eBay being sued over patent infringement

From: Marvin Johnston <marvin_at_rain.org>
Date: Thu Apr 24 11:47:01 2003

Mail List wrote:
>
> Hi Paxton,
>
> > Actually, as a seller, I think the eBay process sucks.
> Scan the DNF message board. A lot of other sellers share that same sentiment.

That feeling is, at least from what I have seen, not a universal one.
What seems to be far more reaching is the feeling that the ebay
management is incompetent from the standpoint of running auctions. They
are incredibly inept at making decisions that will help the sellers, and
incredibly arrogant at forcing their ideas on the ebay community. The
DNF Board (Discuss Newest Features Board for those who don't know) has a
number of people who are *very* familiar with the workings of ebay and
help out where they can.

<commercial>
The DNF Board has a tradition of people seeing how many multiple posts
they can make at 22:22:22 Ebay (Pacific Coast) time. The current record
is 17 in the single second. This is done manually and is actually a lot
of fun. Take a look at:
http://www.rain.org/~marvin/tuz.htm
for more information. I wrote this after I became (briefly) the reigning
champion with 8 or so posts. The DNF Board is at:
http://chatboards.ebay.com/chat.jsp?forum=1&thread=2
</commercial>


> > a much preferred model for me. It is where the sale is extended by a
> > minute or two when each bid comes in at the end of the auction.
> Yes, that one feature takes the teeth out of sniping.

Sniping is a requirement unless the bidder doesn't mind being the bid
price going up. I made a suggestion to ebay years ago that sealed bids
should be allowed that would only become known after the auction had
ended. That would encourage bidders to make a realistic bid of what they
are willing to pay, and make the sniping issue irrelevant. Of course,
since that would benefit the sellers, it was ignored.
Received on Thu Apr 24 2003 - 11:47:01 BST

This archive was generated by hypermail 2.3.0 : Fri Oct 10 2014 - 23:35:45 BST