Ebay questions

[B16mts]

Eh up knowledgeable people (and everyone else),

As i've never sold anything on ebay i'm not quite sure what to do. Just been asked my first question on the sale of my truck and first instinct is to say "what a stupid question". Then i started to think, whats the harm in him knowing?

I've been asked : "whats the reserve price please?"

What do i answer with?

Martin

[stormforce]

Eh up knowledgeable people (and everyone else),

As i've never sold anything on ebay i'm not quite sure what to do. Just been asked my first question on the sale of my truck and first instinct is to say "what a stupid question". Then i started to think, whats the harm in him knowing?

I've been asked : "whats the reserve price please?"

What do i answer with?

Martin

have you put a reserve on it and if so then just tell them what it is.I sold a suki on there last year and i never actually put a reserve on it but when asked what i would take for it then i just said £650 and i will end the auction after i receive a deopsit.the gut paid £150 by cheque and i ended the auction but he could'nt pick it up for a couple of weeks so i said if i dont see or hear from him in the 2 weeks then it will be re-advertised

[Apache]

We never use reserve prices. We used to but found it puts people off - not everyone will ask.

It's probably best to set the start price as the absolute minimum you'll accept and go from there.

If you tell him the reserve, it may be too much for him. If you dont, he may have a speculative bid, and if its close enough to your reserve at the end of the auction, you might decide to sell it to him anyway.

The missus knows a lot more about it than I do...

[Sancho]

The only harm in him knowing is that he can either wait or use a 'sniper' to see if it hits the reserve, then pay the reserve and no more. No problem with that, but sometimes it helps to have more bids on there earlier to build up a little bit of urgency. When people see more bids, they think it's a better one than the others and are or more inclined to bid (kind of a herd mentality thing).

If you answer the question and post the answer, no-one will bid until someone else pays the reserve. My view is always that you want as many potential customers as possible, so I tell people but don't copy the answer on to the ad.

[B16mts]

feck it, i'll just tell him anyway.

tbh i'm not really expecting to sell it through ebay, more like advertising.

cheers,

Martin

[koed]

feck it, i'll just tell him anyway.

tbh i'm not really expecting to sell it through ebay, more like advertising.

cheers,

Martin

i think you have more chance on ebay than any where else at the mo .. mine went dead easy

[Phaeton]

If you're worried just tell him & don't post the answer to the auction, there's an option whem you repsond.

[PDR]

If you are desperate to find the reserve price of an e-bay item there is a trick you can use:

Say there is an item that you would pay £100 for but the current bid is £65 with the reserve not yet met. If you put a bid of £1000 in, you will see what the reserve is and immediately retract your bid….. because you made a mistake, right!

This is not something that you should make a practise of (because it is naughty) and any bid retractions will show up in your e-bay feed-back. Also IIRC you can’t do this within the last 12 hours of an auction.

I’ve only done this once or twice for very rare items that I really wanted and ended up buying anyway.