wasting time with commodity 5 day auctions

[Anonymous]

waste of buyers time watching and think they can bid and win an item at 30% off the last price sold.

It much better to have one day bids or 10 minute quick auctions. so sellers can quickly sell.

ebay gets commissions like 10% and these sellers are either wasting time. time is money.

maybe have REAL auction every weekend and closes at 3pm Saturday or hobbyist home bidderes who bid for fun or want a 'fair' price' or auction price for stuff. other than that what is the point of auctions for sellers. sellers just want cash today. or fast as possible. not 5 days. and if the auction is 10 minutes you  get the same price if it was listed fo r5 days if the time is a commodity item and in demand stuff. or new price.  Only rare antiques or no buyers would you want long auctions and still that stuff is usually in the best offers or classified listings not auctions. the problem is ebay and many auctions run out of stuff to auction. no inventory to auction. as they are sold fast. like 5 minute auctions. SOLD in 5 minutes

[eburtonlab]

Auction durations are set by sellers -- seven and ten day auctions are common, though some shorter durations are also available, though they are much less popular.

It currently takes up to 24 hours for listings to be indexed and appear in search; even if eBay changed that for ultra short duration auctions, an auction that lasted an hour could only be bid on by those bidders who could search and find the auction while it was listed. Short duration auctions therefore will limit the number of bidders to those that are online and searching while the auction is ongoing.

Perhaps eBay could schedule ultra short duration listings to appear at a certain day and time so that bidders could be prepared to find them more easily, but if that means that sellers have to wait several days for the right window to list an item, then what would be the advantage to the short duration compared to a week long listing?

Longer duration auctions ensure that users that only search for an item once per week have an opportunity to find the listing while it is active.

Online auctions have different strengths and weaknesses compared to live auctions; trying to make eBay auctions more like live auctions does not play to eBay's strengths.

For sellers and buyers that cannot wait for an auction to run its course, there are buy-it-now listings available.

[ypdc_dennis]

As a Buyer you have search options.

* You can search by time ending and only look at auctions ending in the next 5 or 10 minutes.

* You can ignore auctions and only see Buy-It-Now fixed price listings. Some of those also allow offers to be made, if you think the asking price is too high.

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[reallynicestamps]

Auctions make up less than 15% of eBay listings, and your complaint is one reason.

Some auctions include a Best Offer feature.  Unlike Fixed Price listings, the Auction Best Offer has to be GREATER than the opening bid.

The seller can accept, refuse, counter offer,  or ignore the BO.

If the seller uses Fixed Price, he sets the price he wants. If the buyer uses Newly Listed as his default Search, he can pick up the items he wants soon after listing-- no waiting around. I've had newly listed items sell within the hour.  And others sit around for 30 days.

You can also use your Watch List to find the item you want at the price you want.  Put the listings on Watch and make a Best Offer when the 30 days nears its end and the seller is discouraged.

[reallynicestamps]

Are there still 5 day auctions available? I thought they were either dropped for lack of interest or eBay was charging a fee on them (ie they do not count as Free Listings for promotions) again because they took up too much space for the minimal interest.

[ypdc_dennis]

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@reallynicestamps wrote:

Are there still 5 day auctions available? I thought they were either dropped for lack of interest or eBay was charging a fee on them...

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1 and 3 day auctions have a $1.00 listing surcharge.

5, 7 and 10 day auctions still exist.  I use 5 day when I want the auction to end on a certain day.

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[mrdutch1001]

I use 5,7 and 10 day auctions as GTC has proven to be useless for my items...I used to post 10 day fixed price listings as that really worked well for my items, but when eBay removed that option and implemented GTC for all fixed price listings, my sales fell dramatically and with the "no urgency" to buy, items would just sit for weeks, upon weeks with no sales...

Auction format works well for me on eBay. My other selling venue has fixed  price listings...