Good piece by my old friend Rani about how online auctions work in Singapore:
When I tried to sell my xda II online, I was surprised to find out that the logic of online auction is almost totally different in Singapore. At first, I tried to sell my xda II in Singapore Pocket PC user group (PPCSG). However, I can say that, although PPCSG market place forum is a great place to buy stuff, it is not a great place to sell stuff. People from the forum would mercilessly bargain 40-50% from the initial price. Having been unable to sell my xda II with a good price in PPCSG, I looked for other alternatives.
Enter auctions sites, namely, Yahoo Auctions Singapore and ebay Singapore. And I was surprised to find out that… nobody bids on those auctions sites. It was not long until I find out the unwritten rules of the online auction game in Singapore, which is totally different from my experience doing online auction in the US and UK.
Basically it’s like a reverse auction: Put your highest price as the opening bid, and wait for folk to call you with lower bids. Then you just seal the deal over the phone. I wonder how true this is elsewhere? And I wonder, too, whether Rani’s suggestion that eBay and co actually build the capability for reverse auctions into their software, so that in places like Singapore, people actually use their services?
