What would you like to see in a good auction site?

[John Moane]

I was wondering what watch buyers and sellers would want to see in an auction site. Looking forward to your reply. John

[Glyn Meredith]

I was wondering what watch buyers and sellers would want to see in an auction site. Looking forward to your reply. John

Proxy bidding; low fees; a feedback system that is fair and works; good management; intolerance of fraud; at least hundreds of regular buyers and sellers; auction cancellations and extensions at the seller's choice.

There are other things, but that will do for a start from me.

Glyn

[veritas]

I can,t add any more to this than Glyn has.

[Stephan]

If I was building one I would go for a flat fee structure and work it like a newspaper.
Pay up front for the space you use and forget about the rest of the fees.
I would have a joining fee of say $20 and then let the seller use up the fee by placing adds.
When the money is gone you have to add more dollars before you can place more adds.
Like a pre paid mobile phone. No bill to send and no bad debts the chase.
Low overheads equals less work to run it equals lower fees.

I would let everyone (all public) look at the adds but you would have to join up to bid on stuff
with some kind of serious vetting process before you could join. Keep out the problem children as far as is possable.

I would have some kind of probation period that might limit new buyers to a max bid till they prove themselves.

I would keep new stuff and old stuff separate not all mixed in together or at least make it easy to filter out what you are not interested in.

Finally I would have links to other useful sites like postage sites or couriers.
There might even be some educational material available to help people with postage and packing.
Ways to pay and traps to avoid. That kind of stuff.

[John Johnson]

Make it impossible to Snipe an auction. Last bidder wins after a period of 2 minutes, after every bid the clock resets. I have lost more auctions to the snipers than anything else. Now I just put in my max price and let it ride, problem is that most people would be willing to go the additional $2 the sniper beats you with to win an item. Snipers are bad for sellers for sure, and for buyers also.

[Irwin]

I'm with John J. on the sniping issue. Ideally, it needs a solution.

[Stephan]

Can't agree with a ban on sniping. Without it those in different time zones are at a dis advantage.
I have tried leaving bids the night before only to have someone creap up on my bid till they piped me at the post.
I have also had "the sellers friend" push me up.
I don't see sniping as unfair because anyone can use it.
If your bid is highest they can snipe all they want and you will still win.
I prefer to place bids myself but if the item ends at 3.00 am and I am keen on it I will use a sniping service to bid for me.
I have had about 50% success rate with it so it fails sometimes just like any other system you try.
At the end of the day if someone else is willing to pay more then you are unlikely to win.

[Glyn Meredith]

I'm for auction extensions - if there are bids in the last minute or so, the auction is automatically extended (seller's choice). As a seller, I've sometimes seen a bidding war start this way. It adds tension and a higher price for the seller.

I also back the seller being able to cancel an auction at any time and for any reason - with a small penalty to stop it becoming too common practice. Cancellations can be annoying for buyers but if a seller annoys the customers too often, they will shop elsewhere, so the seller has to use this sparingly.

Both of these functions are seen on the Japan Yahoo auctions, which I use for both buying and selling. For me, the functionality there beats eBay any day.