While at it I also must say that eBay auction system could see some improvements.
1st - no automated bidding or reserve prices and maximum bidding.
2nd - no last minute bidding. If someone bids at the end of the auction - auction is prolonged by the amount of time, chosen by owner of the item, ie 10 minutes.
3nd - could set price increments.
1st - not possible
2nd - that will defeat the whole purpose of ebay.. you better create your own service ; )
also I don't understand ebay bidders who bid NOT last seconds of the auction.. that makes no sense to the buyers.
3d - why?
As a buyer and a seller I'm very satisified how ebay works right now.
As a buyer I do use some legal tricks to buy cheap and as a seller I also use some tricks to make the price go up ; )))
p.s. "Reserve price" ; )
1st - maximum bidding is the one I loathe the most. I want to buy an item - I bid 10$ and set maximum to 100$. If someone (shilling or not) raises my automatic bid to , say 50$ - I'll simply refuse to buy it later. Seller will be pissed off, but who cares, right? Having bots for stuff like that is different, and no a big % of people will be using bots, so I'm fine with them. Reserve price is not so bad, but it's fee could be in percentage, not a fixed one. Like 2% for example. Otherwise for small auctions it's too high.
2nd - while it was this feature which attracted most buyer to ebay in the first place, thinking that they can outsnipe each other and that their greed will be rewarded. Maybe eBay audience is matured enough for improved auction system, which can be run alongside the other, in a test mode for a start.
3rd - if 2nd one is set in motion it will be possible to increase auction time with 1 cent bids, making it endless. So there needs to be some rules to prevent that. Like a price increment when bidding, and maybe some restriction to bid less than some total % in x amount of time.
