RSSFriday B.S.: eBay Overstimulation
Apr 27
Life in Digital ebay, online, online shopping Comments Off
I have always been kind of a late bloomer when it comes to trends. Ebay was founded in 1995, and it has taken me twelve years to create an account. I wasn’t afraid that my addictive personality would keep me up at night, scrolling through pages of listings for an Asian edition six-disc set of the Star Wars movies with Chinese on the packaging. (Last night.) And I wasn’t afraid that I would rack up hundreds of dollars in charges on my credit card for seasons 1 -- 4 of the Profiler. (Last week.) Or that I might get into a bidding war with fat_caddy_1975 for a collectible oversized poster of Tori Amos from the Choirgirl era that I owned once before six years ago. (I lost.)
No, pretty much the reason I avoided eBay was because I didn’t get it. Bidding seems like a long way around to buy something handled and discarded that you can pick up on amazon.com in the same condition, or even half.com if you want to support eBay’s business enterprise. And nothing compares to browsing through the racks at your favorite store -- no virtual mall can replace the textures and smells of mall Americana.
Having created my eBay account and given it a go for the last week, I have all but confirmed I am the wrong personality for this kind of thing.
First, there is the fact that auctions can run anywhere from 1 day to a week. That lacks the instant gratification that makes shopping a buzz.
Second, the low starting bid is a sham. Nobody in their right mind is selling Black Apple iPod Video 30GB Enhanced MP3 -- SEALED Unit for $.01. Even if you the seller didn’t pay for the original product, you would take a bullet to your head before you would part ways with a brand new iPod for a penny. It’s an auction, not a giveaway.
Third, it’s dubious at best to get within the last 30s of your bid and have someone up you by a dollar. The trick, of course, is that you’ll rebid and they might rebid and eventually, it will come down to who has the most nimble fingers when the time expires, and all of a sudden you’re paying $69.95 for a jWIN 3 CD Mini System Cassette Radio, er, a boombox with $19.99 shipping. But the truth is that strategy entirely contrary to the concept of a maximum bid. This is exactly how much I am willing to pay for this item. Once that is set, what, really is the motivating to get into a bidding war?
Oh, I get how the bidding war could be addictive to the right personality. But the effect of that is that people are paying exorbitant prices for things that were probably barely worth the price of shipping. I sweat the cost buying a pretzel from vendor stationed on the sidewalk in Central Park. In all my years of not being an eBay customer, I always assumed that the purpose of buying on eBay was to not pay full price on the item. So far, I have found that the exact opposite is true. You have sellers who post jacked up, unreasonable starting bids. Other sellers who bid over you so you can’t get away with a bargain (and don’t tell me it’s against eBay’s rules -- it’s only against the rules if you get caught.) And you have buyers who don’t need it, possibly don’t even want it, who are solely in a bidding war in the last few minutes of the auction for the buzz they get with a back and forth, manic bidding war.
And then you have me. I can get a secret thrill out of rebidding up to someone’s max bid just knowing that it’s going to cost them more to buy the same thing they were going to pay half the cost for before I logged on. Well, I don’t really want it, and I don’t really want to pay for it, but [giggle] it’s kind of funny to watch someone else pay more for it.
So far, I have won exactly 0 bids. All of the reasons apply in my case. I don’t want to wait five days for the auction to close. I don’t want to find out with 29s left that someone overbid me by a dollar just to see if I’ll bite (or worse if it ever really was the seller logging in as a different identity to jack up the price.) And of course, the most important reason I have not won any bids and likely never will? Come to find out, I really didn’t want it in the first place.
