critique and answer to our auction-system

I am very pleased with my Lobi couple you recently sent to me. Thank for the fixed priced auction. Was it a success? I imagine it was not as you do not seem to renewal. I liked your fixed price auctions because my problem is that I do not totally trust your auction system. Sorry for telling you the things as I feel. I may be wrong but I am sure many people watching your site must feel the same, so I prefer to tell you my feeling. Starting prices should be equal to your bottom price. What is the use of a starting bid of 10 € if you don't sale it when it reaches 50? I saw the oldest lobi you ever sold for about 2000 € fixed price and last time it was over 3000 € on auction and know it is again for sale! It seams quite obvious that you auction system do not keep privacy on the maximum bid given. On the other side I understand that low bidding on nice objects must be irritating. Bref on my side I think you should think about the system to improuve it and give to your clients confidence in it. I may be a little rude in the way I put things. Nothing personal. If I do it it is because I appreciate doing business with you. I bought you some very nice items. The ones I did not like you accepted to take them back! That is appreciable!. Thank you. RC

Thanks a lot for your e-mail. Your way expressing critique is absolutly not "rude". I appreciate your critical words. They have a high worth for me, because I know there are people, which don´t face me with their critique, they are only talking about me with violating words to other people.

The Online-auction system, we have created and established in the last years and which will be modified for sure also in the future, isn´t comparable with other auction systems, like ebay or the system of Offline-auction houses. I wrote about these things several times in our blogs.

Once again: Nearly all of our auctions have an "estimate price" and "a covered minimum prices". The starting-price has nothing to do with both of them. If we bring a new object to auction, it has normally no fixed price. That means a very low starting price, because the bidder should think about the value of this object and we can see which bidder is making a serious offer and which one only likes to press the buying button. With serious bidders we are working also on an other level outside of our auction-system.

If an objects doesn´t reach the covered minimum-price, we start the auction another time again. Than a client has two possibilities: Purchasing the object for a fixed price or to make a bid during the time the auction is running. If there is a reasonable bid close to our minimum-price, I will have a look, if it´s possible for us to sell it for this price or a price very close to this offer. Sometimes - if we need money for example or we have collected several similar objects later - we are selling certain objects at a level, which we have paid for. That means without any profit. But this is okay for us, because we have the chance to buy other interesting objects , which are rare and normally also expensive.

Under the entrance picture of the bidding form you can find the identification number, which is different than the auction number on top of the form. If you put the identification number in our search-function on top of the search form, you can find the "auctions history". That means all auctions, which are related to this item. If you analyze some items in this way, you will see very different performances, which are related to many different reasons. This search-funtion is also very interesting, if you want to have auction-price-performances for a group of objects. Example: You want auction-performances about a "Puguli", a "Kilité" sculpture or about "Latra" carver. In this way you will get an exact mirror about objects and results in the past.

Prices can go up and down, it has nothing to do of being "serious" or "not serious". The only realistic price is the price of a closing. There are chatterboxes who are making endless comments about the "before and the after" a closing. I am sorry, I can explain things like I do it here but about the "before and after topic" it goes to far for me to discuss about it again and again. If you don´t like a purchased item, you can send it back immediately without any comment. This is the biggest difference between an Offline- and an Online-auctionhouse. With an Offline-auctionhouse it´s very difficult - after the hammer is fallen - to get your money back...no problem with an Online-auctionhouse. So why this endless "before and after closing" discussion?

Tribalartforum is not Ebay and not the xyz Offline-auctionhouse, we have to find our own way and we only can find it with clients who are satisfied. So once again, thanks for your critque. I hope I could help you a little bit with my respond. WJ

Thank you very much for your long and detailed answer. It is true I almost never went on your blog, so I did not see the explanations you have already given on the subject. Feel free to publish our exchange. RC