Bartertown.com

There was recently a pseudo-auction on Bartertown ("goes to the highest bidder," the first of this kind that I've seen laid out as such (there are the occasional "or best offer," etc. style, and bartertown often works on a slight haggling scale, which is sort of similar)), and, not all that unpredictably, a lot of things were sniped in the last few hours.

(link to thread)

Now, no hard feelings, but it didn't really feel like bartertown, it mostly felt like feebay, minus the fees. Now, I'm not a fan of said corporation, but, at the same time, there is already an "Auctions" section to Bartertown.

Maybe I'm alone in this, but, advertisements for off-site auctions are already confined to the Auctions subforum, so my thought is, it seems reasonable to require auctions within Bartertown to have the same requirement.

Thoughts?

I thought it was an interesting way of doing things.

I mean when someone posts something to sell isn't the same thing happening just behind the scenes.

The poster gets a bunch of PMs and sells to the highest bidder. The only difference here was that it was out in the open.

This way, a potential buyer knew a head of time what the highest offer was, before sending a PM, and everyone knew when the seller would make a final decision.

I think its a fine way to sell things, but I can see it catching on, so maybe there should be a sub-forum set up for it.

I have no problems with it at all. In fact, I've done them myself.
I think the difference is that I kept my current prices private. I didn't post what the highest offer was, so that nobody could accuse me of trying to inflate the bids (Note: I am NOT saying connivingsumo was doing that. Just saying I was making sure to avoid someone implying it).

I don't see an issue with it every now and again. If it starts becoming rampant, though, I think we'd definitely look into moving those posts into the auction forum. Of course, I really don't see them becoming rampant. I mean, keeping up with something like that is a LOT of work.

Eric

I did it myself once and MM is right, it IS a lot of work. I had to not only keep track of what the offers were but also send pms to the ones who had been outbid in addition to the regular stuff. I dont see a lot of people doing it though.
1. because of the hassle.
2. because it would be easy for someone to inflate prices by being dishonest about what they were offered.
3. there is not "record keeping" thing to keep everyone honest..
I'm not saying that people are dishonest, dont take me wrong in that. However, it only takes one person to ruin it. I was lucky in that I had built a reputation that no one had any qualms about "bidding" with me and I'm sure MM had even less trouble. But it goes back to only one bad apple ruining the cart.
You never know though, if it happens a lot, Id check it out and wish anyone selling or bidding good luck.

LOL, rereading that, it doesnt make a lot of sense but I wanted to say something on the issue.

This is purely theoretical, but it is really even possible to 'inflate' the prices on a site like this, bidding or not? As far as I see it, this is the purest form of Capitalism, in that the market truly dictates the price; inflating the prices to drive up the profit still relies on having a market that's willing to buy. If you inflate your prices too high, the system fails because everybody walks away, but if you decide to tack on a few dollars to your asking price arbitrarily (honest or dishonest as it may be) and someone still buys it, is it really inflating the price? The audience was willing to pay that price all along, and the bidding would probably have gone that way anyway.

Full disclosure: I got a D in Economics when I was in college, so if I missed or misrepresented anything, feel free to correct me.

I agree with the OP that it did not seem right to have an auction post on BTown.

If you want to sell, set a price and sell - but to take bids is not really what goes on here

How do we know he was honest?
How do we know who and what was bid for what item?

in short, you don't..... while ebay is designed to track all of this stuff, here it is all on the honor system.

I think you should outlaw those types of auction posts

While I acknowledge and respect dissenting opinions...

but to take bids is not really what goes on here

This is an incorrect statement. It definitely goes on here. It happens all the time.

I don't even know how many times I've made an offer on something and received a PM in response, advising me that someone has offered more and asking me if i wanted to change my offer in light of that information. In essence, that't precisely the same, with the sole exception that it's not as up front that this is what will be happening.

Also, there have been more than a couple times over the years where people have run their ads as auction style. So, it really does go on.

As for honesty... how do you ever know anyone is being honest? The best you can do it use the information available to you (or that WILL be available, once Adam get the site back up at 100%) and good judgement. If you think the person might be attempting dishonest behavior, don't take part.

I don't pretend to make the rules here. So, I can't make statements of what WILL or WILL NOT happen. I can assure you, though, that I would not get behind any attempts to limit our members trade activities in any way that is harmless to others. Mind you, that's regardless of my staff position. Even if I were not staff, I'd speak against it.

Eric