A common complaint from both buyers and sellers is that the BUY IT NOW option disappears from an auction as soon as the first bid is placed. Sellers have to pay for the additional BUY IT NOW option so only get value up until the first bid – on a highly sought after item this may be just hours or minutes.
The BUY IT NOW price also acts as a guide price for buyers indicating the value of the item encouraging higher bids. Buyers may well be interested in buying immediately but can’t, if someone has entered a low bid, even if the seller would rather get a quick sale. I for one have received messages from sellers asking if I’ll cancel bids and sell an item immediately, and of course under current eBay rules am unable to do so.
That may all change, eBay are about to start testing keeping the BIN option available on a listing longer even after the first bid has been placed. Options include keeping BUY IT NOW available until the bids reach 50% of the BIN option, waiting until a certain time has passed or a set number of bids have been placed.
For buyers it will kick in the windorphins knowing you’ve BIN’d an item against the bid of another buyer – it’s natural to want something others have (or might have). This could encourage more immediate purchases instead of bids, that should please sellers.
Testing will be carried out in Parts & Accessories category on eBay.com Motors over the next few months.
8 Responses
Slightly off topic but relevant possibly, on .com you can end your listing early to the current high bidder.
We found the option the other week.
Which helps if you start you auctions at prices you are happy to sell at…
Hey Mark, you can do that on .co.uk as well 😉
It would be interesting to see if they will still allow second chance offers for the highest bidder even when the item has been “BIN”ed.
That would be *very* cool, Steve. As would the hinted-at extension of Best Offer beyond the official end of the item.
Are we going to get US style back and forth Best Offers too?
I’d also love to have the ebay.com version of Best Offers where you can counter-offer and negotiate an equitable price. Otherwise too many low bidders and joyriders.
Yep, I third the vote for the expansion of the Best Offer system in the UK. And certainly for the expansion of the current “one offer only” clause in some categories: for example, I have buyers with a successful BO on a SIF listing who want the same deal again, and it can’t be done on eBay because Bead Art only allows one offer per listing per customer. Ridiculous.
All my categories come into the one bite of the cherry and that’s it. I ask people to email first so we can do the negotiating bit, and that works sometimes, but not always. It is very galling to not be able to even say “You are joking, aren’t you…” to some people.