I hate selling on eBay. I sometimes use it to buy, but mostly use the “buy it now” option. However, my BMW R1150RT has to go to make way for the new R1200RT LC that I’m collecting next March. I need to get around £3,000 for the old one – give or take. That’s what it’s worth book price and it is in good condition, so should fetch that sort of money.
Usually, I trade in my old machines and accept that I’ll get a lower price in exchange for the convenience. However, this one is twelve years old and main dealer just aren’t interested in machines that old, so trade-in was not an option.
I tried an eBay classified, but apart from a couple of time-wasters, got no response. So I put it up on auction and it has already collected several bids and over a hundred watchers. Indeed, there was more activity in twenty-four hours than the classified ad collected in its whole run. Because I don’t want it to go for silly money, I covered myself with a reserve. It’s a realistic reserve. Although there seems to be an eBay culture that dislikes reserves – the general feeling seems to be that the seller is trying to rip off buyers by putting in an unrealistic reserve to push up the final selling price. No, I’m just not prepared to give it away, much as you might like that. Those folk feel that I should simply start the listing at the lowest price I’m prepared to accept. For a low-value item, I’d agree. For something like this, I don’t. There’s something odd about auction psychology that requires a low starting bid to get things going. In which case, I have to protect my item from going at too low a price. The reserve, therefore makes sense.
Anyway, I got a request from one of the bidders asking me what the reserve was. I declined to tell him as I felt that the other bidders don’t know what it is. That really should have been the end of it. He asked and I declined. However, he came back telling me that he had a budget (fair enough) and if the reserve was outside it, then he was going to look at another bike and if he made the trip, then he was going to buy it. I’m really not interested in any of this. If he wants to go look at another machine and buy it, that’s not my concern.
I have to say that attempts to manipulate me don’t go down very well. My response was pithy and along the lines of he must do what he thinks fit. I’d given my answer for better or worse. Trying to use the “I’ve got cash here” as a means of persuading me simply doesn’t work. If the bike is outside his budget (and it is) then fine go buy the Honda. Don’t try to use it as leverage because I will simply dig my heels in. If the bike doesn’t reach its reserve and doesn’t sell, I have another option up my sleeve anyway – and I still have a month to play with, so I’m not desperate.
Then I got one of those spammy scammy messages from a semi-literate foreign scammer telling me that they would be in the UK to collect the bike, so would like to bid on it.
That’s why I hate eBay. I just want to sell the thing without all this nonsense. That’s why I prefer trade-ins…
We sold my father-in-laws bike on ebay. A last second snipe put the price up by a huge amount and was from somebody in Korea. We told them we wouldn’t accept their bid and sold it to the second bidder at the price he put in before the snipe. I really don’t understand how he managed to get a bid in as we had restricted the auction to the UK and collect only. Yes, I hate ebay too.
Mine’s restricted to the UK which is why this person was probably trying to get me to accept bid. At least, I think that’s what he was trying to say, it was so garbled that it wasn’t clear.
A couple of years ago I sold a car on ebay twice. The first time the “buyer” contacted me a few days later to say he’d left his ebay account logged in and his son had bid on my car so he was cancelling the sale. 🙄
I also got the wasters asking for a Buy It Now price.
“No. If I had a BIN price it would be in the listing” Thinking that would be the end of it but some are quite persistent:
“But I have the cash”
“No, I’m going to let the auction run”
“But I need a car urgently and I have the cash”
“There are about 6,000 cars on ebay with a BIN price, buy one of those”
“But you are close and I have the cash” etc.
It sold the second time around for about £20 more than the first time it “sold”.
Browsing the bicycle section is an eye opener as well. You wouldn’t believe the number of people who have had their bicycle stolen and need to buy a bicycle urgently to get to work/visit their sick Granny/[insert your favourite sob story here] so have you got a BIN price. 🙂
Good luck with your auction.
Yes, it’s the idiot quotient that irritates me – although all forms of private sale suffer from it, which is why I dislike selling privately.
My auction does have a BIN option set at £3,000. To anyone wondering what the reserve is, that should give a fair idea.
I have similar feelings about Ebay, but in particular their reserve price system is total crap. In the days I used to go to car auctions most cars sold had a reserve, but if the bidding failed to reach it the reserve it might be disclosed and if close the top bidder was encouraged to bid to it. Then there was a deliberate policy to bring the seller and top bidder together in the hope they could reach a compromise. Ebay just lets things hang with no system in place
If mine doesn’t reach the reserve, I simply won’t sell it. Below that is well below book price and for a machine in condition this good, that would be giving it away and I’m not doing that.
I’m not sure really how eBay could replicate a live auction house though, given the very nature of the medium. The BIN option disappears once the reserve has been hit, though.
I seem to be very lucky with ebay, both buying and selling I have had no real problems with either. Except one – I had a buyer in Sweden, who was really keen to buy an old (decent) hi-fi amp I was selling, asked all the right questions and wanted to know if I would end the auction early, I refused and he bid enough to get it for a really good price (only £80 or so). Sent it off via UPS. Left him positive feedback. Thought no more of it. A week or so later found I had gained a negative feedback saying ‘Ripped off, amp doesn’t work’ (or something similar). I know it had worked when it left here as I’d tried it. I contacted ebay and said that the buyer had not even bothered to contact me for a refund and they removed the neg. Odd behaviour from the buyer, as I would have simply sent him his money back had he returned the amp…..
My wife had an old Macbook that she was selling, a BiN of only £300 or so, had two fraudulent buyers both picked up by ebay and Paypal promptly, but meant she had to wait for 7 days each time before re-listing and the final, genuine buyers payment was held by Paypal for a month before she could reclaim it.
To sell things that I value, I’ve always found BiN’s are good as long as I am realistic with the price (and I guess selling a bike in January is always going to be hard, no matter how cheap it is, Longrider!) I’ve sold several bicycles to the Far East this way. Sensibly priced, explain the shipping arrangements, and be prepared to converse with the folk who are nervous about spending a reasonable sum of money for something from ‘abroad’ seems to pay off. To buy, I ALWAYS snipe right at the end, bidding early is only good for buyers! Mostly I lose out, when I ‘win’ it is a massive bargain!
Yes, I know. However, I want to buy the new one in this tax year so my selling window is January to early March.
Looked at your ad, other than the pictures looking rather dreary (because of the weather) it seems well promoted.
You just need a couple of weeks of good weather to get the buyers out… Oh!
Indeed. 😐
It’s a nice day here (50 miles from Brissle) might be worth going out and shooting some new pictures of the bike in the countryside*. It’s all about making people imagine what life would be like for them if they owned it!
*or Stokes Croft for the urban hipster.
Good point, but it won’t be today.
Update – okay, I had more time than I thought, so I’ve added a couple of images taken at the local common.
I usually go to ebay when I buy a car and I’ve learned to ignore all these emails. Unless it’s a genuine question about the item for sale, I won’t even bother to respond.
My biggest bug bear is how all the bids go on in the last few seconds. A real auction (as brought up above) would allow bids to continue until they are all in. Ebay should only close the listing if there hasn’t been a bid for a while after the close time.
Ebay are also becoming victims of their own success. They are always changing things and adding new restrictions. It’s becoming quite a pain in the arse to sell things, although it is a good buyers market
The point of bidding at the very last minute on ebay is that (as a buyer) you 1. don’t show your hand too early and don’t get involved in a click war where you bid each other up and up for no particular reason and 2. you are not stuck, contractually obliged to buy something days before the end of the sale.
If a buyer places a bid of (say) £100 on something with 4 days to go but they are the first bidder they have to wait until the end of the sale to see what it will actually cost them, if in the meantime another similar, but better, item comes along as a BiN for (say) £70 they are already committed to the first and are in danger of getting two for £170. Rather less of a bargain
That is why the sensible folk use snip software to place bids seconds before the end of the sale – they are not committed to buy and are not likely to get a bit enthusiastic and over bid for something just to ‘get it’.
Quite so and I’m a little surprised that the two high bidders engaged in a bidding war last Saturday with five days or more to go.
I usually take a different approach. If I want something then I put on a bid for what I am prepared to pay for it and walk away. I either get it or I don’t. usually, though, I do because my bid is a sensible one based upon what the item is worth. I got a replacement rack for the Deauville that way.
I reckon what you are asking is a fair price, having been in the trade, BMW’s of any generation tend to hold their price, the R1150 series was very well sorted and a very capable bike, mileage is not an issue as they are designed to do at least 200 k kilometers and as long as they are looked after, little wears badly. I once sold stuff on Ebay, never again, however I buy fairly often and usually bid in the last 35 seconds, recently I missed two Kawasaki Z1 petrol tanks both going cheap, grrrrrr, the price for one from a breakers is astronomic!
Ebay fell apart when they prevented sellers from leaving buyers a negative feedback. Result is that buyers can BIN, never turn up or pay, and still have 100% feedback. But they can leave the seller a negative. Sort of sums up the world we live in really doesn’t it?
Indeed. That’s why I pretty much gave up on selling. This is a rare exception.
Oddly enough a friend of mine sold one of his old bikes on eBay last year in order to buy the BMW he had always wanted. He was also contacted by some foreigners who were allegedly only in the UK for a short time, offering a good cash price. He was highly suspicious, although in this case the message was well-written and not “spammy” in nature. Nevertheless, he ended up inviting them to come and view the bike – making sure his mate was present at the same time and having invested in a UV banknote checker and one of those test pens.
They turned up on time, were polite and spoke pretty good English. He ended up selling to them as their cash tested OK and they did the paperwork and loaded the bike into a van with minimal fuss. The bank subsequently had no problem with the notes.
To this day he thinks it was odd, but he exercised due diligence and nothing bad happened. It’s a very strange scenario – what would be his legal position if it turned out the cash was genuine but the proceeds of a crime elsewhere?
It is plausible that there is a real developing market for second-hand bikes in East Europe, but would buying them at UK prices make economic sense? Despite the best efforts of government, my casual observations suggest that bikes are becoming more popular here, not less, so a glut in the market seems unlikely.