Andale Auction-Management Software By Wilson (Win) H. Bent, Jr. AuctionBytes.com
April 22, 2000
Andale (Spanish for "hurry up") is a Web-based service for placing and bidding on auctions (not the same ones, obviously!), tracking them, sending mail when they close, and even archiving them long after the auction site itself has forgotten them. Andale can post to eBay, Amazon, and Yahoo, and it says they will add more sites in the future.
Andale charges a fee of 2.95% of the winning bid price on successful, closed transactions; there is a minimum of $0.10 per auction. Andale charges a maximum of $30 per item for cars, trucks, RVs, collector cars, and real estate. There are no fees for listing auctions or for image hosting.
Signing up is a fairly involved procedure because of all the information Andale uses to support your auctions. In addition to logins and passwords, they collect your name and shipping address, your auction preferences (forms of payment, shipping options, etc), and even set up a "boilerplate" email message to be sent to the winners of your auctions.
Setting up auctions is fairly straightforward. They offer several "areas" within a description, which can be a bit confusing at first - what's the difference between "Fine Print" and "Notes on Condition"? When I clicked "Preview this item" before completely filling out the form, they reprinted the form with an error message at the top - nice, but they positioned the page so that I couldn't see the message! They offer your choice of templates and colors, or you can use your own HTML - a nice variety of choices.
Andale does not offer hit counters; at least, I didn't see any mention of them. Once you've set up your auction, you can then schedule when it will be posted to eBay (within a two-hour period); it's nice to be able to set up several auctions over the space of a day or two, then have them all start close together...or vice versa.
The Image Vault is simple to use. You can upload multiple images to the Andale site, then select from them when setting up an auction. (I was a bit confused over the images it automatically loaded.)
While your auctions are running, Andale tracks them all on one page, along with yet-to-be-posted auctions, and those that have ended and require your attention.
Once your auctions have ended, Andale can send mail to the buyer, directing them to a "Web Checkout" page, which shows the item, the closing price, and mailing address for payments. (In some cases, it shows the shipping rate, but only if you've provided that information in the first place.) It also gives them links to your current auctions - a nice little bit of advertising. Andele provides you, the seller, with a page summarizing your completed auctions, and allows you to track which have been paid, which you've shipped, etc. I would like to see dates on those items, e.g., "Sent May 1," but this is still a pretty handy feature.
What's the drawback? Well, like many sites, they add their advertising to your auction - I can live with that, especially since eBay's new rules made them shrink the logo. However, I got the overall feeling that they were taking more control over my auctions than I really wanted; I got the feeling that my auctions were not really mine.
Wilson (Win) H. Bent, Jr learned to read from Superman comics and has been collecting off and on ever since. Raised in Ohio, he lived in Boston, New Jersey and California before settling in Austin, Texas. Email Win at collector @ haus.org. eBay ID: whbjr.
