Question on eBay bidding

It's a 1987 Warco which was sold from England but seems to be a decent Taiwan lathe of the period, similar to a Jet. Not the finest, but decent for a Taiwan lathe and it seems to not have much wear. Maybe you remember the other recent threads where I talked about 50 Hz motors and link belts.

Umm, I said the lathe had 11" swing, but it actually seems to have 13". The operator's manual I got with it is for an 1127 model. Anyhoo, I think an 8" chuck should be enough for my needs, but 10" would probably work too.

Or, you could just bid on the damn auction and not try to cheat the seller out of getting the right price. The only reason to snipe is to pay less than you would if you were honestly bidding for the item. You want the item, and you want to pay as little as you can for it. By lowering yourself to using a sniping product, you're cheating the other bidders out of the chance to bid legitimately on the item.

I'd pay extra for the option to sell items with "extend bidding by 15 minutes if any bids come in in the last 15 minutes" feature; some sites have this. That way, the bidders all get an equal chance at an item, and it's not a contest of who can pay for a faster network connection to get that last-second snipe in for as little as they can pay.

I don't expect that this will change your mind, and please don't expect that you're going to change my mind by justifying how it's not really like that, it's really just trying to buy it for as little as possible without giving anyone else the chance and all that.

I do not see any cheating here. I submit a legitimate bid at a legitimate moment. I do not owe the seller a duty of giving him as much money as possible.

And yet, you're using a shady tactic to bid without giving others a chance to make their bids.

Here's a thought - decide what you want to pay for it, put in a reserve bid, and wait for the email. If it's more than you wanted to pay, you wn't get it. Everyone gets to decide how much it's worth, and the guy who bids the most gets the item. Just like a real auction, where they don't just say "OK, I know there's 20 people out there who would have bid more than that, but it's 10:02:47 so the item goes to you".

I realize that I'm not going to change anyone's behavior, but again, I'd pay extra to list items if they had a "late bids extend end time" option.

But I owe them no duty, legal or moral, to give them a chance to outbid me. In fact, ebay gives them a chance to outbid me, by allowing them to submit a proxy bid with their max price.

Well, it's unlike a real auction, yes.

It's not clear if the effect of having fewer interested bidders would be more detrimental to you compared to the expectation of getting higher bids. This issue has been rehashed to death in alt.marketing.online.ebay.

I usually just watch the auction and place my bid 3 min before the bid close. But I'll usually bid the highest amount I'm willing to pay.

I like beating out sniper services.

Rubbish.

Don't you understand how proxy bids work?

The only folk who are being robbed of a "chance" are those who are too silly to bid their final, honest amount - the aptly named "clueless-newby-increment-bidders".

Nothing wrong with nudging them out.

-- Jeff R.

Yes, I do. Sniping is an intentional way to deny people who use it properly from having an equal chance to win the item.

Which is why I said "bid what you want to pay and see what happens". Bid your final, honest amount, and if it's worth more than you want, then you won't get it.

And, nothing wrong with wanting an action that ends when the bidders have all had an equal chance to decide when it's over.

It is NOT cheating the seller, in the slightest. If he wanted to get more, he has the option of a higher starting price, or a reserve price. [I do think reserve prices are dishonest crap, and generally wont bid on auctions with them]

That's horseshit, every one had a chance to make their bids, they CHOOSE to snipe and perhaps miss. NO ONE can snipe you out of winning, if you bid the maximum amount you are willing to spend, as early as possible. And doing that you don't get caught up in the heat of the moment, spending $40 for an item that retails for 39.

jk

Then, why did you not bid more onthe first item?

That could hardly be overcome if that "moron" bid 10 min before the end of auction, as opposed to 10 seconds.

It's a problem to any auctions, you pass one item and then someone turns up who is willing to bid more for another item.

That's a good way to see, however, if you bid early, you give out information that has value.

Yep.

So, you're doing it so you will pay _more_ for his item? Oh please, tell me how you come up with that one.

And then, why do you snipe exactly? Since you can get what you want for what you want to pay for it if you just bid that amount, as you suggest others do?

Face it - you want to see how high it goes, and bid just high enough above that to get it, without giving anyone else a chance to do the same thing to you. If you claim that that's not your motivation, you're either lying or delusional.

I don't understand any of this. Any auction, including EBay, allows the seller to establish a minimum price below which he/she will not relinquish the item. Even a "no minimum" auction establishes the minimum price by inference. Anyone auctioning anything is automatically establishing that they're willing to accept the highest bid - regardless of how low - so long as it is greater than their minimum required. You CAN'T cheat the seller. He's already stated that he's willing to accept YOUR "right price".

LLoyd

If you use sniping to keep the seller from what he'd get if everyone had an equal chance to bid on the item, you're getting the item for less than you would have paid otherwise. The seller, therefore, is getting less than he would have otherwise.

People who are sniping are doing it so they can outbid the guy with the top bid, at the last minute, so nobody else can do the same thing to them that they're doing to others. Like I said before, obviously those who use it are OK with that. I know it's going to happen, but I'm not going to let a claim that it's not done for exactly that reason go unchallenged.

Are you primarily a seller?

Face it -- my goal is to get something that meets or exceeds my quality requirements for as little money as possible. Before eBay, I had a couple of buys locally of equipment. I bought an electronic thingy for $5 that was regularly going for $650. I didn't feel a bit guilty. I assumed it probably was blown, so looked at it as a lottery ticket and I won.

Now with almost everthing like that finding its way to eBay, you are fighting every bozo in the world who happens to be paying attention at the time. In my opinion, putting out your max bid early, just tends to give people time to get emotional and bid up the price to the max of what it should be worth or (frequently) higher.

Do you ever watch the TV show "The Price is Right"? I bet when one person says, "600 dollars, Bob.", and the next person says, "$601", you go nuts. It's allowed, but it's JUST NOT RIGHT, damn it.

When I sell I put a minimum, anything above that is a plus.

When I buy I want the minimum price, most of the time I just list my max and go on. Sometimes I use sniping but I still don't list more than my max. If the bid goes over my max be it in the first hour or last second, Oh Well.....

Sounds like someone has been beaten by snipers...

About the same of both. How would that matter? It's either being done to pay as little for something as possible without giving others the chance to do the same, or it's not. Doesn't matter if I'm the buyer getting edged out, or the seller getting shortchanged.

And yet, you didn't shove someone out of the way to buy it, did you?

So, you're sniping to get the item as low as possible, without giving somone a chance to outbid you. Yes, we've established that.

Well, haven't watched it in years, but yea, that's exactly the asshole-ish behavior that sniping is.

Ignoramus15786 wrote in news:Omzze.97186$ snipped-for-privacy@fe52.usenetserver.com:

Usually the first item I bid on is on a nine or seven day listing, then another comes along at a seven, five or three day listing. Or the item ending first is listed wrong (that's when you can get a bargain)and I didn't come across it until after I've bid on the other.

True.

Especially on Ebay. The second item always seems to be in better shape too.

Not really. No one knows what you've actually bid but you. I've won items that I bid on as soon as they were listed, and had a dozen or more bids at the end. The other thing to remember is that if there are two identical bids, the first one in wins.