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

[perezfan]

Originally Posted by Stupe the Second Sacker

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.

I was responding to the original post, which read as follows…

“So I get it, you have to think about the Buyer's Premium and take it into account and bid accordingly. But what is the actual point? The only possible motive I can come up with is that's a psychological tactic by the auction house to make you feel like you're paying less than you actually are, or even worse, hoping for ignorance on the part of the buyer.

Sorry if this has been discussed.”

There is no “trickery”… sorry to disappoint all of you conspiracy types. I suppose if you ran a business such as an auction house, you’d do it as a courtesy with zero fees. Very generous… Good for you!

But how do you propose paying the employees, the server host, the printing company, the photographer, the description writers, the shipping/packaging personnel, the consignment director, and the social media specialist? I guess they’ll all work for free as well. Got it.

[Orioles1954]

Originally Posted by perezfan

But how do you propose paying the employees, the server host, the printing company, the photographer, the description writers, the shipping/packaging personnel, the consignment director, and the social media specialist? I guess they’ll all work for free as well. Got it.

And that's just the half of it!