On 20/08/2005, at 10:04 PM, NSURIT@xxxxxxx wrote:
> eBay is a business. Were either you or I that business, we would
> not be
> very pleased if a seller used our venue to sell their car . . .
> however they
> only listed the hubcap with a condition of selling the rest of the
> car to the
> buyer at a predetermined price (off the books) if they were the
> successful
> bidder on the hubcap.
>
No, but aBey is a medium for selling, not a broker. I have sold many
things to buyers who asked if I had additional items. If I sold the
hubcap at a swap meet and the buyer asked if I had an engine at home,
would you suggest that I should pay an additional fee to the market
when he drops by my house the following week and buys one? If I
listed the car and then offered the buyer certain accessories that he
would find hard to get otherwise...? When I bought my present SUV, I
was very pleased to pay a extra to get the custom built roofrack and
the front and rear bull bars - they would have cost me a fortune
otherwise. And the seller was happy to get a fair price for them
without the trouble of advertising. If I hadn't wanted them, then he
was hardly disadvantaged. Fortunately, he had the patience to not
sell them off sooner and he well knew that he wouldn't have got value
for them if he'd left them on the vehicle. He also realised that the
best potential customer that he had for them was the buyer of the
car. I bought the vehicle from a dealer, where he had traded it in,
but we have a law here that the dealer must disclose the name of the
previous owner so that you can check the vehicle's history. He told
me that he had them and I was able to ask him to hold their sale - he
even fitted them for me! Should I now remit a fee to the dealer?
I try to do the same with selling system gear on Oboy. It is simply a
separate transaction, involving an item that has never been listed.
You may as well claim that a professional lister should not mention
that he has a load of stuff or has a storefront on the likelihood
that a later transaction may occur off the net.
> eBay is, IMHO, a true example of a free enterprise system in which
> buyers
> and sellers determine market value. Market value being that price
> at which a
> willing seller and a willing buyer agree to complete a
> transaction. It is a
> fair and open system in which no one has an advantage.
How quaint! :) The problem with free enterprise is that it is rarely
free or enterprising. Private seller and private buyer and both
ethical and co-operative - sure. But the two parties are rarely on an
equal footing, even on Ubye - or at least not since its earliest
days. Professional seller and naive buyer? Ignorant seller and
bargain hunter? I'd suspect that a significant number of transactions
reflect and unequal power relationship. Bought a Paiste cymbal for my
son the other day and got it very cheap. The seller now claims that
it had been stolen from the rehearsal room when he went to pick it
up. I'm pretty sure that he just doesn't want to let it go for the
price but what can I do?
In fact, the approach that I suggested above is both enterprising and
free! I would be more sympathetic to iBot if their subsidiary PayPal
was fairer to me - but they've both had their slice of my action and
I'll reserve my sympathy and concern for people like me, rather than
megacorporations who are doing very nicely indeed thankyou..
AndrewF
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