ePay

From: D. Peschel <dpeschel_at_u.washington.edu>
Date: Tue Oct 27 01:39:36 1998

> Making a conscious effort to move the auctions to Haggle would be a good
> solution. However, the people actually doing the SELLING need to be
> convinced of this. For all they know, they can list something on eBay and
> 7 days later have a small fortune. This doesn't happen on Haggle because
> the Antique Computers listing gets nowhere near the traffic that eBay does
> and people don't know to go looking there for antique computers. And
> unfortunately, no effort has been made to raise awareness of Haggle's
> auction.

I have not been paying attention, so I could be wrong. But it seems to me
that this argument is a bit worthless because if you succeed in moving all
the old computer auctions over to Haggle, and Haggle becomes popular, then
the same old dirty dealings will happen on Haggle too, just like eBay.

I guess you're hoping that eBay will remain popular for ordinary auctions
and Haggle will become popular for computer auctions... this might work but
it might actually make things worse, if the compu-vultures start to pay
special attention to Haggle. If you're banking on some innate difference
between eBay and Haggle... well, yes, that might work.

Boy, I'm really pessimistic (especially considering I've never actually used
eBay or Haggle).

-- Derek
Received on Tue Oct 27 1998 - 01:39:36 GMT