Hypothetical sale question

[canmic]

Here's an idea, might be a good one, might need some 'tweaking'. It's similar to the chinese auction but a bit different.

Basically it's a bidding queue type auction.

You run it like a silent auction but if you have, for example, 100 guns, then the top 100 bids get to buy. Bidding runs over a number of days with a 15 minute rule, ie: say bidding is set to close at noon on June 1st. What happens is that starting on noon on June 1st, bidding closes as soon as 15 minutes passes with no new bids. This prevents 'sniping' at the last second.

The minimum bid price is your reserve price and you have a minimum bid increment of, for example $5, to prevent silliness of outbidding by a penny or whatever. In the case of a tie, the earliest bid received counts, so for example if you had 100 guns and 100 bids already in, then to place a bid, it must be at least $5 more than the lowest bid already in.

You might get some server issues when bidding opens because people are impatient but no one 'loses out' because they just have to wait an hour or a day for things to settle down and they haven't lost anything, there is no rush to bid before anyone else and no last minute rush because of the 15 minute rule.

This works similar to the chinese auction and also gets you higher profits than simply selling for a given price when demand > supply.

Something that would be very nice of you and would make lots of people happy would be to use some of that extra $$ for a donation to charity or something like a firearms rights lobby group or a prize of some sort or even all of the above.


EDIT: I forgot something really important! When the auction ends, everyone gets the item for the LOWEST winning price, not their maximum bid price!!! That's a really important detail (my bad, sorry) Because having different people paying different prices will create bad feelings. Bidding a high amount basically means that you don't have to constantly keep re-bidding and checking.

So, if you had 5 items, for example, and once bidding ends and it has been 15 minutes since the last bid, the top 5 bids were:

$3000
$2500
$2000
$1500
$1495

then those 5 people would get to buy for $1495

The nice thing about PAL being required is that people can't "cheat" and place multiple bids with different "accounts" because you can require that their account have their PAL # in it and afaik, you can't get 2 PALs

[The Giant]

You did everything just fine. These people that say "you just lost a customer" aren't worth losing sleep over as they would probably be more of a pain in the butt in the long run.They will be back if you have what they want anyways...

[jobbass]

There is No such a thing , customers lost for life
Customers use a service for 2 things
Either you have what they need
Or
You are the cheapest

Providing a service is good , the question is for debate

At what cost

And the majority of internet savy , they pretend service is N 1
Till you touch there pocket

Hypothetical sale question.

Next time we have a similar situation to what we have just experienced with the CZ 858 sale, how would you, the retail customer like us to handle it?

I obviously grossly underestimated the amount of interest in these firearms. I expected them to take at least 24 hours to sell. Whilst we have appeared to have pleased the vast majority of customers we have also received some “hate mail” and lost some customers for life, I don’t appreciate either.

One customer made a suggestion that we should sell draw tickets for a nominal cost ($10 - $20), (this income could go to a charity?) each ticket would give the purchaser the chance to be drawn and if successful they could then purchase the firearm at the previously listed price. Draw tickets would be sold for a predetermined time, for example a week.

I favour a “Chinese Auction” list the firearm at a very high price, so in the case of the CZ-858 sale we just had, I would have listed them at $1,995.00 and then lower the price $100 per day until all sold or my reserve price was reached.

Despite all our advertising we have had two customers contact us, when is the CZ 858 sale going to start!

Anyone out there with any other ideas we could consider?

[canmic]

Just get more 858s and every one can be happy! Lol

This is, of course, the very very very best solution, if it's possible.

[7.62x39 Shooter]

You guys did everything perfectly. I blame the people who don't understand anything about Internet connections and how servers work. They kept clicking on buttons impatiently and that screwed it up for a lot of people.

[canmic]

I think listing them for 1995 then going down would be a good way to lose customers

I agree with this, people will be way way more unhappy if they bought early on and paid more and could have paid less if they waited. It's a psychology thing not a rational thing but it is what it is.

There are a LOT of things that have me saying "Darn it, I could have gotten that so much cheaper if I'd bought it before the price went up" and I don't get mad at the store or anyone but myself for the missed chance

BUT if I buy something and then it becomes available at a much lower price, I'm more likely to feel that I was "cheated" or taken advantage of or whatever.

Logically, a reducing price over time and the trade-off between being sure to get one and paying less makes sense, but emotionally, it's going to create a lot of bad feelings towards the seller in the long run.

[tommyinbc]

Haveing faster servers and open phone lines really doesn't matter!!
There were 403 guns and 5000 customers. So what ever you do.
4597 customers never got a 858..

Pretty much sums it up...Even having a faster server, lots of people would still miss out and some would unfortunately get pissed at the fact...

The 'entitled generation' know doubt...

Those people need to grow up..!!! Plenty more things in life to worry about...I was on the website trying to order for 90 minutes...If I hadn't of got one, it would just of been a shrug of the shoulders and move on..No problem..Forget about those that send hate mail or "I'll never use you again"...They will be sending the same emails to the next company when something is not available or out of stock....

[Ol'timer]

CZ aside, I am a Wolverine customer here in Red Deer, past, present and future. You have a great store and very good customer service and the complainers will do what they do best.

[Mark-II]

Mr Wolverine

I believe that you already went above and beyond by advertising the guns and sale well in advance and in doing your best to ensure that everyone had a fair crack at them by eliminating the basement dealers from snapping them up to scalp later.

Criticism would be that this is at least the second time that your ecom site has been unable to handle the load demanded of it, and that's where much of the frustration seemed to be.

Hosting your own ecom server is bush league, and your business is beyond that. You need a hosted and scalable solution that can meet these periods of peak demand without crapping the bed.


Now can I have a discount on a cowboy rifle?

[canmic]

There is No such a thing , customers lost for life
Customers use a service for 2 things
Either you have what they need
Or
You are the cheapest

This isn't exactly true. "cheapest" isn't always about the cost of the item. My time and effort and frustration are worth a lot to me. If a vendor "costs" me a lot of time, effort and frustration then sometimes I am certainly willing to pay more money to avoid that non-money "cost" and will go elsewhere.

That said, this was NOT that sort of situation. really. If someone is sooooo upset about not getting an 858 from that specific batch that they won't deal with that vendor again? wow. they need to take some time off from gun buying and seek counselling. seriously.

If someone got so frustrated that they decided that they won't participate in another of this sort of "flash sale" experience, that's a different matter. I decided that a long time ago. Unless there is NO OTHER WAY to get an item, I avoid these feeding frenzies. There are 858s for sale elsewhere, maybe more expensive, maybe not exactly the same or whatever, but not so much more or so much different that I feel that I MUST participate in a frustrating feeding frenzy to get one.

858s aren't unobtanium. The price offered was a great price and for some people worth the effort to try to get one at that price. But to get so upset about not getting that price that you won't deal with that vendor again, even in a relaxed non-feeding frenzy way? That's pretty extreme.