uBid has entered into a deal with Yahoo to accept its auction sellers onto the uBid site with no pre-qualifications. The agreement is expected to be officially announced by Monday at the latest, according to a source familiar with the deal. Yahoo recently announced it was closing its US and Canadian auction businesses - the last day to bid or buy on Yahoo Auctions is June 16, 2007. Yahoo Auctions had stopped charging fees to sellers in June 2005.
uBid, based in Chicago, allows third-party sellers to sell on its auction site through its uBid Certified Merchant program. The company said it only certifies 33 percent of all applicants that apply to sell on uBid as part of its strategy to keep its site safe. It also collects payments from buyers and forward the money to sellers. In April, the company said it approved its 2,500th seller into the Certified Merchant program
Many Yahoo Auctions sellers have been looking for alternative venues on which to sell and have given serious consideration to Bidville, a small auction site acquired by uBid's DIBU Trading Corp. subsidiary in July 2006.
Details about the deal are not available; for instance, it is not known whether Yahoo Auctions will share historical customer data about the auction sellers with uBid, and whether uBid will limit the sellers it accepts to active users.
In May 2007, uBid reported it had 341,000 active auction participants and 545,000 auction events in the first quarter of 2007.
