[quote name='georox']The whole don't-see-prices thing bugs the hell out of me. Its basically playing a guessing game, and a way lengthy one at that. For buying it seems hella-easier to just goto eBay or amazon...
*edit*
Just to prove my point, if somethings up for 30 days, and the price they want (Since buyers are blind to seeing this) is around eBays/Amazons, we end up waiting 30 days for it to end and get nothing. This whole no price/length of listings thing seems like a giant pain.[/quote]
There's a way to do this. Now, I can't tell you what it is, cause our store partners wouldn't be too happy, but I will answer questions with
and
.
(What can I say, I like games. Marco? Polo!)
Let me give you a little bit about our philosophy on this - Dawdle's probably the most similar to Priceline, in that you name your own price and we try to find a seller for you at that price. The big difference is that with Priceline, you generally get a hotel room that's within some nebulous area (Times Square) as opposed to a particular hotel (W Times Square). With us, you get exactly what you want - a copy of
Phantom Hourglass, used, but complete with box and manual - rather than used, but in "good" condition. If we had total price transparency, we wouldn't be able to get all of the inventory that we do have, because people don't want to compete with themselves.
We take your bid and do three things with it -
1. we check it against anything that's listed on the site at that moment and keep checking it against listings that come in for the period of your bid;
2. we publish it for everyone to see under Most Recent Bids to notify potential sellers that someone wants it; and
3. we send it to our store partners on a delayed basis to see if they can fulfill it.
Sometimes, yes, after 30 days, we can't find a seller at your price. But unlike Priceline, you don't have to change your bid to re-submit; you can incrementally increase it, either after it expires, or even during that initial 30 days. (And you can submit a bid for less than 30 days, of course.)
This is why we encourage people to bid on items with no matching listings - even if something isn't on the site now, if you have a good bid, we'll do our best to try to find a willing seller. Rather than just settling for what sellers have available, we can start with what buyers actually *want* and then find a seller.
But, we do something Priceline doesn't - we tell you what other people have been able to win at. So rather than going on some forum and trying to find out what a good bid is, we show it to you right there. The reason we do this is to set a "market price" that gives both buyers and sellers some certainty to the value of the product.
Right now, bidding on Dawdle is set up to be like buying a stock with a limit price. You'll never pay more than your limit price. (Our limit prices always include S&H, so there are no surprises, as well.) That means you may not win at all. We may consider just letting people buy at the "market price", which would be the lowest seller matching price. (Who's willing to sell that Complete copy of Phantom Hourglass for the cheapest?) Would that be something you would be interested in?
(Edited for clarity - it's late and that's pretty long.)
