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| Author |
Message |
aruba
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Auction Post-Mortem
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Feb 23 20:42 UTC 1999 |
I'd like to do a little post-mortem on the auction while some people are still
around. What did you like about this edition of the auction? What would you
like to see in the future? In particular, what do you think the auctioneers
should do differently in the future? Go ahead and let me have it for delaying
so long last fall - I've got it coming. :)
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| 29 responses total. |
jep
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response 1 of 29:
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Feb 23 20:51 UTC 1999 |
I liked the way the auction items were kept moving right along. When
the bidding was slowing down, the bidding was closed reasonably quickly.
I liked seeing several new items listed per day while the auction was in
progress; it kept me interested in the auction, without making me feel
overwhelmed by dozens of auction items.
I didn't like the big delay during the fall, when nothing was happening,
but the auction wasn't over with yet.
It was a little difficult picking up the items I won, and also donating
the item (the screen tent) that I donated. It was worth it, but it'd be
nice if some easier way could be found; a specific drop-off point for
donating items, perhaps, at some convenient location. I'd be more
likely to donate items for the next auction if it were a little easier
to turn them over to someone.
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cmcgee
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response 2 of 29:
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Feb 23 22:45 UTC 1999 |
I'd like to start a list somewhere of "items wanted for the next auction".
Some of us avid garage salers might keep eyes out for them. And I did
promise, way back in the fall, that if we got a 501c3 designation, I'd go find
us some bigger corporate donations.
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tpryan
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response 3 of 29:
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Feb 23 22:50 UTC 1999 |
It has taken a lot of work, but I think having the auction run
for close to eight/nine months now gave an oppurtunity for many to
join in.
To do: get a way to allow, by conference, the ability, do that
'read first, last' current default, or useful for the auction.cf, set
that initial read defualt to 'read all {not frozen}'.
To do: perhaps a way to move sold (or transaction complete) item
out of the auction.cf to perhaps a solditem.cf using link, de-link and
kill.
For non-moving items (those with no bids) set them up for
'quick sale'. That would be where an item may be 19.95 new, minimum
bid was $2, but 'quick sale' price would be $5. First to accept gets
the item. This would be for items that have not received a bid after,
say 45 or 60 days, at the discression of the auctioneers.
I want to thank Mark for being the clearing house for the books
and other items I have donated. I would not have been patient with
multiple request to pick-up or mail as many items. And Thank Carol for
putting up with their place being turned into a wherehouse.
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omni
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response 4 of 29:
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Feb 24 05:41 UTC 1999 |
I think the auction should be perpetual. The new trend of Internet
auctions has cought on, and I think that the last nine months is enough
evidence to show us that we do have the stuff, and the will to go on
perpetually, that is, as long as someone is willing to run it.
We know that this is a great income resource for Grex, and it
could help solve some of the financial worries that we have.
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otaking
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response 5 of 29:
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Feb 24 13:31 UTC 1999 |
I have to agree with omni. We probably could have a perpetual auction. It
doesn't take too many items to perpetuate it either. There would still be
lulls, but the auction is paced slow enough that it wouldn't be too much of
a problem.
I also like the slow pace of the auction. The problem I have with eBay and
others like it is that I have to constantly check my items up to the last
minute. I don't always have computer access, so being able to take a few days
off before I have to check my items is a lot easier to deal with. Plus, the
end price can be much higher without a strict time limit.
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cmcgee
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response 6 of 29:
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Feb 24 19:34 UTC 1999 |
We could have a perpetual auction if we had a perpetual shipping staff.
I'd like us to look for someone other than the treasurer to do that.
A way to create faster closure on things that aren't moving at all (like
the idea above of quick sale) sounds good.
I'm of two minds about the pace. On one hand, I often don't check back
for 3-4 days, so I prefer fewer things entered, and less tight closure.
On the other hand, having the price go higher faster is good for Grex.
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krj
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response 7 of 29:
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Feb 24 20:33 UTC 1999 |
I wonder if the "specialness" of the auction would be lost if it
became perpetual. In the beginning, before we turned into
tpryan's book clearance outlet :), there were a lot of donations
of baked goods, personal services, etc. People who donate these
things regard the auction as an annual special event, and I worry
that this would be lost in a perpetual auction.
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aruba
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response 8 of 29:
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Feb 25 00:34 UTC 1999 |
Re #1: To answer John's point about having a "drop-off" point:
The next auctioneers can make their own rules, of course, but speaking for
myself, my preference is for donors to keep their items until they are closed
and paid for, and then arrange delivery to the buyer. This cuts the
auctioneer out of the middle, and makes for less deliveries overall.
The other side of that coin is that if the auctioneer doesn't physically have
the items, he has to nag the donor to deliver them. I got tired of doing that
over the last two auctions, so I agreed to take Tim's books and the other
stuff I housed, for the sake of being sure they'd get delivered. I feel
strongly that we can't let the auction get a reputation for being a venue
where you may or may not get the stuff you pay for; that's why I think the
auctioneer has to keep after donors who don't deliver. But it adds a big
burden to the auctioneer's duties.
I'd like to hear how many new items per day people think would be optimal.
I started out at 1 last summer, then went to 4 in December, and then to 2 in
February.
Re #3: To add to Tim's "To Do" list: I'd like it if bids were automatically,
or at least semi-automatically, stored in a database. That would make it a
lot easier for the auctioneer to check on which items are active, which need
attention, and which have been dormant a long time and could use a kick in
the pants. One way I can think of to accomplish this would be for an
auctioneer, when doing a "read new" in the conference, to enter each new bid
by hand, hopefully with some software help. It would be nice if one could
type "bid 10 3 2" at the "respond or Pass" prompt and have the program
interpret that as "there is a bid on subitem 2 of the current item, in
response 10, for $3". It would then read the item file and get the bidder's
name and the date/time of the bid and store everything in the database.
Having everything in a database on Grex would also mean that we could write
fancier report programs than the "query" program. We could check what the
total of all high bids was, an individual user could check the total of
his/her high bids, and we might even be able to automatically remind everyone
who owes money how much they owe, instead of reminding people individually
on an ad hoc basis, as I do now.
Re #6: I don't understand what you mean by "tight closure", Colleen. Could
you explain?
I have two problems with a perpetual auction, though I see the advantages,
too. One is what krj said in #7: I think if the auction is perpetual, we
won't get a lot of handmade and service items, because it's the excitement
of the auction starting that scares those things up. Mary Jane was kind
enough to donate an astrological report twice during this auction, but most
of the other items that were produced by Grexers have only appeared once per
auction, at the beginning.
Also, starting up the auction with a bang now and then gets a lot more
potential bidders to check it out, the same as with any new conference. The
longer a conference is around, the harder it is to attract new people. (With
the exception of the sex conference, I suppose. Some things never go out of
style. ;))
The other problem I have with a perpetual auction is that it is just so much
darn work to keep up with. If we could find someone willing to do that on
a semi-permanent basis, that'd be great - but I don't know that we can. I've
reached my limit, for a while, anyway.
As far as the treasurer being the auctioneer, there are certainly advantages.
If they were two separate people, a lot of information would have to be shared
accurately - namely, the treasurer would have to mail the auctioneer every
time he got a payment. Right now I record in my credits table which item each
part of a payment is for, so that if anyone tells me they paid for something
I can check on it, or if they ask me what they've paid for and what they
haven't I can tell them that too. If the next treasurer keeps that up, he/sh
will have to follow the auction to know what each payment is for, because I
lot of people don't tell me when they send in their check. (Maybe if it was
all in a database online it would be easy to look up, however.)
However, of course, the treasurer's job by itself keeps getting more
complicated. I am lucky not to have a job right now, so I can spend a lot
of time on Grex stuff. The next treasurer may have less to give.
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aruba
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response 9 of 29:
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Feb 25 01:15 UTC 1999 |
One more thought from me: I think we should consider in the future
whether we should have another outlet for some of the items that we have
been putting in the auction. The fact is that there's a lot of overhead
in selling someone a book for $2; someone has to write a description, the
auctioneer has to check the item every day, then when it's closed bug the
buyer until he pays, then bug the donor until he delivers, or deliver it
himself. Clearly some items are worth all that hassle, but some aren't.
And the smaller the price tag, the harder it is to get the buyer and donor
to take it seriously, as well.
It's also a big pain when someone wins something and then never pays. We
could have a standing policy that you have one month to pay, after an item
closes, before it goes to the second highest bidder. But what if the
second-highest bidder has spent his money on something else in the
meantime, and now doesn't want to honor his bid? I think it's not
unreasonable of him to take that position; he assumed the winner was
going to pay. So then we have to put it back in the auction, which makes
it clear to everyone that the original winner was a deadbeat. I don't
mind doing that to people who really *do* blow us off, but what about
people who just overstepped themselves and don't have enough money? I
wouldn't enjoy embarrassing them. Not to mention the fact that it would
be hard to interest people in the item again, when they'd already seen it
sold once.
Plus I just don't want to give people the idea that it's acceptable to bid
on something and then duck out. Or bid on and win a lot of things, and
then pick and choose which ones to pay for. I can just imagine some - let
us say "mischecous persons" - deciding it would be fun to bid up lots of
items and then not pay for them. That would really be a headache for the
auctioneer, and it would certainly deprive Grex of money.
So I've felt compelled to nag people who don't pay. Sometimes it works,
sometimes it doesn't. I confess that I get a bit nervous whenever I see
someone I've never heard from before bidding on an item.
Carol's idea is to have a garage sale for some of the smaller stuff, and
cut out all that overhead. If we did that, we could enter it in the
paper, and get buyers from lots of places. I think donors would either
have to haul away unsold items at the end of the day, or agree that it was
OK to put them on the curb underneath a "FREE" sign.
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krj
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response 10 of 29:
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Feb 25 02:42 UTC 1999 |
One problem is trying to guess in advance what will generate
bid competition. I don't know that anyone could have predicted that
the Jimmy Webb and Nanci Griffith music books would be the ones that
would go for close to list price.
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dang
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response 11 of 29:
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Feb 25 03:15 UTC 1999 |
item:auction,141 <--> item:coop,78 (For those of you who don't
use/speak backtalk, that means that item 141 in the Auction cf is now
linked to item 78 in Co-op.)
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aruba
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response 12 of 29:
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Feb 25 05:03 UTC 1999 |
Thanks for the link, Dan.
Re #10: You're right, Ken, that is a problem, and undoubtedly we would guess
wrong once in a while.
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aruba
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response 13 of 29:
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Feb 27 19:25 UTC 1999 |
I didn't mean to silence other comments with my suggestions. I'd still like
to hear more of what people liked and didn't like about the auction. For
instance, is it too confusing to have multiple books per conference item?
should each book get its own item?
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devnull
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response 14 of 29:
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Feb 27 23:17 UTC 1999 |
I think Mark has done a great job dealing with the deadbeats; I don't think
he's particularily done anything wrong there. Clearly, he has a good sense
of what the challeges are, and has done a resonable job of dealing with them.
Unless the rules of the auction are drastically changed, it's not possible
to do anything very differently to make the situation better.
(Restricting bidding to people who have actually sent either money or ID
to grex in the past might help in many cases, but we might also lose some
worthwhile sales.)
I was annoyed by the way the CD assortment is being sold;
I'm much rather bid directly on the CDs I want. It also appears that there
are two or three CDs that aren't getting sold (although the item hasn't
be closed yet), because there are bids on 17 CDs, and there are a few
more than that, I think.
I've tended to think of the auction as a perpetual thing, although maybe
it isn't.
The idea of raising the `quick sale' on items that haven't sold, and raising
the price above the minimum bid, may or may not be a good idea. I've bought
a couple books for $2 or so when I've noticed they aren't moving; these are
books that I likely would not want to pay $5 for. At the point when we find
they don't sell, the summary has already been written, but I'm not sure
whether the overhead on selling me a $2 book is considered reasonable. (It
probably helps to some extent that I'm buying lots of other stuff...)
One issue with an explicit one month to pay for your item is that it might
cause problems for the way I've been buying stuff (that is, I'm planning
to send a check as soon as the assorted CD item closes; that check will
pay for the CDs and several books, some of which were sold to me a few
weeks ago). I suppose that giving the auctioneer
the right to give the item to someone else after a month, but not requiring
the auctioneer to immediately give up after a month, might be an adaquate
solution to this.
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aruba
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response 15 of 29:
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Feb 28 14:21 UTC 1999 |
Yeah, I think that would do it. As for the CDs: My goal there was to avoid
having to follow bids on 17 individual CDs within the same item, and avoid
having to track 17 individual payments. In other words, laziness on my part.
Trisha also shouldn't be asked to send out 17 different packages.
Anyway, it was an experiment. How did other people feel about it?
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otaking
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response 16 of 29:
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Feb 28 19:57 UTC 1999 |
I think bidding for the first, second, third, etc. picks of the CDs was a good
idea. You may not get exactly what you want, but you'll get something
interesting.
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devnull
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response 17 of 29:
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Feb 28 23:44 UTC 1999 |
Would requiring one to bid on at least three CDs if one bids at all help
to avoid this problem, while being less annoying?
(Yes, it's a lot of work to track without automated software.)
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arthurp
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response 18 of 29:
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Mar 1 02:36 UTC 1999 |
I don't much care for the idea of a continuous auction. Hard on the staff
involved n that aucion, and I think it would hurt the surge of interrest
caused by the startup.
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aruba
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response 19 of 29:
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Mar 1 04:01 UTC 1999 |
Re #17: I don't want to try to keep up with that. The next auctioneer can
make his own decisions, however. (And even with that scheme, the CDs could
end up going to 17 different people.)
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aruba
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response 20 of 29:
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Mar 1 04:09 UTC 1999 |
(And besides, I think the item will make more money for Grex the way we did it
than it would have otherwise. Everyone should keep in mind that this event
is for charity, and that dollars spent go to a good cause.
Of course, if you felt the rules on the CD item were misleading, Joel, that's
something else again. I tried to make it clear in #0 how the bidding would
work, so that everyone would know what they were getting into. If I failed,
I'd like to hear about it.)
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devnull
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response 21 of 29:
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Mar 1 04:55 UTC 1999 |
No, I think the rules on the CD item were basically clear enough. There
were a few cases that weren't made clear, but when I complained about
the one I cared about, a good answer was given.
(Another case we haven't considered is this: is someone allowed to bid
a higher amount per item and reduce the number of items they are bidding on?)
I think the argument about not wanting to track 17 CDs is largely a
psycological thing; there were many more than 17 books, and people didn't
complain about tracking individual books.
Yes, if you require people to bid on at least three CDs, and allow for the
possiblity of people losing all but one, you could have 17 different buyers.
But it's highly unlikely in practice that you'll have more than 10 buyers.
It might be interesting to see statistics on the number of books sold,
the number of books for which there were no bids, and the number of distinct
book buyers, although I guess collecting such statistics would be nontrivial
given the present state of unsophistication.
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rosie0
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response 22 of 29:
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Mar 1 09:13 UTC 1999 |
i dont like how the cds are being bid on. i dont want to go higher
(especially if i dont know what i am going to end up with-- you
might get more from me if i could bid on precicely what i want), and im
scared im gonna end up with a bunch of cds i dont really want. i agree
that you could have handled them the way you did the books--3 or four to an
item, and a couple of items per day. the likelyhood is that people would
buy several anyway.
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aruba
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response 23 of 29:
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Mar 1 16:12 UTC 1999 |
Re #21: Tim donated 113 books, 21 have had no bids, and there have been 28
separate buyers. (I may be unsophisticated, Joel, but I do know SQL. :))
I'm sure you both are right, and we could have done the CDs like the books.
Like I said, it was an experiment. I think it's kind of neat, though, to have
some items where you know what you're bidding on, and others where it's a grab
bag, and, as Forrest would say, "you never know what you're gonna get".
Someone who doesn't like grab bags, of course, needn't bid on them.
Your argument, Laurel, that you might have paid more had you been able to
control what you were getting, is the best one not to do it this way. But
I suspect what would happen if we did the CDs like the books is that a few
would have gotten bid up and the rest sold low, and the resultant total for
Grex would have been less than it is now. Obviously I'm just guessing,
though.
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valerie
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response 24 of 29:
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Mar 6 20:45 UTC 1999 |
This response has been erased.
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