What do we think of this one? I won this auction but it states reserve not met. What does that mean? Where is the reserve price listed? It’s not.
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Hello! Reserve price is not listed but will show “Reserve Met” when the reserve price is met during bidding. Its always best to get your bids in earlier so that our higher end stuff can meet reserve rather than last second. If there is a text on the listing showing “No reserve” that means it will sell at what the highest bid is. If a product does have a reserve price, the product will not sell until it meets the reserve price which is the minimum that vendor is willing to take
If this is the case, why not show the reserve price? It’s misleading for a person to think that they’ve won an auction only to find out that they didn’t because it wasn’t high enough for the seller. Despite beating the other bidders. It’s just wrong, flat out. Just state the minimum you’ll take for the item and let bidders decide if they are willing to meet and go above that.
The listings already have the “NO RESERVE” or “RESERVE NOT MET” badges, which let you know if a listing has a reserve or not, and whether it’s been met. So you should know even if you’re leading, if “RESERVE NOT MET” is showing, you will not be declared winner. There is no surprise or trick. And this is a per-item options sellers set. So not everything has a reserve.
We don’t show the actual reserve because it defeats the purpose of an auction. An auction is a way to also inform on what the market thinks this coral costs. Once you publish the reserve, bidding tends to sit on that number instead of finding the price. We want to let the market move without handing everyone the seller’s walk-away price.
This is a common practice among most if not all auction sites. You know there is a minimum. You don’t get told what it is. If you only want to buy when the floor is public, there are listings that don’t have a reserve, and Lightning Sales let you buy out or make offers on.
Having said that, I do encourage sellers to save the reserve for only a few select items, and allow most of the listings to go on without one. At the end it’s only advantageous when you have a winner, which translates into sales and cash flow, which can then bring in loyal customers and repeated sales.
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