I am not at my office right now, and won't be able to check until Monday
morning why this specific person was placed on my blocked bidder list, but
there are three primary reasons people are placed on my blocked bidder list:
1) There is an automated process that places all bidders on my blocked
bidder list if they have not paid four weeks after an item closes. If they
never do pay, they stay there, even if it is over one 99 cent item (this is
because we absolutely do not want even one bidder who does not intend to
honor every single bid they make on our auctions).
If they pay AFTER four weeks, then they remain on my blocked bidder
list until they discover it, which sometimes takes a few weeks, and often a
year or more. If they then contact us directly, we remove they from my
blocked bidder list, and tell them that if they don't pay for future
purchases within four weeks at the very most, they will permanently stay on
my blocked bidder list.
This may seem harsh, but I think no one should bid on items if they
can't pay in full within four weeks. Some have described this as
"restrictive payment terms", but I wonder if those who can't pay within four
weeks (especially since they can pay with any credit card, which can be paid
off over years) should be bidding at all? Maybe they should save their money
for more pressing things, like their mortgage payment, etc.
When auction houses give unlimited credit, with a tiny amount down, and
endless time to pay at high interest rates, they are in effect turning
themselves into credit card companies, and that can cause artificially
inflated prices on collectibles, and contributes towards creating a "Ponzi
scheme", where prices rise 20% annually, until the inevitable crash (it
works the same in the stock market, the real estate market, and the antiques
and art markets, but this is the first time it has been tried in
collectibles, but I suspect the result will be the same).
2) I place people on my blocked bidder list if they post on a forum that
they will never purchase from me. This is for their protection. I sell so
much that they may accidentally bid on one of my items without realizing I
am the seller, and this way the blocked bidder list serves as a wake-up to
remind them that they don't want to buy from me.
3) I place people on my blocked bidder list if they post libelous or
defamatory remarks about me in any public forums. There is one sad fellow
who several times has posted that I was fired from Christie's in 1993, with
additional incorrect defamatory comments. It apparently does not matter to
this fellow that I was never fired from Christie's (I stopped doing auctions
there because they changed owners, and the new owners would not sign the
same contract as the previous owners, one that stipulated that I and
not Christie's publish the catalog: in fact they offered me other incentives
in an effort to keep me there, and I turned them down), and the very
public fact that I did my last auction with them in 1997 also does not seem
to matter either! I can't see why I want to sell to someone who is so far
removed from reality that they post private whispered smears which they are
told onto public forums (without in any way attempting to find out if they
are correct), and so this person, and others like him, remain on my blocked
bidder list.
I have found that by keeping these people on my blocked bidder list, I
collect from 99%+ of the buyers, both in money terms, and in terms of
numbers of items. I also get less than one in one thousand items returned,
either because of condition description, or any other inaccuracy in the
description. I am convinced that the tiny number of people who reside on I
my blocked bidder list are responsible for a huge percentage of the
complaints we regularly see posted about on forums, and I have no desire to
change my strategy of selling.
I want my auctions to be 100% honest in terms of actual bidders who
only place bids on items they intend to buy, and who honor every single bid
they make. I strive to describe every item 100% accurately, even if it often
makes some of my consignors cringe (I regularly get e-mails from consignors
that say, "Did you really have to run it down THAT much?", but in their
heart of hearts they KNOW I described it accurately), and I know the buyers
very much appreciate that honestly. We have spent 19 years perfecting the
best ways of wrapping movie paper, and the only complaint I get on that
front is the "It took me an hour to open the danged package!" I hear
regularly.
I feel certain that the above policies pay off huge for me in terms of
the number of people who bid in my auctions (sometimes to the exclusion of
all others) precisely because they know there is no monkey business in the
bidding, that the items will be exactly as described, and that they will
arrive in exactly the condition they left here in, and I KNOW that this is
often not the case with other auctions).
I fully recognize that there is a tiny percentage of people who in spite of
all of the above do not want to deal with me (many out of jealousy, in the
same way they don't want to buy from Wal-Mart) and I can live with that. I
am content to continue to sell to the 29.000+ collectors I have already sold
to, and leave that tiny "lunatic fringe" alone!
Bruce
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