Monday, February 11, 2008
I can tell I'm a bit depressed lately by the contents of the mailbox. I've been shopping online. I do that when I feel like I need pampering. Shopping online is more satisfying than shopping in stores, because when packages arrive in the mail, or when the big brown or yellow trucks come up the driveway, it feels like someone sent me a gift. Somehow it gets disconnected from the money spent.
Some of the shopping has been on eBay. I hadn't visited eBay since the fall of 2005 (except once to buy something from a friend), but since last July I've been indulging far too much, in spurts.
There's a method to get the best deals on eBay. I don't understand people who bid early in an eBay auction. It's not at all like a live auction, when you want to register interest with the auctioneer so that you don't get left out when the bidding gets hot. Registering early interest on eBay is NOT a good thing, and it's completely unnecessary, if you understand automatic bidding. If you want to make sure the seller doesn't end the auction early, just ask a question. That tells the seller you're interested without alerting other bidders.
I'll see a nice sari, with three days to go on the auction, and six or seven bids in on it already, invariably from people with less than 80 in feedback count. They obviously don't understand eBay's automatic bidding and they're just bidding each other up. I don't bid until the last few seconds of the auction, and I almost always win at the lowest possible winning amount. If I had placed the same bid earlier, someone would have "nibbled" my bid all the way up.
(Bidding in the last few seconds is called "sniping", and it's despised by people who don't understand automatic bids. The explanation of automatic bidding is complicated, but once understood, the concept is simple.)
So I do a little research on the other bidders who have revealed their interest. I look at what they've bought ("won") lately, and how much they paid, how much they're willing to go for an item of this type. I look at what their interests seem to be. I look to see if they have a habit of "nibbling" up automatic bids. I look to see if they ever snipe.
And frankly, I look just because I'm snoopy and I want to know what they bought. Sometimes I find some good stuff, good sellers, that way.
One woman I researched today had a very strange buying history. She was buying all kinds of pure junk. Then I realized it was all very cheap junk, and she was getting it at the starting price (often very low) as the only bidder. It looks like she opens with the lowest bid on a LOT of junk (we're talking like $.50 and $1.25 shipping), and then either gets outbid, or wins for a pittance. She has bought and got feedback on about 50 items in the past two weeks. I suddenly realized that she isn't buying stuff - she's spending a little money to build a good feedback rating. I'll bet that if I look back in a month, I'll find her listing all that junk for sale, along with some of her own stuff that she wants to sell.
She's smart. A lot of people won't buy, especially expensive items, from someone who has less than 50 feedbacks, or less than 99% positive. Most people won't notice that her perfect feedback is all from buying piddly things.
She's the one I'd worry about. The sari she has bid on is already higher than she has paid for anything else. It's obvious she's smart, and she's specifically interested in this particular sari. This means I should bid very close to the end of the auction, leaving only seconds. Super snipe.
And that's the lure of eBay. Not only do I get "gifts" in the mail, but I get the thrill of the hunt, chase, and kill.
Of course, the question is, why do I need that boost now?
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A sari? Yeah, I wear them occasionally. And where else can you get six yards of bordered silk for $25?
The best sari seller out there is Bee Patel [http://stores.ebay.com/Bee-Patels-Sari-Palace]. Her saris are always in perfect condition, described accurately, well photographed, and priced right. My only complaint is that she doesn't sell the sari together with the matching blouse (choli). They're separate auctions, and it's possible to win one and not the other, which is maddening.
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Later: I was just wandering around eBay, and I found a seller, Everydaysource, who has a feedback count of 710202. That's over 700,000 individual eBay ids he has sold stuff to. Not 700,000 sales, the sales number is at least 1,035,309 (feedback from any id is counted only once). That's mind boggling!
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