Peter,
Absolutely agree with you but, for a vast number of people, that is a perception that the Buyer's Premium somehow means they are paying more. For a lot of people, perception is reality, deserved or not. Same thing may possibly be said about sales tax. A major auction house like Heritage is in multiple states and due to the volume, frequency and dollar amount of auctions they run, they have to follow the letter of the law and properly collect sales tax on many, if not all, items they sell. On Ebay there are some legit businesses that collect sales tax but, even then, it is probably for only one state, not many. And there are what I would think is a decided majority of sellers that treat selling on Ebay as a casual sale, similar to if they are just having a garage sale. They don't register as a vendor in their state and collect sales tax from anyone in such cases.
This is exactly why stores will price items at $4.99 and not an even $5.00. It is why gas stations charge $2.72-9/10 per gallon and not an even cent amount. It is all about perception and what people perceive. If not, why don't all auction houses not bother charging a separate Buyer's Premium as an add on to the hammer price of an auctioned item? If everyone truly factors in such Buyer's Premiums when they're bidding then they could tell seller's they'll just get X percent of whatever the final hammer price is for their commission and everyone should end up in the same place as if they added a separate Buyer's Premium. It doesn't happen though. Some, not all but, some bidders will not factor in the Buyer's Premium, especially in the excitement of the auction format, and end up bidding more than they maybe would have otherwise. And even if they don't end up winning the auction, they make someone else who was determined to win a particular item have to pay more than they maybe would have had to otherwise.
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