Posted By:
Corey R. ShanusThanks for the thoughtful response and again, I applaud you for trying to come up with creative ways to deal with something everybody is seeking a solution to.
In the end, the problem of auctions running too long may, as with many other things in life, be something to which there not only is no practical solution, but something in which the best solution(s) themselves have serious pitfalls. And sometimes then the best solution is to keep the current system. With what you're doing, not only are you penalizing those ("auction-ender-delayers") who intentionally keep auctions going too long (which I think we all have no problem with), but you are also penalizing those who through no fault of their own get caught up in the auction-ender-delayers' webs. And that is what I have a problem with. For those innocent people, you should be encouraging them to keep bidding, not kicking them in the jaw for doing so. I know if I am bidding in one of your auctions (and believe me I would love it to end at some reasonable hour so I can go to sleep) and I am topped at 1:29am and for one of the reasons I described in my previous post I would like to place another bid, I would be very resentful that I am now forced to pay a higher buyer's premium. In fact I might be so pissed off I might decide not to raise my bid, which is a lose-lose for both you and your consignor. Perhaps a solution to this situation would be for you to change your rule to leave it to your discretion to add the extra buyer's premium after 1:30am. If as you say it is only a few bidders who cause the auction to run all night, and it is obvious who they are and what they are doing, then the threat of nailing them with a higher BP might be enough to address the problem without penalizing those whom you do not want to penalize.
I might add that another approach altogether might be to after, say, midnight change the 10-minute rule to a 5-minute rule, and every 20 minutes knock 1 minute off it, with the understanding that after 1:20am it would stay at 1 minute. This way by 1:30am you'd be down to a 1-minute rule, everybody still bidding would be glued to their computer screens and the auction would probably be over very shortly.