Posted by Jack Smith on October 08, 1999 at 02:30:39:
In Reply to: Re: Why e-bay is not honorable posted by Tim Offutt on October 07, 1999 at 19:47:11:
Tim,
I'll have a shot at that....you claim that ebay is most certainly an auction...but in reality, you don't know any such thing. They have already had lots of legal troubles, and there is no way of telling if a seller is even real. I'll bet I could auction off your house, and you would never know it until some guy with a moving van showed up. In person, an auction is hard enough to keep under control, but online, it's IMPOSSIBLE. The auction you described was probably run by the government, and although you would guess it's being run fairly and honestly, name me ONE other thing which the government does in honest fashion? Why should this be different? I would go farther and say that government auctions are probably more honest than civilian ones, all things considered. God help you in a civilian auction if you are in for a large sum of money. I HOPE you were not implying that people who do not utilize auctions are NOT educated, disciplined, or otherwise....I find the opposite to be true actually. Some people are just too savvy to fall for this traditional ruse. In my area, if you can't get a good price for the scabby looking pile of junk machinery behind your barn, you call an auctioneer, which honorable gentleman sets up shop on your lawn, and proceeds to "sell" your junk to all comers. EXCEPT...he brings a few of these "comers" along with him. As a team, they conspire to get a bid fever going, and before you know it, the gambling spirit in a lot of people will take over and you see folks carrying away a $250 rusty broken post auger with frozen gears in it. I've seen them actually fight over the junk, and the silly thing is that they could have gone down to the Farm & Country store and bought a new one for about the same money. People do this because they can be conned into believing they are getting a bargain if they outbid their neighbor. Kinda upside down, isn't it? Auctioneers justify their presence by getting more for your junk than you could have, and they then take the extra for their split. all that really happened was that the price on everything got inflated, usually by dishonest means. (phony bidders in the audience) I think most folks understand how and why auctions are "dishonorable", (not my term) but the myth persists that one can get great bargains at an auction. These myths are carefully cultivated and nurtured by auctioneers and their companies. One only has to read the Barnum & Bailey type newspaper ads to see what's really going on. But then, some folks still believe the $50 jeep-in-a-box stories, so with a gullible public as the targets, auctions continue to prosper. I'll concede that in the case of the government, which MUST dispose of huge quantities of material each week, one may in fact get a windfall at an auction. You may just as quickly get skinned alive and spend your hard earned money on worthless junk, especially if you buy sight unseen. Auctions don't give refunds...they don't allow normal credit arangements, and they don't allow many of the other protections that are important to consumers in the retail market. Ever wonder why? Hey, it would be nice if they were run above board, but it would also be nice if the people in hell had icewater. It just ain't going to happen. Not while it is this easy to free a fool from his money. Some day, I'll meet someone who purchased something from an auction which was substantially as advertised or presented. So far, I've only heard about people being dissatisfied with their purchases, and some of them downright cheated. Got a horse you don't need to feed anymore? Swaybacked and crippled? No problem! Call the auctioneer and he'll get a racehorse price for her! Then, when the trusting fellow who buys her, relying on the honesty and integrity of the auctioneer, who described her as a fine piece of horseflesh, finds out that she was misrepresented, and is really suitable for glue, explain about caveat emptor, and sales are final, and you begin to see why I get so mad at auctions. No retail business would ever get away with the same things. IN an auction, all the rules of fairness and honesty are suspended, and everything is the fault of the "undisciplined and uneducated buyer". Nuff said?