Originally Posted by BobC
Are you really serious???
Have you ever in your life owned or operated an actual business to really see and understand how ALL businesses, whether they produce an actual product, or just provide services, have any number of differing and varying costs involved? AHs can have different numbers of employees, in different numbers of locations and offices, in different states with different levels of taxes, and owners with different needs/wants as far as how much they need to make. They can provide different levels of advertising with significantly different costs, and even the size and volume of lots, and how frequently they hold auctions, can dramatically effect how much they need to charge as commissions and fees to stay in business.
Every single business, including AHs, have what are known as fixed costs, that they know they have to pay whether they hold one single auction, or sell one single item, or not. And those fixed costs are going to vary from business to business, and AH to AH. And then there are the variable costs that are incurred, based on what they have to spend to actually run an auction and sell items. And those obviously are going to vary from one AH to another. So, thinking and ever suggesting that all AHs should somehow be charging the exact same commissions and fees as every other one is absurd and ludicrous.
And go back to what I posted in post #88 of this thread and read my scenarios of what can happen if one AH splits their fees of say 15% and 25% between a seller's commission and a buyer's premium, while another AH that say only charges a seller's commission of 29%, sells the exact same item for the same gross amount. Even though both AHs are charging different commission/fee percentages, in my scenarios both AHs end up with basically the exact same profit. So just because the commission/fee percentages between AHs aren't exactly the same doesn't necessarily mean one AH is making more or less money than another anyway.
This thread should have never gotten into a double digit numbers of posts. The OPs question was pretty quickly answered. The way various people are misinterpreting and going in weird directions with this is ridiculous. Here are the cosmic truths surrounding this entire issue.
AHs have to charge someone, sellers and/or buyers, commissions/fees so they can make money they need to stay in business.
AHs have all different and varying costs and needs as to how much they have to make, which can affect the commission and fee percentages they end up having to charge, to stay in business.
AHs need consignments so they have items to auction and sell to make money to stay in business.
AHs will often charge bidders Buyer's Premiums, so they can lower prospective Seller's Commissions so more people will consign items to them as opposed to other AHs, so they can stay in business.
AHs do not charge Buyer's Premiums to be deceptive to bidders. They generally do however not add the BP onto the bids during an auction so people bidding can see exactly what they'll end up paying, until after the auction ends. Because some bidders may/do forget and end up bidding more than they may have otherwise had they seen the BP added onto their bids during an auction. And virtually all the AHs do this as a marketing technique, trick, whatever you want to call it, so they can hopefully make more money for their consignor/customers, and also make a little more money for themselves, to then still stay in business.
AHs have to stay competitive and pretty much do what all the other AHs are also doing, to stay in business.
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