Online auction bother
Oct. 10th, 2016 06:14 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
mtbcI have some items to sell, mostly for collection only. I don't really know their value and am not desperate to eke out every dime from each so I am content to auction them; I do at least want there to be an element of competition to ensure that the sale isn't badly mispriced. Having bought on eBay with PayPal for many years without any trouble, they were my first thought. I am using reasonable browsers like Firefox and Chromium but, partly in attempting to adjust my various (all identical) mailing addresses with them (for setting item location), I discover that some parts of their web interface are actually alarmingly buggy and barely usable. I am loath to entrust auction management to such a poor-quality site. While I may complain about Amazon, their site at least typically works properly from a technical point of view.
Looking around, I find eBid, and their website seems at first blush to possibly be quite usable. Their fees are lower but I'm not very sensitive to that. However, without paying a goodly amount I am obligated to accept PPPay payments, and goodness their site is rubbish too. The final straw was it repeatedly not accepting the lower-limit credit card I use for online merchants combined with small details like the way it then flips my billing address' country to
One has limited choice of online auction sites because the top few take the lion's share of views. This sales effort does seem to be turning into one of those that should be far easier than actually is and I find myself having decreasing tolerance for needless hassle. I am already almost minded to post the items to Gumtree with a sliding scale of dates and declining prices such that the right amount of cash at the right moment secures the item, no haggling. I'll hold off for a while and see what other ideas present themselves.
It seems that life is full of such hassle. (First-world problems, I know.) For example, just this evening I inflated a car tire with a compressor that replaced one that just made a loud noise while letting all the air out. I had my usual garage try to fix the tire's slow leak but they just changed the valve to no useful effect. I told them it hadn't worked and to try again and they replaced the valve again and expressed surprise upon learning that it was the same wheel, not that I'd made any secret of the fact; they then suggested that it now looked to be holding air. I later e-mailed them to ask if it is worth my bringing the car in a third time and never heard back. There's a Halford's Autocentre within a short walk of work, perhaps they will suffice, but then I'd thought something similar about eBid.
Looking around, I find eBid, and their website seems at first blush to possibly be quite usable. Their fees are lower but I'm not very sensitive to that. However, without paying a goodly amount I am obligated to accept PPPay payments, and goodness their site is rubbish too. The final straw was it repeatedly not accepting the lower-limit credit card I use for online merchants combined with small details like the way it then flips my billing address' country to
Austriafor a retry. I am thus loath to trust their technology also.
One has limited choice of online auction sites because the top few take the lion's share of views. This sales effort does seem to be turning into one of those that should be far easier than actually is and I find myself having decreasing tolerance for needless hassle. I am already almost minded to post the items to Gumtree with a sliding scale of dates and declining prices such that the right amount of cash at the right moment secures the item, no haggling. I'll hold off for a while and see what other ideas present themselves.
It seems that life is full of such hassle. (First-world problems, I know.) For example, just this evening I inflated a car tire with a compressor that replaced one that just made a loud noise while letting all the air out. I had my usual garage try to fix the tire's slow leak but they just changed the valve to no useful effect. I told them it hadn't worked and to try again and they replaced the valve again and expressed surprise upon learning that it was the same wheel, not that I'd made any secret of the fact; they then suggested that it now looked to be holding air. I later e-mailed them to ask if it is worth my bringing the car in a third time and never heard back. There's a Halford's Autocentre within a short walk of work, perhaps they will suffice, but then I'd thought something similar about eBid.
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Date: 2016-10-10 10:18 pm (UTC)