grrrrrr eBay numpties

Could be difficult contacting a seller it he's in prison!

Agreed (although I wish my local camera shops were full of cheap kit!)

A strident minority of ebay sellers seem to be forcing prices up with unrealistic buy it now listings. These convince other sellers that the market value of their items is higher and lead to such ridiculous items as an ME Super for £100. One particular seller who lists everything "best offer" but won't knock more than a couple of £s off is particularly to blame IMO, especially with their apparent monopoly on the supply of lens caps, etc...

I've had a mixed couple of days on ebay. On the down side I put a "Best Offer" in on a piece of electronics that promptly had its "Buy it not" price increased by about 250 percent! I didn't get that auction.. The original price was about right, by the way, so it was just simple price gouging.

On the other side, I got a 645 (medium format) lens at a decent price from a "I don't know anything about photography" seller. The barrel was very dirty and there was the very beginning of fungus on one element (sone filimentation, but it looks like it's not etched the coatings yet). I queried it and got half the price back, so now it's pretty much a solid bargain. Main quandry is whether to send it to a proper repairer or to clean it myself (not such a dangerous thing to moot - my day job is very relevant for this. Mainly an issue of not getting bitten by left-handed screw threads unawares!).

I wonder who you mean...

The obvious logic on the 645 lens: How much would it be worth after cleaning, and how much will cleaning cost? If cleaning plus lens price is still lower than or the same as the price of a clean example then get it done professionally.



Unfortunately a few other sellers seem to be adopting their business model! I now find myself buying sanely-priced BIN items from dealers and seldom bid on auctions as items just tend to go silly at the end. I managed to bag a K 135/3.5 last week which shot up from £17 to £42 in the final seconds. Unfortunately for the sniper my max bid was £50 (as it was minty with original caps)...

You need to start sniping yourself Matt
Putting on high bids like your £50 one is just saving
the seller from having to do his own shill bidding

Surely if Matt had used a sniper, the outcome would have been exactly the same if his 'snipe' was 50 quid.

Who goes via Quidco to get 40% back of the ebay revenue for winning an eBay auction or Buy It Now item.?

John

It's covered in another thread somewhere on here. (Ebay Madness link )
As with shill bidding people will just keep nibbling away with
higher bids just to see what the higher bid is. The big problem
is if TWO bidders put very high maximum bids on just after
an auction starts..... the price zooms up to the 2nd highest
straight away. It happened recently with a faulty lens worth
£10 shot up to £41, no feedback has been left to date

Gixen or snip(dot)pl are good for sniping the latter
costs about 17p for each successful snipe.

Never heard of that? The seller would have to agree?

Me. Every time.

You have now!

John

Interesting week for me, I got a faulty SF1n 9SFXn) for £7 inc p&p, lost out on a CZJ 50mm and won a much better one that needs servicing, no problem.

But the BIN items I was watching, one refused a 'best offer' the other 'jumped' from £25 to £35, I don't know how they did it!

One clown in particular had a used FA77 (in mint condition mind you :roll listed for more than the SRS new price for about six months. Still on sale (for less) but for some reason nobody is taking the plunge

I definitely see a difference between bargain and fair price.

A couple of weeks ago I managed to get hold of a grubby MX with 50/1.7, ERC, original strap, also a case/light meter/flashgun for £50 from a Mencap branch which had listed it BIN. I've replaced the light seals and given it a good clean, I'd now classify it as somewhere between excellent and minty. All seems to function as it should, a test roll came back fine. I'd call that a fair price - not a bargain, but a good MX and 50mm are worth that much.

Today I have once again seen those Takumar-A 28-80mm lenses advertised for £35. They're worth about £10 IMO. £35 is into M series prime territory!

Some lenses seem to have dried up almost completely. I haven't seen any M 100/2.8s for a while now, can only assume that people just aren't selling. That notorious ebay seller seemed to be trying to ram the price up by a good £50 over what had been the generally accepted level a year or so ago.