When Peter and I (who by the way are the sole owners of
MoviePosterExchange.com) were first talking about adding a sniping capability
to our website we investigated and contacted several companies to see if we
could find a good fit. One of the first things we found out was that most
companies had no interest in adding any affiliates (certainly not JustSnipe
that David mentioned), and those that would still charged members for their
services (either by way of monthly/yearly fees or by purchasing snipe bids in
bundles). We were determined to keep costs as low as possible for our customers
and were not satisfied with these answers.
Then we talked with GavelSnipe.
The GavelSnipe story as we understand it is that they were a company offering
eBay snipes and struggling to stay afloat finding affiliates to work with when
Heritage stepped in with some needed capital and partnered with them to offer
exclusive sniping capabilities for Heritage’s auctions (and this happened 6
years ago, certainly a very old story for newshound David Kusomoto to finally
dig up).
To me this makes Heritage more transparent rather than less.
Would you rather Heritage offer sniping capability in-house? Would it make you
feel better entering your snipes directly on Heritage’s website? Or perhaps
they should have partnered with one of the dozens of companies that has gone
out of business in the past few years? How would it look to their 700,000+
members to tell them they are changing sniping company affiliates again? Of
course it is better for them to partner with a company and have stability in
this area.
The issue of Heritage peering into your high-bids and shilling you up to me is
a non-issue. Nearly all of Heritage’s most expensive items are offered in their
signature auctions – which you CAN’T snipe. So it’s not even applicable to a
majority of their revenue.
Yes, Heritage auctions thousands of items a week through their different
divisions. But is the risk/reward worth it to break the law this way? Let’s say
you have placed a $250 snipe on an item that would have naturally ended at $200
without shilling. Heritage’s buyer’s premium on this extra $50 bid is less than
$10. The risk? Potential treble damages on a multi-million dollar class-action
suit and the loss of license. Is that worth it for a company that does almost a
billion dollars a year? My guess is no. But you would have to draw your own
conclusions.
Remember Heritage is a licensed auctioneer. They are subject to review and
regulations. The main reason we have not started auctions on our site yet is
that we had to finish the certification required for our state. I believe we
are the only company that deals exclusively in Movie Posters that will be a
licensed auction firm. To us this is an important distinction. We will be
subject to the laws and penalties of the state of North Carolina (which have
some of the strictest regulatory laws in the country when it comes to auction
houses) and wish to be as transparent as possible in our dealings. I don’t
believe any other weekly poster seller (besides Heritage) can say the same.
So for us, partnering with GavelSnipe made good sense. We are branding
ourselves with the company that provides sniping service to the two largest
movie poster portals in the world (eBay and Heritage) We have paid GavelSnipe
to integrate our software with their site and pay them a monthly fee so that we
can keep the service free for our customers.
Bruce you are correct when you suggest that we would like to shield our
customer accounts from Heritage, or any other dealers for that matter. You know
this from when you offered to list items on MoviePosterExchange but requested
you be allowed to ship directly to the customers. We certainly appreciated the
offer of support, but ultimately we chose our customers privacy and security
over being able to have your items listed with us, and if we suspect that
Gavelsnipe has violated the trust we have placed in them (which we have no
reason to believe will happen) we will pursue the matter to the fullest extent
of the law.
As for the answer to Dave’s final question: “Who signs Gavelsnipe’s paychecks?”
I know that the answer to that lately has been that I have.
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