VK2VHF wrote:
Also think back to when eBay first launched, it was more like an online garage sale with genuine people selling stuff they no longer wanted and the market could fairly determine an item's price. But today, it is full of business sellers (and scammers) selling large quantities of the same item at fixed prices. Not many private radio sellers these days. And what about the buyers?
There are still plenty of private sellers that use ebay but there have been a couple of things that have discouraged them from selling in the past couple of years.
The first was ebay's fee's were too high. So it was just cheaper and simpler to sell your gear on vkham etc.
The second was that some people felt they got less than their radios were worth. But that is to be expected when you auction anything.
Auctions do two things well. They sell things fast or they sell in demand items for the best price.
They don't sell ordinary items for a good price.
I haven't come across too many scam sellers. Most of the commercial sellers are pretty straight forward and honest. I've come across one or two that haven't been too honest or are misleading.
There are more scam buyers these days. People who claim they did not receive an item is the most common.
There are some buyers that seem to actually look for infrequent sellers to scam.
There are also some that receive an item and then make a claim of something very minor. ie; "This radio has scratches on it and they were not mentioned in the description." The reason behind this is to extort the seller. The scam buyer wants a discount and knows or thinks he has the buyer by the balls.
If the buyer says, "Well just send the radio back and I'll refund your money,." The scam buyer is then cut between knowing he now has to hand back a good radio and isn't going to get a discount and has to pay for the return postage.
Of course to punish the seller they give them a negative feedback.
A friend sold a radio. The new owner claimed the radio didn't work and lodged a claim. My friend could have just said no, but he asked him a few questions before just accepting that maybe something was damaged during transit even though that is unlikely. The buyer was upset that he was not going to be reimbursed for the return postage and of course went on the slander my friend.
When the radio was returned it was obvious what had happened. He'd reverse polarised the radio. I replaced the burn out 1N4007 and the radio was as good as new.
[/quote]There seems to be a trend where they do not bid until the last 2 seconds to keep the bidding activity and prices down.[/quote]
Ah ! The art of the snipe !
When you are auction hunting you have to understand the rules of auctions and the psychology behind them.
The first is yes, people do snipe and it is very common. The reason is an attempt to keep the price lower because there is always an idiot who doesn't understand auctions.
The purpose is not to give the dolt time to think about his bid. Since he isn't actually serious about buying the item, he just thinks he might get it for $2.87.
You can review the bid history as see these kinds of idiots.
Lets say it is a radio that everybody expects will sell for $100 and is currently sitting at $5 with one day to go.
The dolt will bid $11, and get instantly outbid by somebody who put a sensible bid of say $85.
The dolt will then bid $15, and then $20, then $25 and then $30.
At this point he might go away for half an hour and come back and then bid $40, then $50, and then $55 and so on.
Then he might bid $58, $60, $61, $62.50 etc.
Don't believe in ESP ? You can hear the bidder's thoughts !
So if none of the serious bidders bid until the last minute the dolt will be $20 and be the highest bidder up until that last minute.
He will of course think that he is going to get the item for this price and doesn't have time to think about bidding against anybody else.
Some of the more serious bidders may place a sensible bid, but when I higher bid comes along, they may realise they were undervaluing the item and have that few seconds to realise their stupidity and correct for it. The snipe also doesn't give these people the chance to realise that they were being a tight a*** and if they had not been so tight they could have still got the radio for a good price.
Sour grapes is the result.
What I do hear a lot is "I missed out on that item by $1"
No, you were the second highest bidder and you did not get outbid by a dollar. You got outbid yes, but not by the automatic increment of the auction.
The person that beat you may have had a bid $20 higher, so your extra dollar you would have still lost and cost that bidder an extra dollar.
As a seller on ebay, you would encourage this kind of stupidity because your item doesn't sell for the highest bid, it actually sells for the second highest bid.
So that is the psychology of your opponents. Most of them are easy to outwit.
What your left with is a handful of serious buyers who are all going to pay something close to what you would like to get for your item.
This is where the rules of bidding come into play.
The highest bidder wins of course.
But secondary to this that people do not understand is that the first bidder wins.
If three buyers all place a bid of $100, then the one that placed this bid first is the one who will win.
So placing your bid at the very last second is not the best solution.
The rules for you bid are simple. Bid the highest amount you are prepared to pay for the item taking into consideration the cost of postage etc.
Never outbid yourself. If you have to place a higher bid, then you were never serious about the item in the first place. You don't need or want it.
Bid late. Late enough so that nobody else has time to think about trumping your bid, but early enough to get your bid in first.
There is also the buy it now price. It is always tempting to try and get something for cheaper. But if the buy it now price is below you maximum bid, then take advantage of it. I've seen the first bidder of an item bid over the buy it now price many times.
If you do not win an item, then don't worry, there is always another one tomorrow.
If you know there isn't going to be another one tomorrow and you really want that item, then your bid should reflect that.
You wouldn't mind paying $110 on a second hand item you know would cost you $150 elsewhere.
On the reverse side, consider that it is an auction and that you do not exactly get the chance to test drive an item and this too should reflect your bid.
If you're buying a car at an auction, you don't get to test drive it and quite often don't even get to hear the motor running. Your bid should be based on what you can see. A car that does not run. So it should be for a radio on ebay. The buyer should demonstrate that the radio is functional, but your bid should reflect that it is not unless he will guarantee that. I have bought radios where the seller was honest and showed the power output of a radio. The output he showed in his photo was under rating the radio's rated power output. Not that I cared, I was happy to buy that radio even with 80% of it's output power.
When I received the radio I tested it and found that it was actually putting out more than the rated power because the seller had used a lossy cable for the test.
No doubt that was a consideration for some of the other bidders as several of them had bid at a slightly cheaper price to reflect that.
My gamble paid off for me, but I was still prepared to pay more than everybody else because I wanted that specific model radio and I know they don't come up very often.
Even after the auction is over, you should not just walk away from it. Go back and look and learn.
Look at all the bidders and if you can look at how each of them bid and look at what other items they have been bidding on.
I think ebay may have closed that little avenue, but I used to look at all the other bidders and learn how each of them bid.
I would then go and look at some of the items they were also bidding on and I would find other items that I would also like but had not considered searching for.
Then of course I could easily outbid them because I knew how they were going to bid even before they knew.
Some other tips are to broaden your searches.
Sometimes items have obscure listings and are not so easy to find.
For example if you are looking for a 70cm radio then you might search for: 70cm, UHF or 440MHz.
But you should also search for 432MHz and 400 and 432. A radio that is listed as 432MHz may not turn up in many other searches, and so if you do an obscure search and an item turns up which isn't in any other searches, chances are you will pick it up for a good price.
Know your market, know your limits and know the item your buying.
A little bit of common sense and caution and you will pick up a good radio for a very good price.
It's better to get a good item for a cheap price than a bad item for an expensive price; so assess the item, set your price and stick to it.
I forgot to mention ....
www.auctionsniper.com if you want an automated sniper. You can just set your price and sit back and wait.
It will also do some detailed searches for you and send you an email if it finds anything. I have TM2400 in my searches so whenever one of these radios appears on ebay, I get an email.
like everything else we buy these days
