My highest praise - for Audiogon


All too often, we hear the negative. Of everything in life. But today, I wanted to put forth my story. One that is positive. Of excellent thinking, planning, and execution when it comes to customer service.

My highest praise. My deepest thanks and appreciation. For who, for what? For Audiogon auctions!

Last night, I was involved in an auction here on Audiogon, and put in my bid for about as high as I would go on the item. A pair of Manley SE/PP tube amps(fabulous amps, congratulations to their lucky new owner). It was bested close to the end of the auction. I decided to stand pat. I will probably go with a new Rogue Magnum instead. Just a judgement call, trying to use my head along with my heart. But, I did see a bit more activity, and wanted to see how things ended up. So, at the close of the auction, I tried to check the winning bid.

To my surprise, it went into OT. Cool!

It goes like this, if there is activity in the waning moments, it goes to OT. No sniping. The winner will be the true winner. The honest and fair winner.

I remember Audiogon's real time auctions back a couple of years ago. Very cool. My biggest complaint about auctions is how someone swoops in the last 5 or 10 seconds, and steals something I was set on. All's fair in love and war? BS. It's low down and cowardly. In fact, last year I lost a pair of black pearl earrings for my fiance on ebay. Believe me, if I ever come across the person who did this, I am still mad enough to tar and feather them. I honestly mean this. With all my fiber. They will pay...

Auctions should be where the person who wins is the one willing to pay the highest price. The highest bid. Auctions should not end precisely at a certain time, but should end once the highest bid has been submitted.

As I said, I did not end up with the amps, but I would have had I WANTED to. And, THAT is the only fair way to play.

THANK YOU Audiogon!!! You are doing it right!
trelja

Showing 1 response by ryanp100

As an avid member of eBay, and the occasional sniper, I must take issue with the way this method is described in this thread. First, the highest bid DOES always win an auction, no matter what time the bid was placed. Someone who carefully watches the clock on an auction and then times his bid to best another still has placed the highest bid, no? For those who complain about this "unfair" practice, resulting in losing a pair of earrings or other item, why did you not place your highest maximum bid initially and let the system proxy bid for you? Both eBay and Audiogon appear to use virtually identical systems, so why not place a bid, as recommended, for the MOST that you're willing to spend? Should a sniper come along and bid more, then you have very little room to call "foul" since that person was willing to spend more than you. If you REALLY want an item, why not bid $100,000? I'm pretty sure you'll get it... The whole point of the proxy bidding is to avoid problems with slow versus fast connections, since nothing is faster than the system to increase the current bid price.

To that last argument, some might say "But what about those nasty people who just bid and bid just to drive up the price?" To me, this argument appears specious, since I know of no one who has unlimited funds just to ruin other people's days. In fact, I believe that the overtime system utilized here (and I must confess that I have never used the A'gon auction system and am merely going on a logical extension of what was described in this thread previously) lends itself to a higher incidence of shill bidding which could result in unfair auctions. An "associate" of the seller can easily bump up the price in the last few minutes of the auction, especially if there is considerable interest in the item, and cause a new round of bidding which inflates the price. Again, I make no accusations, and have no idea if this takes place. I would like to hope that it does not, since the vast majority of people on this board appear both congenial and sincere.

I'm terribly sorry if this post has aggravated anyone. I don't post very often, quite rarely in fact, although I do enjoy reading the dialogues in these threads and I do see some names above which regularly contribute and whose opinion I respect.