Web auctions are now one of the top leading ways to sell and buy items. One of the best parts of Web auctions is it brings buyers and sellers together without ever having to meet with each other. Instead of having to go to the store to look at an item that you want and pay full price for, can look at it online on one of the many leading auction sites such as “top 3 rated sites today 1.eBay, 2.uBid, and 3.Bidz.com.”(1)
eBay was the first Web auction site to be created, back on September 3, 1995 by French-born Iranian computer programmer Pierre Omidyar. The first item that was sold on eBay was a broken laser pointer for $14.83. “Omidyar contacted the winning bidder to ask if he understood that the laser pointer was broken. In his responding email, the buyer explained: "I'm a collector of broken laser pointers."”(3) Omidyar knew he had struck a gold mine from that day forward and eBay is now present in over 30 countries with a total asset of 22.003 billion dollars.
There are many advantages to using Web auctions to both buy and sell items. One of the advantages is the fact that most of the time the item is cheaper than it is in the store. Also you have a wide selection of infinite items and many times more than one of the same item so you can pick which item you feel is a better deal, where as when you go to a physical auction there are only a certain amount of items for sale and usually only one of each item. Another advantage is time and effort, “Web auctions present great savings in terms of the time and effort required to purchase items. With a physical auction, you have to physically travel to the venue of the auction, which will cost you money and time. You can participate in a Web auction from the comfort of your living room or office, as long as you have a computer and Internet connection.”(2) When using Web auctions it allows for easy and secure payments whether it is using Paypal, a credit card or a money order, you are protected by the auction site, where as when you go to the auction most of the time you need to have physical cash on you.
On the flip side of things there are also many disadvantages to using Web auctions to buy and sell items. One disadvantage is when a seller either over describes an item or under describes an item. An example of this is when a seller describes an item and tells you ever detail that it has/comes with and when you get a physical item its only half of those things, or when they post an item and the only description it gives is “New” and when you get the item its clearly not “New”. Another disadvantage is the authenticity of an item, especially autographed items. The seller might say it is real and it is indeed real, but it’s a real “copy” of the original autograph. One disadvantage to sellers is fictitious buyers. They bid on your item and win it and then send you an email saying that they live in a foreign country and they are sending a money order and need you to ship it to a fake address and then they never pay you. If you ship it then you lose out on the item and won’t get your money because they delete their account after it. But with how security of the sites and fraud protection is getting better by the day many of these issues are getting resolved without the seller or buyer getting burned.
After people realized eBay was a gold mine and there was money to be made, many more sites began to pop up mimicking around the set up of eBay. With over 85 million eBay users today, Web auctions are still growing and more and more people are using them each year. Today there are now more than 100 different Web auction sites and more are being developed/discovered yearly. Though Web auctions may have some of its disadvantages, the advantages it carries out weighs them tremendously. Overall Web auctions are one of the fastest growing ways to sell and buy items from all over the world at a fraction of the cost.
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