Idlebones

eBay 101, and a man called Horse

September 27, 2006 – 12:05

The annual Laytown Racing meet was held today, and I decided to try my
luck. Wearing a long linen shirt loosely (if I’m going to lose it, it
might as well make it easy for the bookies) and light combat pants
into battle, I parked my car at Mum and Dads’ drop in to say hello.
Dad being Dad, it wasn’t long before I was roped into giving him a
lesson on eBay. With very few pressing matters for me to attend to
besides throwing my money after horses, I acquiesce, and make a very
strong cup of tea for myself, take several deep breaths, and sit
before the computer
. Instantly Dad is tidying around me. I feel like a
sliding Curling ball with his brushes and sweeps across the table
before me as Dad prepares the desk, and hope he will relent before I
crash into the wall. I adjust my seat regardless and soon have eBay’s
main page open in front of me.

“Right Da, this is the Main p…” He’s disappeared. A disembodied
voice from the kitchen pipes up:

“Cup of tea O?”

“Have one thanks”.

Dad is very much the the spinning top. Constantly in motion and
defying physics, seemingly creating energy faster than he can burn it.
You have grab him and arrest his spin, rather then wait for him to
slow down and settle. When he comes back in I wait a moment as he
rearranges coasters, bends table lamps and searches in drawers for his
camera. All with accompanying soundtrack. A new whistled tune that I
can’t quite place.

“Sit down there Horse, before you start cleaning behind my ears
would’ya” I say, irritably, jumping out of my seat and turning it,
offering it towards him.

I slept badly last night and the close air today is doing me no
favours. I fidget uncomfortably as I sit on the edge of the desk. Dad
has noticed and all at once offers me a mint. For some reason having a
stick of gum, or a boiled sweet to suck on helps. A Foxes’ Glacier
placebo in place, we begin.

“Right, click on ’sign in’”

“Right so”

Now I feel like a teacher, standing over him giving instructions.
Thankfully, Dad is pretty good on the PC these days, not afraid to
have a go. In fact he’s better when there isn’t someone looking over
his shoulder, I’m sure. When there is someone looking over his
shoulder, he questions every move.

“Left Click?”

“Yes please”

“Double or single?” I’m in McDonalds all of a sudden.

“Just the once , ta”

I walk him through the layout of eBay. Showing him the basics. He
picks it up, the rudiments at least, very quickly. Now I have to show
him how to sell.

Selling on eBay is a fairly straightforward affair, so long as you
keep two things in mind. The buyer wants the cheapest price possible,
and you want to sell for the highest price possible. In between there
is bidding. This is how the conversation went between a teacher who
can’t teach and a learner who is used to getting the best deal out of
everything. Whether it be a car or a pint of milk, Dad will find the
bargain, and probably come home with a profit. He has learned an
arcane form of mathematics that makes my head spin. It’s roots begin
in Math, but wander into side roads of bargaining and barter that
years at St Mary’s CBS never taught me. The result is usually a
positive balance for Dad and a slightly bewildered salesman licking
his wounds. This is the man who would welcome Jehovah’s Witnesses’
into the house and sell them life insurance including medical
interventional support that they don’t believe in.

“So the highest bidder can bid as high as he wants and I can take
it?”. He’s rocking back in his chair, forefinger to mouth, abacus
clicking in his head.

“No. Not quite. They enter their highest bid that they feel they can
stretch to for the product, and eBay bids on their behalf. For
instance. You advertise a scanner for €10. The bidder reviews it and
decides the highest he will go is €20. He enters this amount and his
bid is incremented by 1, thereby bidding €11, until someone else
trumps his bid with a bid of €12. eBay recognises that other bidder
will stretch as far as €20, and so enters a bid of €13 on your
behalf.”

A pause. The beads click across the Abacus.

“So I can accept the bid of €20?” he says eventually

“Ahh, no. You can’t see that he has set his limit at €20. All you see
is his automatic bid of €13″

“So I can accept his bid of €13?”. It’s a wise enough question.

“No. His highest bid thus far is €13. €20 is the highest he will
possibly go. Your auction is for 7 days. If no one else outbids him,
its his. But you may get other bids”

More top lip rubbing. His eyes thrown up to the right in thought.

“But I must have a limit?”, he says. He’s getting it, but thinking hard.

“Yes you have a floor limit. A lowest price that you will accept when
you submit your item”

“So why don’t I set it to €20?”

“Because you want to invite bids, and for the most part, you have no
idea how much someone is willing to bid at the offset. So if you set
your reserve too high, you may scare them away. Don’t forget you buyer
will have to pay for postage costs too. They’ll take it into account
when they look at your price. And lets face it, it’s not worth much
more than €20″.

“Aaah. I see. But I can accept €20 when its bid”

I have a moment where I have to check myself. I have a habit of being
quick of the mark and trying prove myself right when I’m clearly in
the wrong. A sudden flash of a memory skirts around my mind. Tim and
Gab and I arguing over a Trivial pursuit question on a cold night In
Gabs’ house in the South. Something about distance I think. I was
trying to argue that even if two objects are touching, there is still
a distance between them, however microscopic. I can’t remember why I
was so adamant about the answer, but I lost the argument, grumpily
demanding that physics was probably wrong, much to the amusement of
Tim and Gab.

“Well, no, because you’ve committed to a 7 day auction so you should
see it through. But if someone bids €20 they have to stand by it to
the end, unless someone outbids them”

Dads eyebrows are knitted now, pressing down on his grey-blue eyes
that look into the distance, deep in thought, his thumb and forefinger
still pinching his top lip.

The mechanics of the computer world are strange enough to me, let
alone my dad, who grew up with news that filtered through by
newspaper, radio, then television. At best, sometimes, grainy, and
incomplete. Children can pick up how to work a computer today quickly,
because they don’t question. Left click here and it opens. Simple. For
the rest of us, we want to know why a left click does what it does.
The Internet is such a vast, overwhelming revolution of information I
Think I would have found myself dizzy and lost very quickly had I been
in his position. But he takes it logically, methodically (painfully so
at times!), but always unafraid to give it a lash. Admirable, to say
the least. There’s just so much to it that it is unfathomable. He has
wireless internet now, and watches videos from Sky news, reads the New
York Times and other newspapers every morning.. Rings me to tell me
the latest news! And I’m trying to teach him how to sell!? I tried
sales for two years and was unquestionably crap at it. I realise
suddenly that all I’m trying to do is show him how to do something
he’s done all his life: Sell, but without the buyer being in front of
him. That’s the alien concept to him. Not the internet, not the funny,
weird names of the buyers, but the act of selling to a faceless
market. How weird, and extraordinary must that feel all of a sudden.
You can’t depend on charm, not on cups of tea and friendly banter.
Just “here’s the product, how much do you want to bid?”

I feel suddenly belittled by the task in front of me. Dad could
probably sell this bit of kit for €20 by just chatting to someone who
doesn’t need it in the pub. I realise I like eBay because I don’t have
the knack of selling that he does.