eBay Australia have announced that they too are dropping the Dutch Auction listing format, citing that buyers found the system too confusing and claiming that sellers used it very little.

The Dutch Auction system essentially allows for inventory multiples to be listed in an auction format.  Buyers then bid on a single piece or on several.  When the auction ends, the bidders with the highest bid values (up to the total number of items in the listing) are the winners.  All of those winners then pay the same price, which is the lowest winning bid.

Seems simple enough to me, but I notice that over the last few years, eBay have increased the complexity of the explanation in their help pages, perhaps in a constructed effort to wean buyers and sellers away from the format?

When most sites last year increased their minimum start/selling price to one dollar/euro/Pound on Fixed Price and Stores formats, it was seen as the end of the “penny sellers” on eBay.  Migrating those sellers to Dutch Auctions could have been an option, but it was largely overlooked at the time.

For example – one popular seller category that was heavily hurt by the minimum selling prices was Crafts, especially the beading categories.  Whereas previously sellers may have uploaded listings for several hundred individual beads at 1p-5p each, they suddenly had to start assembling them into packs that could meet the minimum price value.

At that time, selling in core via fixed price multiple listings had only 10-day maximum listing duration available.  Had the sellers switched to Dutch Auctions, they could have retained their existing sales methodology, albeit under a slightly different philosophy.

Until mid-May, it is still possible to do this, but after that time, the format will be gone … unless sufficient support to retain it emerges in the next two months?  (eBay seem to be fond of policy U-turns this year, so there’s still a slight hope their minds can be changed).

Ed

Update - Belgium and Spain have posted similar announcements of the loss of Dutch Auctions – looks like this will be a global policy folks … unless you can use the format enough in the next 8 weeks to make them change their minds?