Most of the auctions I run are Buy-It-Now auctions. I always use the same price for the opening bid as the Buy-It-Now price. In other words you either want the item or you don't and if you bid on it it's yours.
I had a $20.00 item on BIN auction for $20.00 and the bidder placed a regular bid instead of the BIN bid. I closed the auction and sent the bidder an EOA notification congratulating them, requesting address and gave them the total with shipping. This was a 10 day BIN auction.
I get the following email from the bidder:
Hey, I thought that this ended on June 2nd?
I thought I had some time?
Are bidders now expecting our BID auctions to be Lay-a-Way auctions??? Was I wrong to close this auction and sell it at the opening bid which is the same as the BIN price???
posted on June 8, 2002 07:31:28 AM
As a 3 year seller on ebay ... I have found there are many buyers that live pay check to pay check and actually just last month ... did do a layaway for someone ( she did ask me up front before buying) .. she bought 3 auction items ... sent me 2 cash payments bi weekly and is sending final amt this week.
She was wonderful to deal with and has left me outstanding feedback without even receiving her items !
So... i'm thinking not a bad idea to do that especially with postal rate increases .. maybe can sell a few items to one ebayer to save on shipping since i give a discount with multiple items !!
Also have had buyers email me at auction end to say they will pay me in a week that they needed to have more money in their paypal
( i am assuming that they are also sellers and were just waiting for their buyers money from their sales to go into their paypal acct that they didn't want to charge
posted on June 8, 2002 08:29:15 AM
Sounds like this person may have been budgeting. You could change your auctions to having a BIN the same as the opening bid and making reference to that. That way you wouldn't have to close auctions early either. Give this person a little time and be polite with them. I bet they will come through.
Good luck
posted on June 8, 2002 08:37:34 AM
I don't understand. Doesn't the bidder get the item when they bid if the BIN and opening bid are the same? I have never used it. I use the BIN but I set the price 25 cents higher. If Ebay is going to charge you a BIN for it then when that person bids that amount no matter what option they take the BIN should work. If it doesn't then eBay is making money on your BIN and it isn't effective. Wow. that's a new one. Talk about lay-a-way. I said this in another thread. I think holding a check is a form of lay-a-way. When I send out my EOA's I tell them I don't hold checks so that money better be in their account or they shouldn't have bid.
posted on June 8, 2002 04:20:28 PM
Your auctio was for a $20.00 starting bid amount....... OR BIN for $20.00.
Your bidder did not want to BIN on this auction,
He placed a BID, and was willing to WAIT for the auction to close at the time it stated on the auction page.....when it should have.
If you say payment to be recieved within 7 days from end of auction, or something to that effect. .
The buyer took that in to count when they placed his bid,......say auction had 5 days left on it, and payment had to be in to seller 7 days from close, that gave the buyer 12 days to come up with payment to be in the sellers hands.
By You closing the auction EARLY, that gave him only 7 days.
I think if you are going to RULE your own auction, I would put in the auction, that
""if you do not do the BIN, and place a BID instead, then I will close the auction early. ""
It may be the same price, but the bidder/ buyer has the OPTION/CHOICE of BIN or BIDDING.
If I placed a bid on a 7 day auction, I would expect that the action to end in 7 days.......NOT in a few hours of placing my bid, or the next day.
Just my 2 cents worth
posted on June 8, 2002 05:05:35 PM
This is the way I handled this. I sent the customer an email stating they had an additional 10 days to pay for the auction. That would give them a total of 20 days after the auction closed. They were happy with that.
The reason I have a BIN price and an opening bid price that are the same is to entice the bidder to use the BIN option instead of placing a regular bid. I then list the same item again for others to bid on.
I have a large inventory of the products I sell and can buy my merchandise much cheaper than most sellers. I sell everything at about 15% to 20% less than my competition. Needless to say I move a lot of merchandise.
Everyone runs their auctions different. This just happens to be the way I run mine. It's worked great for me since the eBay started the BIN option.
