

Ask HN: What's your biggest gripe with craigslist and/or ebay? - mslagh

From a usability, content or technology standpoint.
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evanrmurphy
Ebay's auction model includes a strict time limit that doesn't adjust for
bidding. That is, if someone bids in the last few seconds of an auction,
there's no increase in time as there would be in a traditional physical-space
auction to allow others an opportunity to bid higher if they're interested.
This leads to the whole phenomenon of auction sniping, which is pretty silly
when you realize it's all the result of what's arguably a design flaw.

Imagine an auctioneer in real life implements this policy. "Going once for x.
Going twice...." They begin mouthing the word "sold" when a competing bidder
jumps in at x+1. The auctioneer proceeds as though nothing happened ("Sold!")
except that the sniper wins ("For x+1...").

~~~
evanrmurphy
Currently investigating to see if I'm wrong about this - if eBay does actually
have a dynamic time limit feature and I was just unaware of it.

~~~
mslagh
They don't, and I agree that it is flawed. But perhaps flawed is too strong of
a word, and it's just that ebay auctions don't tend to mimic real-life
auctions (and maybe there is a reason for the discrete time limits, ie sellers
need to know exactly when items are ending; buyers are often time limited
sometimes as well: 7 days often seems like an eternity anyways). Many of the
up-and-coming penny auction sites include this feature, as it is much more
necessary to their business model.

~~~
evanrmurphy
I think Ebay realized at some point that marketplaces are more profitable than
auctions and adjusted their model accordingly. Now they're in this limbo
between an auction site and a marketplace site but not great at either. They
can afford this of course because they're a monopoly, but if I really want the
experience of one or the other I'll use a service with clearer focus.

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eliot_sykes
Shameless plug, I have a love/hate relationship with Missed Connections, and
as a result created <http://www.MissedConnections.com> to improve on the good
work Craigslist started.

~~~
puredemo
Nice domain.

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onceuponkauai
ebay: auctions suck, bidding on stuff isn't my idea of fun. There is too much
of negative press surrounding fraud etc, so you have to go out of your way to
portray yourself as not being a criminal. craigslist: people are cheap, it is
handled face to face, if you are selling something large, usually random
strangers come into your house.

So that really has nothing to do with coding, but those are my gripes with
each.

------
rrival
on craigslist, scams/spammers

~~~
proexploit
Craigslist spam is a huge problem, but they don't do enough to take care of
it. Right now I'm really annoyed by the way every single time I want to look
at the job listings, it makes me click again after a page explaining what
affiliate marketing is and how it's scammed.

