Yahoo! vs. eBay
Written: Oct 25 '00
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Yahoo! auctions has one big advantage over other auction sites: it’s free. Free to buy, free to sell. It also has one big disadvantage: it requires a credit card to bid. Most other sites, like eBay, the leading auction site, require credit cards to sell but anyone may buy. Not so on Yahoo!. Unfortunately, while fewer “fake” or non-paying bidders are able to take advantage of the service, likewise many legitimate non-credit/debit card holders are unable to participate as well. It’s the classic case of the rain falling on both the good and the evil. You can have lots of bidders with some fakes or few fakes and fewer bidders, but not part of each.
Moving along, it appears that eBay and Yahoo! both have about the same number of auctions but less activity. If you think about it, this makes sense. Ebay charges between $.25 and $2 to list an item while Yahoo!’s listings are free. But because of the credit card thing and because of less notoriety and whatever else, there are actually fewer people who bid on Yahoo!
The structures of the two websites are quite different. Besides simple aesthetics, Yahoo! has a couple of features eBay doesn’t. For instance, on eBay, in many cases, the price of an item for auction rises 10-50% in the last few seconds as “snipers” wait till the last second to outbid the current high bidder. I have myself sniped and can say that the only reason I did it was because it was done to me. You can only tolerate losing so many auctions by $1 and three seconds before you, realizing you can’t beat them, join them. On Yahoo!, however, if there is a lot of last minute bidding occurring then the auction may be extended until there are no bids for a certain amount of time.
Another feature is the so-called “buy price” of an auction. This is a price with which you are very happy such that if someone bid that amount the auction would automatically close and they would win. This encourages people who really want an item to bid high and take no risk of losing. Of course, you’d want to create your buy price so that it’s over the retail value of the item, otherwise regular bidding could cause your buy price to be hit and end the auction without giving you full benefit.
I’ve found that often items sell for cheaper on Yahoo! than on eBay, but by no means is this always the case, nor is it certain to be true for any given item. All things being equal, I would prefer eBay to Yahoo!. The categorization is a little better and there is a little more of a community feel. But hey, that’s just my two cents worth…
Recommended:
Yes
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Epinions.com ID:
lovdbyGod7
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Member: David Dinkins
Location: Rolla, Missouri
Reviews written: 139
Trusted by: 307 members
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