Sigh. I was bidding on an empeg and tuner combo deal, seen here:

http://cgi.ebay.com/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?ViewItem&category=18798&item=3079003060&sspagename=rvi%3A1%3A1

I watched that auction for the last 30 minutes, prepared to fend off any comers ... and then two bots come in, with 3 and 4 seconds left, and outbid me. This happens every time. EVERY time.

This really sucks for the guy selling, because I was prepared to go much higher - but the chaps bidding in that last 3 seconds force the auction to pretty much a premature end, causing the guy to not make as much as he would have if bots weren't available.

Sigh, guess I'm really just pissed about missing out on the empeg and tuner. Good for them, bad for me. Guess I should have just put in the top end of where I was willing to go.

Won't be a next time. That's the last time I waste any effort on that site.

> This really sucks for the guy selling, because I was prepared to go much higher

Then why didn't you bid that amount then? Put how much you are willing to pay for it, and then if a bot beats you, know that they either wanted it more or are clueless and paid too much for it.

Guess I should have just put in the top end of where I was willing to go.

Yep. I used to hate snipers until I did just this. It also has the advantage that I'm note valueing the item in the heat of the moment. If I get outbid - so be it. The other bidder obviously valued the item more than I did, or has more money than sense.

For what it's worth, I always bid-snipe*. No bots, I do it by hand.

Sometimes I miss my window. I guess there's nothing I really need all that much, though. I just don't see the point in engaging in a bidding war. Might be better for the seller, but not for my pocketbook.

"Don't hate me because I'm tricky",
-brendan

*well, technically, I "buy-it-now" a lot when I really want it.

In reply to:

---

Then why didn't you bid that amount then?

---

I think I can safely claim stupidity here. I had some sort of illusion that I was somehow keeping the price lower by not bidding all the way up. Now that I ponder this I see the hilarity of it, but before ... I guess I just had not put that much thought into it. :/

All sniping does is hide the fact that there is an interested bidder out there - you are hoping that the current bidder doesn't have their maximum price in the proxy bid system and don't want to give them a chance to revise their bid.

If you do snipe, make sure you put a reasonable price in - I have seen a sniper pay $500 for a $100 item because the current bidder had a large proxy bid to deter snipers!

Gareth

The final price of items *does* tend to be much lower if bidders withold their bids until the last minute. The problem with eBay is that a lot of people treat it like a competition and raise their max bids beyond the true value of the item if someone outbids them (it's an easy mistake to make, I've done it myself). It is best to minimise their window of opportunity.

I've never won an auction in which I have entered my max bid days before the close. On the other hand I've won about 35 auctions by entering my max bid 1 minute before the close. I think the key thing there, to avoid getting sniped by a bot, is to enter your MAX bid at the last minute so eBay will fight it out on your behalf in the closing seconds.

Rob

Gareth - I'm not sure I agree with you on two points:

1) sniping does more than hide the fact of an interested bidder...for every sniper, it "cools" the auction a bit. What do you really think the Watch List is for?

2) Someone who makes a $500 bid for a $100 item is just a plain idiot, sniper or not.

-brendan

I was gonna try to snipe that combo for $700, but my damned DSL is down @ home, (forever apparently) and I wasn't willing to stay at work until midnight to do it. I won't use sniping services, sniping is fun. If I did want it that badly, I'd have bid early, but apparently I didn't...

If you ever come to the dark side- the best way to snipe is:
JBidWatcher
cool little program and free.

My company used to run its own auction site and it had a neat feature (from the seller's prespective) to help prevent sniping; if a bid was placed within the last 10-minutes, the auction would be extended by a further 10-minutes. This would happen repeatedly until the bidding stopped.

That totally makes sense, but it's not in eBay's interests to do that.

I just found this page on why sniping is good and methods to avoid it are bad, and I've never seen more half-baked pseudo-explanations in my life.

Yup, last-second bidding is the way to go (for buyers).

I've only ever particpated in one auction on eBay, and won it with a carefully considered bid in the final 3 seconds (and I'm very happy that they also synchronise their time-of-day clock with a known-good reference server!).

I bid exactly the maximum I wanted to pay, which happened to be about $200 higher than what the item sold (to me) for in the end. But the final price was also about $150 higher than the previous maximum displayed bid before I hit the send key.

Had I bid earlier, the slow-but-steady crowd would likely have run the price up to way above my max bid -- better for the seller, but not for me.

cheers

but it's not in eBay's interests to do that.

This has always baffled me about eBay, can you share your reasoning here? My viewpoint is that a higher final selling price wins eBay a bigger commission on the item sold; I can't see how they gain by not addressing sniping.

Sniping, especially if there are multiple snipers, will still raise the auction to the highest price offered from all of the bidders. It does not matter to them if all of the bids come in during the last three seconds for throughout the full auction duration. The result is the same - the highest bid (and commission) wins.

the auction would be extended by a further 10-minutes. This would happen repeatedly until the bidding stopped.

I don't care for that strategy -- as a seller or a buyer. If I'm selling, I want the damn thing to be sold, over and done with, not dragged out for hours or days. As a buyer, I don't want to have to stay up all night waiting for the auction to close.

Here's a better way: When an auction is placed, the end-of-auction time will be (for instance) 2:45 pm on whatever the end day is-- plus or minus 15 minutes.

So it might end as early as 2:30, or as late as 3:00, or anyplace in between, and no telling when. So the 'bots would all have to place their bids at 2:29:55, and the snipers who liked to live on the edge would try and guess how far they could push the window before it closed, and the people who really wanted the item would just put their maximum bid in at 2:28 and let it ride.

I think it would work, and would lend some interest and excitement to the auctions as well.

tanstaafl.

The real correct way to do it is to require authentication of your individuality and let you bid only once.

Or don't show what the bids are until the auction closes.

The problem is that they're mixing multiple types of auctioning together and it doesn't work well.

As Paul points out, if all bidders were intelligent and just bidded their max amount, even if they all did it at the end of the auction, eBay (and the seller) would not lose any money because of it. Spending development time to combat this non-problem would cost money and gain eBay nothing.

But sniping actually improves the seller's take, and, therefore, eBay's because people get caught up in the heat of battle and keep saying "I can bid just a few dollars more" and end up bidding more than they would have if they were asked to choose a single maximum amount.

You can argue that sniping is a bad thing, as I would, but eBay doesn't see it that way. It can do nothing except increase the winning bid amount. If it increases, eBay gets more money. So why would they want to fix a problem that actually generates more revenue for them?

Now you can argue that the bidders find it unfair, as they do and as they should. (I actually think that the problem lies not with sniping but the associated problem of being allowed to rebid.) eBay might want to fix the problem in order to ameliorate the bidders. But what would that gain them? More bidders? eBay is not at a loss for bidders. Also, sellers would rather sell at a site that can get them more money, and since sniping creates the possibility of higher profits, they'd rather have sniping enabled. If they were to offer snipeless auctions, what sane seller would want to choose it? Going to another site that offered it will have the additional problem of fewer bidders.

If eBay wasn't a virtual monopoly in the online auction world, we might see some improvements, but no one else has even come close to matching them, and, at this point, in order for one to do so, it'll have to offer snipeful auctions in order to draw sellers. After all, if there's nothing to be sold, the bidders won't come, even if the auctioning is better.

The only solution I can see at this time is governmental interference. And I can't imagine many people would be in favor of that.

> Sniping, especially if there are multiple snipers, will still
> raise the auction to the highest price offered from all of the
> bidders. It does not matter to them if all of the bids come in
> during the last three seconds for throughout the full auction
> duration. The result is the same - the highest bid (and
> commission) wins.

This assumes "reasonable" behavior by non snipers. As mentioned earlier in the thread, some people put ridiculous bids in. Some of the people put the ridiculous bids in on their 3rd or 4th bid only, due to the "gambling mentality". I'd prefer not to press their buttons and cause the price of the auction to get out of reach of anyone who wants to use ebay to pay *less* than retail.

-brendan

> My company used to run its own auction site and it had a
> neat feature (from the seller's prespective) to help prevent
> sniping

...that sounds a heck of a lot like Onsale's bidding engine...

-brendan

But sniping actually improves the seller's take, and, therefore, eBay's because people get caught up in the heat of battle

Err.. no, the idea of sniping is to bid at the last possible instant, so there is no heat of battle to get caught up in -- no time for back and forth counter bids.

Cheers

...that sounds a heck of a lot like Onsale's bidding engine...

And look where it got them... Another example of where an inferior technology won out due to better marketing.

that sounds a heck of a lot like Onsale's bidding engine

No, it was the Fairmarket (R.I.P.) platform that we used to use (until they got bought out by eBay!).

Okay, that was poorly stated, I'll give you. The ability to rebid actually causes that "artificial" increase. Sniping exists to avoid that. The problem is that the snipers are trying to avoid anyone bidding against them in a battle and are subverting eBay's poor plan in order to do so. The ultimate conclusion to all of this is that all bidders should submit their bids at the last possible moment. The proxy bidding is supposed to take care of that for them, but fails due to the battle mentality. Sniping is the symptom of the problem that causes eBay's design to "artificially" increase prices, and it appears unfair on the surface to the non-sniper. Changes to the system would allow sniping to become irrelevant, and that change would be detrimental to people interested explicitly in the battle, snipers or not. Oh, and eBay's and the seller's bottom lines.

The ability to rebid actually causes that "artificial" increase.

Well, of course you can re-bid. It's an auction, y'know. That's what an auction is all about -- a bidding competition that is ultimately resolved in favor of the person willing to bid the most money.

One bid per auction? Screw that -- might as well just go shop at WalMart.

tanstaafl.

<sigh>

No.

You tell your proxy (eBay itself) what your maximum bid is and it bids on your behalf.

You, like so many other people, are confusing an eBay auction with a going, going, gone auction. Think of it more as a sealed-bid auction.

Also, your statement would put you in the category of auction warriors who are more interested in the battle than the prize and make the rest of us pay more.

I bid differently

I look at the item and decide what the Maxium amout I am willing to go on it is.
then I bid that amount, if you want to out bid me or snipe me go for it, I never even watch items, I just sit back relax and wait for the e-mail saying I won or I got out bid,

The only exception to that rule is something really rare that I really want, (Ie. Jeri Lynn Ryan's Idenctile Twin sister that likes aging balding geeky guys) I will watch that item and raise my bid as needed.

The whole proxy bidding thing is a good concept in theory, but for some reason most people seem to have trouble working their heads around what it does exactly. There is no doubt in my mind that when people wait to bid until the last minute the ending price of the sale is less than if people had been going at it the whole time. I think this isn’t as much a function of liking the action as it is that when people bid throughout the life of an auction it gives them a chance to talk themselves into a higher bid. If you’ve had the highest bid for a couple of days, you get used to the idea that you’re going to win. Then when someone comes in higher you start to reevaluate what you’re willing to pay in order to restore the auction to the favorable conclusion you’ve gotten used to. As more people join in the auction, those who’ve been around a while find it difficult to resist bidding higher because they’ve formed an attachment to the auction.

For me I mostly bid in the last minutes of an auction, not in an attempt to “snipe” the price but in order to keep myself from stewing over the auction and talking myself into a higher price than I originally felt was acceptable. Of course, I fully recognize the problem is my own weak will power and inability to stick to a price I’ve chosen, but this is the way I overcome it. I don’t commit until there’s not much of chance for me to change my bid.

I probably really wouldn’t mind if Ebay restricted each person to one bid, but it does sound a bit like Ebay taking away my freedom to bid however I want.

but it does sound a bit like Ebay taking away my freedom to bid however I want.

LOL. Does anyone else remember when the word "freedom" had real meaning? Do you think that we could avoid debasing it any more?
Bidding on Ebay is a privilege granted to you by Ebay, and not a right. As such, you are allowed to bid exactly as their rules and regulations permit, for as long as they deign to grant you that privilege. That isn't Freedom.

"I Pledge Allegiance to the flag of the United States of America
and to the Republic for which it stands, one Nation under God,
indivisible, with liberty, justice, and the right to bid freely on Ebay for all."

The whole proxy bidding thing is a good concept in theory, but for some reason most people seem to have trouble working their heads around what it does exactly.

AMEN TO THAT!!! Like Bitt said, people seem to think eBay's auction model is going, going, gone where you can always outbid someone that bid above you. It's not, why can't people figure that out?

When I do bid early, always the absolute MAXIMUM I am willing to pay, but, there is always one person looking for a deal by nibbling away at my bid. Snipers also snipe to prevent this type of behavior. I have won many auctions sniping, and lost many as well, but every time I lost, it was because someone was willing to pay more than me for that item. Seems pretty simple to me...

Yeah, actually I tried to reword that sentence a million times to get it to sound right. "Freedom" does not always mean politics, though. If I were to say a certain shirt restricted my freedom to move and that was why I didn't buy it, you wouldnt' be calling me out on that.

I fully understand that Ebay has the right to do whatever it wants. But no one likes to feel restricted or have an option taken away. So I mean "freedom" in the sense of "free to bid the way I always have", not "free to do something and not go to jail."

there is always one person looking for a deal by nibbling away at my bid

Which means "I want to beat you, but I don't care whether I win the auction or not."

Which means "I want to beat you, but I don't care whether I win the auction or not."

I don't quite understand that statement. "Beat me" as in raising the bid as high as they can, whether or not they win the auction?
IMO, most people think eBay is the land of cheap stuff. People will constantly increase their bids by the minimum increment until they reach their max price. In other words they are looking for a deal by trying not to pay what they think is a fair price, and don't get the proxy bid concept.

If they keep inching up on you, they're looking for the amount you bid and bid $1 over. But if they do that, anyone bidding anything more at all will win. Instead, they could bid $50 (for example) over and still get to purchase the product at $1 over what you bid. Unless someone else bids more and they'll have to pay more.

So they're interested in beating you, but not interested in paying any more than what it would take to beat you, including whatever it would take to beat the next high bidder.

Of course, there's also the notion that they're just idiots who don't understand how the proxy bidding works, which I didn't consider.

My problem with ebay is that people don't bother to research the market price for anything and, under pressure, bid substantially higher than, say, the low-end prices found on a froogle search for the items. I got tired of playing the bid game with idiots...

For example, I looked yesterday at the prices of used Rio Receivers on ebay (historically) and found I could do better getting a refurb via an online merchant elsewhere. Also, the shipping would certainly be cheaper than the typical $15-$20 that most ebay sellers charge.

-brendan

You tell your proxy (eBay itself) what your maximum bid is and it bids on your behalf.


Yes, I agree.

But what if I put in my max bid, find out it's not enough, and then after some soul searching decide, "Well, OK, I'll go a little bit higher." I don't think I've ever actually done that -- but I would resent not having the option to do so.

category of auction warriors who are more interested in the battle than the prize

I have to confess that I do enjoy the excitement of the auction process, which is one of the reasons I like to bid-snipe. "Will it be enough? Did I cut the end time too close?" That sort of thing.

Considering that I rarely bid on anything that sells for more than about $30, it's pretty cheap entertainment.

tanstaafl.

But what if I put in my max bid, find out it's not enough, and then after some soul searching decide, "Well, OK, I'll go a little bit higher." I don't think I've ever actually done that -- but I would resent not having the option to do so.

I did that just recently, and ended up winning the auction. I didn't really want to go that high, but considering that the next lowest price I found on a similarly used item was nearly double what I won the auction for (and new ones are $1000+ over what I paid), I'm reasonably happy. So yes, I'd resent that, too.

Well, that may be a little draconian, but thirty updates an auction is ridiculous. Maybe give 'em one update per couple of hours or something, but restricted enough that nibbling, etc. isn't useful.

But, then, this was about not being able to get into a bidding war. I liked my second option better anyway.