On the other hand, a week I spent a few Novembers ago - waiting for the bidding to end on a new-with-tags toddler snowsuit - was not such a hoot. For a mom staring down both barrels of a Midwestern winter, waiting days for an auction to end - only to learn that one has to schlep to the mall anyway - can be a bit irritating.
Hal Wendel, CEO of online startup Fididel, felt the same way when he tried to buy a tennis racket online two years ago. "It was a disaster," he told the E-Commerce Times. "It was an older racket, it took two months to find it, and then I got sniped at the last minute." (In online auction lingo, "sniping" is sneaking in on an in-progress auction at the end, sometimes literally at the last minute, and offering a price barely over the leading bidder to win the item.)
An "aha!" moment shone through Wendel's disappointment at losing the tennis racket, though. "Why," he asked himself, "are there only two ways to buy online: auction or fixed price?" He set out to find a way to allow sellers and buyers to negotiate together in real-time in an effort to come to a mutually agreeable price. Each party, he reasoned, should leave the transaction knowing whether or not a deal has been reached.
