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Strategies & Market Trends : Value Investing -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Bob Rudd who wrote (6958)	4/26/1999 11:22:00 AM
From: geoffrey Wren	Read Replies (2) \| Respond to of 78475

Re: How do they make sure you really get what you pay for? [on ebay auctions]? I have known two people who bought things on internet auctions. One showed me the auction system in fact. She bought some jewelry, found it grossly misrepresented. Also, she now has a feeling that the person who forced her bid up at the end may have been a shill. Paid $100, felt it was worth $10. But the seller was overseas, etc. Now she won't use auctions anymore. Someone else I know bought a computer on the internet. He got it quickly, but it did not work. The seller has offered to fix the machine, but he has to drive 60 miles and leave it overnight. He has not got around to it yet. In the interim, comparable priced computers have dropped in price $100-$200. He won't use auctions anymore either. That's two I know who have tried, two who won't use it anymore. Maybe that is not typical, but . . . . I believe the true future of the internet here is not auctions, but a system of registering items for sale easily and systematically. It will probably be Yahoo that gets to this first; something like the current Personal Ads that it already runs. Let's say you enter that you are interested in a used 20" tv for less than $125 within 20 miles of your house, and you get a listing of them. Within 5 years I would say this will be the primary classified ad system in the US. Then you get to see what you are buying before you buy it, but it is the internet that puts the buyer and seller together. Obviously this threatens the cash cow at the newspapers now in their Classified advertisements, but where the consumer wins, there is often a businessman who loses. Geoff Wren