The brief answer to that question is: a place where you can sell and buy ANYTHING without intermediaries.

No special skills are required. Every registered user can start auctions of any goods, common or collectible, new or used, however big or small. Buyers have the opportunity to choose the most acceptable among many proposals. Items which are for sale can be offered for auction or by selling directly for a fixed price.

Welcome to the world of BalkanAuction!

This is an auction sale type in which bidding is realized only when there is more than one bidder. Standard Auctions can have a Reserve Price and a Buy Now Price.

This is an auction type where goods are sold at a fixed price. Bidding is not available on these auctions.

Alternatively, there is an option Accept Offers which is available for fixed price items. This means that the buyer can make an offer to the seller for less than advertised.

Here is an example of how the Accept Offers option works:
Seller X1 starts an auction at a fixed price of 100 €.
Potential Buyer X2 who likes the item but does not accept the price makes an offer of 60 €.
At that moment, the seller can choose one of the following options:

• Accept the offer of 60 €. In this case, the auction ends immediately and user X2 is the winner.
• Decline the offer.
• Respond with a counteroffer which must be within 60 – 100 € (in this case it might be 80 €). It means that the seller is willing to decrease the price, but the minimum possible price for realizing a deal is 80 €. At that moment, user X2 has two options - to accept or reject the counteroffer of 80 €.

Other potential buyers who can make offers to the seller at the same time can be also included in the example. Eventually, accepting one of the many offers will cancel all others and ends the auction.
You should know that all the offers have a 48-hour expiry.

Finally, if user X5 visits that auction and uses the button BUY IT NOW for 100 € while all the potential buyers exchange offers and counteroffers with the seller, all the offers and counteroffers are canceled, and X5 is the winner.

A reserve price is the lowest price the seller is willing to accept for an item. If the seller has activated that option and the bidding ends at a price lower than the reserve, the auction ends without a deal. Reserve Price is hidden to buyers, and is only visible to the seller. The buyer can only see it if the current price has reached the reserve price.

It is a price at which the seller accepts an offer without bidding. If the buyer uses that option, the auction ends right away.

After each transaction Sellers and Buyers can leave feedback about each other.
The rating is calculated as such: the positive feedback is counted +1, and the negative feedback is counted -1.
Feedbacks from one and the same user is counted only once.
The feedback rating score of every user is additionally indicated by a rating tag (star). The colours are:

rating	star
0 - 9	none
10 - 49
50 - 99
100 - 249
250 - 499
500 - 749
750 - 999
1000 - 2499
2500 - 4999
5000 - 9999
over 9999

Choose the most appropriate and correct title for your item within 60 characters. The words used in the title should best describe your items and are used for all search options. For this reason, making your auction easy to find, entirely depends on what is written in the title.

Don’t forget – the buyer cannot touch and see your item in real. The required information about it must be included in the description. The site allows for entering HTML code.

Choose the most appropriate category for your item. If you are unsure, you can always review categories beforehand in which auctions of similar items are active.
Incorrect choice of category leads to decreasing the number of visits to your auction and it will lessen the chances for a deal.

If there are item specifics, then fill them in as accurately as possible. They make it easy for potential buyers to find your item.
Item specifics (Size, Condition, Colour, …) are different in each category and not filling them will definitely reduce the traffic towards your auction.

You can upload up to 13 images (1 main + 12 additional).
Maximum size of each image - 10 MB;
Acceptable formats – jpg, gif, png
The first image will be used as a thumbnail for the auction.
An option to insert a watermark with the user’s name on every uploaded image is available.

Buy Now gives the potential buyers the opportunity to purchase your item right away.
At a Standard Auction, if a buyer starts bidding at the starting price, the Buy Now price is hidden and the auction continues with bidding. If the auction also has a Reserve Price, the Buy Now option is shown until the Reserve Price is met.

On Fixed Price Item, the Starting Price option and the Reserve Price option are not accessible.

You can select the date you want your auction to start in the future (up to 30 days).

If you want to increase the number of the visits at an auction and the opportunity for a deal, you can take advantage of the paid advertising options:

• Homepage Top
• Category Top
• Highlighted
• Bold

By selecting at least one of the first two options, your auction will be listed twice in the search results. The visualization will be a fact in both the normal/standard list of results and the section/slide Top Auctions (* the slide is limited – only the first 80 auctions are shown according to the feature currently chosen by the user. The list of all top results is available through the link View All).

Note that even one Top Auction increases the chances for selling of all your auctions.

You have the opportunity to add advertising options up to 6 hours before the end of an auction even if there are bids.
The prices of the advertising options are 50% off when there are less than 3 days.
Adding advertising options is possible either through a link on the page of the auction or by Active auctions

Restrictive option I: This option removes the section Public Questions i. e. by selecting it you can restrict public questions and comments on your auction.
Restrictive option II: This option bans the participation in the auction and any contact with the seller (public and not public) of users with low rating (under 6).

Those two options are available only for sellers with rating of 10 and up, i. e. for reliable and trustworthy users.

Enter the highest amount you are willing to pay and the system will bid automatically until it is reached. Your price remains hidden for the other users (except at an auction with Reserve Price not met). You can adjust your maximum amount again by placing a higher amount.
Keep in mind, each automatic bidding begins the very moment another bidder enters the bidding. Automatic bidding will always keep you at the position of being the highest bidder with the minimum admissible increment till the other bidder is outbid or enters a higher amount than yours.
Example 1: If the starting price of an auction is 1 €, you start the bidding with 10 €. In this case, you become the highest bidder with current price of 1 €. If another bidder eventually enters 4.20 €, then you will automatically maintain the highest position with 4.30 €. If later a third user enters 10 € – you will still remain ahead with 10 € because you have placed that amount first.
Example 2: You enter the bidding with 10 € at an auction with Starting Price of 1 € and Reserve Price of 15 €. You remain ahead with 10 € but the Reserve price is still not met and you decide to bid again – this time with 20 €. Then you become the highest bidder with 15 € and if other users intend to outbid you, they have to enter a higher amount than 20 €.

The bidding increment is fixed but it has different value for the different price ranges:
  from 0.01 tо 0.99 € - 0.10 €;
  from 1.00 tо 9.99 € - 0.50 €;
  from 10.00 tо 99.99 € - 1.00 €;
  from 100.00 tо 499.99 € - 5.00 €;
  from 500.00 tо 999.99 € - 10.00 €;
  from 1000.00 tо 4999.99 € - 50.00 €;
  from 5000.00 tо 9999.99 € - 100.00 €;
  from 10000.00 tо 49999.99 € - 500.00 €;
  from 50000.00 tо 249999.99 € - 1000.00 €;
  above 250000 € - 5000.00 €

In every Standard Auction with open bids, the user who has entered the highest amount is the winner. In case the difference between the amounts entered by the winner and by the second bidder in the list is larger than the bidding increment, the final auction price is formed by the second bidder’s amount plus the increment. Users are ranked in descending order of the amounts entered by them.
Example 3: A user starts a bidding with 20 € at an auction with a starting price of 1 €. Eventually, you enter an amount of 100 € and if there are no other bids till the end of the auction, you become the winner with a price of 21 €.

Delayed last-second bidding. This function is available after purchasing a monthly subscription. Through it, the users have the possibility to set an amount, which will be reflected as bidding (if possible depending on the price at the given current moment) in the last seconds. The advantages of using BidSniper are that the interest for the item stays hidden, you don't need to constantly pay attention to the auction, and decreased probability for a rival bidder to improve their bids and win.

Paid option (monthly subscription) - allows you to place bids anonymously. Your username is visible in the bidder's list only to you and the seller.

In a Standard Auction with Reserve Price, if the bid price is lower than the reserve price, the auction ends without a deal.
The Reserve Price is hidden and it is known only by the seller. The buyer can see it only if the current price has met the Reserve price.

If the buyer uses this option, the auction ends immediately.
In a Standard Auction, if a user starts a bidding at a starting price, then Buy Now is hidden and the auction proceeds with a standard bidding. In case the auction also has a Reserve Price, then Buy Now is hidden when the bid meets the Reserve price.

Make contact with each other after the end of the auction.
Use the communication module of the system by clicking on the available links/buttons on the same auction page or in the section “Auctions”
Fulfill all the needed steps of delivery and paying for the item.

Leave positive feedback about the other user after the successful end of the auction.
Don’t leave negative feedback in advance – give the other user a chance to fix the problem which is usually caused by carelessness, and not having any bad intentions.
All the feedback ratings are public and once made, they cannot be revised by the users.

BalkanAuction carefully pursues malicious users. Although the site doesn’t bear any responsibility for the deals between sellers and buyers, it is obliged when there is a tendency for negative feedback, tracked by reports and negative rating comments, to take measures against the incorrect users by sanctioning/deactivating. You can use the application Contact Us / Incorrect users to report.

When the deal is not concluded at a bidding auction, the seller has the chance to make an offer toward the second-highest bidder in the bidding.

Accepting the offer from the potential buyer will generate a new auction in the system which will confirm the deal. In this case, there will be an opportunity of generating a shipping form (waybill) with discount (for Bulgarian deals only) and for rating comments exchange on the new sale.

Enter a keyword or the auction number in the search bar. A list will appear with all the auctions the titles of which contain the searched keyword. When entering a few keywords, the visualized list will consist of the auctions the titles of which contain all these keywords.

You can widen the range of search by using the symbol * (asterisk).
Example of using the special symbol: Enter shirt* in the search bar. As a result, all the auctions the titles of which contain the words SHIRT, SHIRTs, and so on, will appear in the list.
The symbol * can be used for more keywords.
Example: Germa* shirt*

The additional specifications which can be entered in the advanced search are the following:
- Category;
- Seller;
- Price (range - from/ to);
- Search in the description (not only in the title);
- Search in the closed auctions;
- Search in the new auctions (21 days);
- Search in the auctions without Reserve Price;
- Search in the auctions with Buy Now price.

When searching in final category, except words you can also enter category features (specifications) like Condition, Size, Colour and so on.
The advanced search by the symbol * is also available here (See Fast Search).

You can sort the results of your search according to two criteria – start time and price (in increasing or decreasing order).

Every search in the system can be saved and a daily notification of auction results and new auctions is also available. In this way, you will receive information about the start of new auctions of certain items or by a preferred Seller.
You can view your saved searches from the main search module, and from Settings.

You can customize your notification messages, change your email address and your password.
In this section you have access to all of your Saved searches.

Fees for using advertising/additional options when starting an auction and final value fees will be credited to the user’s account. Keep in mind, the user’s account doesn’t have any payment functions in realizing a deal between Buyer and Seller.
You will receive detailed information about all the transactions and payments made by you, as well as the ways of recharging.

You can create a saved template which can be reused with specific parameters/specifications. This way starting an auction is quick and easy.

A full list of the banned buyers who don’t have the right to bid at your auctions.
Adding users to your “blacklist” also is done from the Profile page of the very users. The link is accessible/visible after logging into the system.

Seller can request a refund of the final value fee when the deal is not realized and under the following conditions:

• No earlier than 10 days and no later than 25 days after the end of the auction;
• No direct connectivity (linked users) between Buyer and Seller;
• No positive rating comments on the respective deal;
• No information of delivered parcel, related to the respective auction.

The link to requesting a refund can be found on the page of every ended with a deal auction.

A full list of your current active auctions.
You can edit your auctions only if the bidding has not started yet.
Early ending of an active auction is impossible when there are more than one bidder.

You will find here the auctions which you have scheduled to start in the future. You can start them right away or cancel them.

A full list of the auctions ended with no sale. You can restart them as the auctions will start under the same auction number and they will be automatically entered in the list of Active auctions.
Keep in mind that all the auctions are accessible up to 45 days after their end. After that deadline has expired, no further activity is possible.

A full list of the auctions ended with a sale.
The Buyers’ names are visualized and the option of having a contact with them through the system is available.
Possible additional options:

• Sending a general notification to buyers about auctions won by them + a calculator;
• Start of a similar auction;
• Comments on a sale, i.e. writing a rating comment in the profile of the respective user.

All the auctions and their details are accessible for up to 45 days after their end.

A full list of the auctions you take part in (bidding or offering).
In this section you are informed about the maximum amount placed by you and the current price of each auction from the list. The current price can be highlighted in red (which means that you are not the highest bidder in this auction or your offer is not accepted) or in green (you are the highest bidder).

A full list of the auctions in which you are the buyer (the winner).
The users’ names of the sellers are visualized and the option of having a contact with them through the system is available.
Possible additional options:

• Sending a general notification to a certain seller of auctions won by you + calculator;
• Comments on a sale, i.e. writing a rating comment in the profile of the respective user;
• Creating a PayPal transaction regarding item payment (for international sales).

All the auctions and their details are accessible for up to 45 days after their end.

A list of all the auctions which you have placed under surveillance through the link available on the page of every auction.

Directions concerning choosing sales tactics refer mainly to standard auctions.

Use the lowest price that you’re satisfied with as a starting price. If your item has a greater trade potential, there will be a bidding. In cases where you don’t expect a bid, you can set Buy Now so that in this way you will satisfy the participants who don’t want to wait till the end of the auction.

It is a fast, easy and risky way of sale.
The final price will be formed by the highest bids and in most cases it will be close to the maximum of the trade potential. Don’t hesitate to include the option Top Auction. Such an auction is attractive – the participants become enthusiastic and even if they have estimated the item skeptically, later they correct themselves by placing a higher bid. The result of all this is that the final price is often higher than your first expectations.
You can include a suitable phrase in the title – SALE, URGENTLY, PROMOTION and so on.
One-cent auctions (without Reserve price) are displayed also in the One-cent section, accessible from the home page.

Including this option will nullify the risk of the previous tactic. On the other hand, potential buyers are skeptical towards such an auction. It often happens, even after showing an interest towards the item, they are not willing to participate.
Use Reserve price only if you want to cautiously “see what might happen”.

It is a marketing estimating tool of the trade potential. The drawbacks of the Reserve price are ignored because the participants have some idea about its value. If you select the option Top Auction, you will get faster and more precise results.
A similar tactic is suitable for high value goods – expensive items, cars, estate sales and so on.

The Extension option is only available to standard auctions without Buy Now and Reserve Price. This increases the chances of reaching a higher sale price by extending the auction if a bid is placed within the last 20 seconds. During this time bids are placed easily by pressing the button for a higher bid to take place. When a new bid is placed, countdown starts at 20 seconds again until no more bids are placed.

Even only one Top auction increases the chances of sale of all your auctions. After selecting this advertising option, your auction will always appear in the top places of the search results, i.e. in the Top Auctions slide.
In order to optimize your expenses, we would recommend:
- Selecting a duration of 10 days for the Top auctions;
- Using Homepage Top for no more than 5% of your auctions;
- Using Category Top for no more than 15% of your auctions.

The phone validation after a registration is made by every user in Settings by clicking the button Send code. After the code is received, it must be entered in the relevant field (Code), followed by a click on the button Confirm. In case the SMS code is not received after you have sent it, please, check if you have entered the phone number correctly. Correct it and send a new code. If it fails again – Contact Us!

Make sure that your username and password are correctly entered. If you have forgotten your password, you can generate a new one by the link Forgotten password

Restriction on user’s activities is possible under the following cases:
- Incorrect (incomplete) data in the registration. Please, provide correct details;
- Started procedure for additional identification. In this case, documents verifying the ID of the registrant are required;
- A habit of unfinished deals along with negative feedback;
- Detected attempts to register additional profiles and/or manipulate an auction by linked profiles.

Rating comments left by one and the same user can be counted once. A comment is not counted in your rating when it is made by a user who has already left feedback about a past deal with you. This is the main reason for having a rating score lower than the number of received rating comments.

Removing a negative rating comment is a possible administrative act but only after a request made by the user who has left the comment (exception: obvious malice/reciprocity).

The reasons might be:
- Filtered email/answer by your spam filter. Please, check the Spam/Junk directory in your email inbox;
- A blocked email address;
- A sent admin notification/answer about the respective case in the recent past.

You can start a similar auction only in the Auctions Test category.

There is no charge for BalkanAuction registration.
The start of an auction is also for free.
Fees are collected for additional / advertising options and they have fixed values. They are charged at every start and restart of an auction, but only in case when there are selected options by the seller:
- Bold - 0.30 €
- Highlighted - 0.70 €
- Category Top - 1.30 €
- Homepage Top - 2.50 €
A final value fee is charged if the item is sold. The fee is 4.3% of the final price but no more than 49 € and no less than 1 euro cent.
Examples: When there is a deal with a price of 1.00 € - the fee will be 0.04 €; price 20 € - fee 0.86 €; price 300 € - fee 12.90 €; price 5000 € - fee 49 €.
The fees are charged to the seller’s account. For more information - Fee section.

If the bidding has not started yet, you can revise/edit your auction. The link Edit the auction is accessible on the page of each of your auctions but only when you are logged into the system. Editing is also possible from Active auctions.
You can add advertising options up to 6 hours before the end of an auction, even if there are bids.
The fees of these options are 50% off when there are less than 3 days left. Adding advertising options can be also done from the page of the auction, and from Active Auctions as well.

Early ending of an auction is possible when there is a lack of bidding or there is only one bidder as in this case the bidder is deemed a buyer. Ending an auction when there are two or more bidders is impossible.

When the sale is not finalized, every seller can get a final value fee refund. It is possible only after a personally generated request (within the 10th and the 25th day from the end of the auction). The link is available on the page of the auction. More Help info

In accordance with General Terms and Conditions 14.1 when there is an uncontrolled deal, i.e. at early ending of an auction after an agreement/arrangement between a seller and a buyer through the communication module of the system, there is no possibility of:
- Requesting a final value fee refund in case of non-finalization;
- Writing rating comments.
The system allows such a type of sales but it doesn’t recommend them.
Keep in mind that deals and arrangements which are not achieved through the regular system tools (Bidding, Buy-It-Now, Make Offer), and they are made only through the communication module, cannot offer you any protection against unreliable users. We note that when you have an arrangement about an item, you can revise the auction or start a similar one with a Fixed Price equal to the arranged one and you can require the other user to use the regular tools of the system, namely – the Buy-It-Now button. In this way, the sale will be officially registered and you will be protected if it is eventually not ended with a possibility of getting a final value fee refund and counting feedback in the rating system.

The reasons for not making contact with the Buyer may be varied. Please, try again to make contact. Anyhow, if there is no further contact with you (within 48 hours), you can leave a relevant rating comment. It will be a sufficient indication/signal to the administrators and the other users.

Such a sanction/fee is placed after detecting a Seller’s serial incorrectness concerning a declared reason of an early ending of auctions and in accordance with General Terms and Conditions p.14.2.
You should keep in mind that observing the regulations in accordance with 14.2 is an alternative to the administrative activity of deactivating the user’s profile.
We remind that in case of an early ending of an auction due to a sale through the communication module of the system, it is necessary the relevant activity to be done having a declared reason “Arranged sale through BalkanAuction system”, and not “Other Reason”. The opposite is considered to be an obvious violation of the terms.

Placing users in the “blacklist” of a seller, eliminates their opportunity of future participating (bidding) in the respective seller’s auctions. Adding to that list (Restricted Bidders) is done from the profile page of the users. More Help info
In addition - at an auction start, there is a restriction option which sets a participation restriction on users who have low rating score (under 6). The option is available for sellers with 10 and up rating.

Note that BalkanAuction is a platform in which every registered user can sell and buy, i.e. the system is not a trader (a seller of items). If you are interested in a particular item - every auction displays the user who has started it, too. After logging into the system, it allows you, through the links in each auction, to ask an public question or send a message to the seller and/or participate in a bidding.

You can perform test bidding only in auctions started in the category Auction Test. The auctions in this category are excluded from the search modules of the system and they are accessible only when you visit that same category.

There is a Correct/Remove bid module inserted in the system which is in assistance of users who have made a technical mistake when entering amounts. This function is quite limited and it can be used only a limited number of times by the user. Removing a bid 12 hours before the end of an auction is impossible.

Sellers are responsible for the items they sell and their actions in the system.
Note that the system is not an intermediary in the deals, and it does not employ any experts who can estimate and give guarantees for the authentication of each item. The public sections under the auctions give an opportunity for users’ and experts’ comments. Of course, if there are continuous signals of misconduct and incorrect description of an item – the auctions will be ended early. When there are repeated negative reports left by buyers and negative rating comments, all the untrustworthy sellers will be deactivated.

To finalize a sale at an auction, when you are the winner of that auction, you should send the seller your delivery details and pay for the item. Making contact is possible either through the link Send message to the seller from the page of the auction or through the available tools in the section Won Auctions

The reasons for not making contact with the Seller may be varied. Please, try again to contact.
Anyhow, if there is no further contact with you (within 48 hours), you can leave a relevant rating comment. It will be a sufficient indication/signal to the administrators and the other users.