What is the point of the "Buyer's Premium"?

[Stupe the Second Sacker]

Originally Posted by perezfan

For those who don't understand the BP.... How do you propose the auction house earn any income and have the ability to keep running? They aren't trying to "fool" anyone. The rules are clearly posted, and anyone with the ability to process information should be able to understand them.

The usual red herring when this topic comes up. "If you don't like the BP, you're too stupid to understand it". Do these same people also think the consignor is too stupid to realize that they're agreeing to have their bids suppressed?

Whether or not we're all stupid, I also repeatedly read this defense, "the AHs don't charge the consignor a commission so how are they supposed to make money?". For all the times this gets repeated, you ever notice that it never gets confirmed? I highly doubt the majority of consignors are gifted zero commissions. If that's wrong, let's see some data.

And as others have pointed out (and it typically gets ignored) ebay with more overhead than any of these auctions houses, manages to keep the lights on just fine.