BattleBids discussion

Hi Kevin,
Battlebids looks very cute, but I don't think it would be appropriate for my listings (clothing). I read the NEWS thread and maybe I misunderstood, but it sounded like it would be applied to certain categories automatically?? I hope clothing isn't one of them! My dial-up customers have a hard enough time waiting for my templates and pics to load

With all due respect, I think this is a horrible idea. eBay's pages are already bogged down with too much garbage...and now we're bloating it further with a frivolous game with no relevance to selling? Do you really think people clicking on our auctions come to waste time and play video games? This is not an arcade but a business, one which we take numerous pains to create. In my humble opinion this is absurd, counterproductive and worthless.

I agree. The bidding process already has enough inherent excitement without the need to add a useless gimmick. If potential buyers want an item, they will bid on it whether or not a game is involved.

Personally, I love video games, but the idea that adding these juvenile games will somehow attract more buyers to the marketplace doesn't make sense. It seems like a trivial fix for a problem that needs EFFECTIVE solutions - fighting fraud, slamming ripoff sellers, fixing ridiculous posting delays in search, fixing bugs, bugs, and more bugs.

Ebay seems to be ignorant of the law of diminishing returns. Constantly making misguided changes and adding more complexity just creates more confusion, more bugs, more buyer and seller disatisfaction, and more motivation to shop at Amazon.com. Ebay needs to stop trying to transform itself into some kind of bloated circus, and go for a lean and mean site where people want to spend their time and money. Games ain't it.

I agree 100%. I want bidders not people playing games. If the game drove people to our auctions all well and good but they already found the auction and now you want to distract them from our items by playing game! I for one opted out of the addition of Battle bids to my auctions
Steve

Ebay/Paypal has a fundamental problem, their fees are too high. The high fees make it more difficult for smaller sellers to make a worthwhile profit and thus to effectively compete against the big sellers, driving them away. With fewer small sellers and a decrease in core listings, Ebay's average prices are going up and up, driving more and more buyers away. Fewer small sellers + fewer 'bargains' + fewer buyers = serious problem. We don't need silly games. Ebay wake up and fix this - reduce your fees! You are going the wrong way - return to your roots!

BattleBids is definitely more appropriate for some categories than others. The post in the News thread lists the specific second level eBay categories that will have a BattleBids game added. Categories like Video Game Systems and Games.

The actual flash object that will be inserted into the listing description will be 40k or less. We designed this knowing that we need to make sure the auction does not load slowly or prevent a buyer from viewing the description. Only when a viewer starts playing the game, will the rest of the game start loading.

I know some people will be opposed to BB and I do encourage people to turn their settings off if they don't want to participate.

-Kevin

Hello,

I am extremely upset about this new BattleBids being inserted into my Auction and/or Store Listings. I DO NOT WANT ANYTHING to distract my customers from my items. NOTHING. It's hard enough to make sales without a Video Game Prompt to distract potential customers.

Who's great idea was this one anyway? How is this supposed to help us in any way? How is this going to increase my sales? Thank you but NO THANKS!!!

And HOW do you you set your Preferrences to say, NO THANK YOU, DON'T INSERT! I do not see any place where you can do that. The only options are: Your Battlebids or Ours...There is no place to say...NONE. I DON'T WANT THESE IN MY LISTINGS. HELP!!!!!

Msricheb

I would also like to opt out of the stupid battlebids stuff. I buy as well as sell, and to me it's just one more stupid useless piece of junk on the auction page to discourage me from bothering to even go there. I cam to Auctiva because it has always been a sane respit from Ebay, but I am now having second thoughts about the sanity. I have also noticed that there is no "opt out option". So it's sort of being forced upon us. sort of sounds like Ebays continually screwing with a well oiled machine until they brake it, and they've done that several times.

Please, please give us the "opt out option".

There is an "opt out" option. In account settings, under "Listing Enhancements", you will find a "no" button to turn off BattleBids. Also, here is a little more info on this: https://community.auctiva.com/eve/forums/a/tpc/f/1081020411/m/9141093252

Well I guess I can take back the begging in my previous post. I thought the no block belonged to the option above, but it was actually the opt out option I was looking for. The ranting and raving about the stupidity of the game in general though still stands.

Isn't that the truth !!!!!

I am so happy to see this is only going to appear on related catagories. I was too no happy with it appearing with my collectibles. Please do not consider adding this to further catagories. Ebay is for auctions and buying not game playing.

Does anyone out there actually have battlebids in their auctions? And what do you think of it? Would appreciate a link just to see.......

quote:

Originally posted by sagecollectibles:
Please do not consider adding this to further catagories.

Hi sagecollectibles - More categories will be added later, so I would make sure you have BattleBids turned off.

Here is an auction that I used it on:

http://cgi.ebay.com/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?ViewItem&item=230179105297

I'm still not quite sure how to tell if anyone actually used it, or if they just bid the regular old way.

I'm not sure this is a good thing, but I'm willing to hold my final decision untill it goes live and I can truly see whtat it is all about and then try an auction or 2 with it. If it is too distracting I'll just turn them off in my auction settings.

quote:

Originally posted by jtr8178:
I'm still not quite sure how to tell if anyone actually used it, or if they just bid the regular old way.

Hi Tyler - If you click the "Instructions" button on the game, "Game Statistics" is displayed at the bottom of the page. Game usage info is there. Not exactly an intuitive location for that.

thank you for your note. i think I have done so but if it shows up I will do so.

Hi jtr8178,
Thanks for the link...very interesting but NOT something I would ever want to use. It does seem way too distracting! I would rather have people trying to snipe or watching the time, rather than being sidetracked by playing a game. I would always wonder if ONE more person would have bid, but was looking at battlebids when the listing ended?????
Thanks again

Hello,

Although I do not list in the categories with current Battlebids auto attach, I think it is a great idea. The categories currently with Battlebids are great for game playing, attention arousing buyers.

Battlebids will keep a bidder/buyer on the item page. The longer someone stays the more likely the bid!

Stay in a barbershop long enough and sooner or later you will get a haircut.

Change is good. If things did not change we would still be listing in DOS.

Auctiva is good at innovation and I am sure they will make it a successful add-on. They also know when to bug out.

Rich Beck

Hi! I too have been a tad worried over the Battlebids as well ~ I am a varely new seller (been around for a spell as a buyer though) and a very small time seller but still I am a bit apprehensive regarding how the Battlebids will/can affect my auctions ~ I also noticed in another post earlier the mention of a seller concerned with her Dial Up Customers and the bogging down of the loading of thier auction if the Battlebids was present ~ I just wanted to let that Poster know or any other seller who may be concerned about this that I have Dial Up and awful ancient phone lines and am lucky if I get connected at 44 kbps and at 44 kbps I opened up jtr8178 past auction (thank you for the link to your auction by the way!) and was quite surprised to see how quickly and smoothly I was able to see the history of the "Race". I don't know if it will be that quick with the actual game vs just seeing the past history of the game but just wanted to let you know from a slow dial up prospective how it went. Take Care all and Good Luck on your Future Auctions!

I am new here and I was reading about the battlebids. I myself think it's a good idea, anything new on ebay and your listing would help. I checked the link above out and was watching the game. Can the game only be played if you are actually bidding? People won't be deceived into thinking they are just simply playing a game and not really bidding will they?? Other than people getting upset because they won something by mistake because they wanted to check out the game, I think it is a really good idea.

With all the problems we have on eBay glitches and with Auctiva this new option is completely senseless.

Why a game on listings? Just something to screw up out listings, make them load slower and make even more maintenance downtime.

This just doesn't make sense.

Maybe it won't be so bad...I looked at it again & found myself completely bored after about 5 seconds........

I want an answer to the following:

If a buyer comes in my auction...sees the GAME..PLAYS THE GAME...Does he win the auction?

I just played the game on my own listing...it made me think I won my own auction.

Answer.....Please?

This might be one of the stupidist Ideas I have ever seren on EBay/Paypal...Ever !!!

Thats saying something !

8+ year vet..seen alot & this is at the top....wow!

Hey JoeBob,
That's a VERY good question...but I don't think that was a true 'test' because from everything I've read, Ebay's bidding system does not let you bid on your own auction (Don't know for sure, never tried it)
Maybe you could ask your winning bidders if they played the game and what happened when they did ??
But I agree...I don't like the idea either..wonder how many members actually use this thing

What a horrible idea! Adding this crap without our permission. Took me forever to remove it from all my new listings. I have now disabled it, but I sure wish I'd been given that option BEFORE Auctiva stuck it in my listings. We don't need more garbage clogging up the listings.

Ramon,

Sorry to hear you did not receive the emails we sent out. You might want to check your spam filter to make sure that emails coming from Auctiva are not being flagged as spam. We sent out three different emails over a period of two weeks to give people a heads up on the addition of BattleBids to items listed in specific categories.

So that you and other users know, we also have a support tool to remove the BattleBids game from your listings if you accidentally did not turn the setting off in your Auctiva account. Simply write into our support team and let them know.

On a more positive note, we have had some really positive reviews, including an article posted by Auctiontips.com, which pointing out several good reasons on how BattleBids adds benefit to sellers.

You can view the article in their October archive, look for it as the number 4 topic, about half way down the page here:
http://www.auctiontips.com/archive/index.php?article=art_october07

-Kevin