimgworld.com\/blog1\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=472"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jimgworld.com\/blog1\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=472"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jimgworld.com\/blog1\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=472"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}