Question on eBay bidding

Every one still has an equal chance! Everyone knows when the auction ends, including the seller. If he wanted a different type of auction, he is free to find one.

I do think the idea someone raised, of extending the auction by 15 min if there are bids in the last few min to be a good one. jk

How do you get "edged out"???? You either bid what you were willing to pay, or YOU were being a cheap ass "shady" buyer.

Snipers don't "shove" any one of the way.

Do you even get that you are talking to several people?? Most of whom haven't said that they snipe.

And exactly what $ amount wouldn't be "asshole-ish behavior "?? Perhaps that person also thought the price was 600, Should she say

jk

Holy crap, people. For a group of adults, there are some really dumb as dirt people here.

First, with any system, the object is to use and manipulate the system to get the desired result. In this case, for your bid to win.

If it is done with sniping, sign up for a snipe program. I use bidnapper, and win 8 out of 10 things I bid for. BUT, I bid what I will pay for the item, and lots of times, it comes in for less.

I can tell you LOTS of ways to get deals on ebay. I am an oldtime ebayer, both selling and buying. I will tell you only one, and then listen to all the pissing and moaning about how wrong this is .........

Do a search on something you want. Arrange the hits with the NEWEST LISTED FIRST. Now cruise through there and find the things that idiot sellers have put in with a severely low Buy-It-Now price. Buy them, if you want. Perfectly legal. Perfectly moral. Perfectly ethical.

Sheesh, people. Learn how to work the system, or just don't participate at all. But all this pissing and moaning is ridiculous.

Sheesh.

Steve

And all the other bidders are free to put in a similar bid, early or at the last moment. Only a fool would put in a large serious bid early, simply because idiots keep pecking away a few dollars at a time until they top your bid -- even if they originally had no intention of paying that much.

I rather liked the "spot bids" at government auctions. The announcement:

"Now opening bids on lot 135!"

would be followed by a group of runners picking up the bid cards, with no bid amounts stated aloud.

Then would follow:

"Closing bids on lot 135!"

A few moments of shuffling through the cards, and a final announcement:

"Lot 135 is awarded to bidder 332" "Now opening bids on lot 136!"

This is not that different from eBay's system *with* sniping, except that early bidders on eBay have their bids partially exposed before closing. Without sniping, a serious (early) bid can still lose to someone playing the "incremental pecking" game.

As a buyer in an eBay auction, you find and use the strategy which maximizes your chance to win, just as in any other auction.

And a sniper can *still* lose to someone who has put in an early bid for more, so it is only the ones who incrementally peck their way up the price range who lose -- the ones who have not yet learned what strategy works on eBay auctions.

As a seller, you still have the option to put in a reserve, and with that, even a last-minute sniper cannot win your item unless s/he bids something for which you are willing to release the item (as determined by your reserve).

Enjoy, DoN.

So -- that is one argument for postponing your bid until closer to the closing of the auction. It gives you the freedom to move to an alternate target without the risk of getting both. Only *after* that earlier-closing auction is closed is the time for you to consider making your bid on the later-closing time. And the closer to the closing time you wait, the more freedom you have to shift your attentions to a (possibly) better item.

Though, the earlier he outbids you, the more chance you get to find and bid on the others.

:-)

Agreed, so sniping has its own risks, and you have to balance them out to determine which is better for you as a bidder. (Partially controlled by how badly you want the item in question.)

Enjoy, DoN.

Dave,

You seem to think it's OK for the seller to want to get as much as possible for an item, but it's not OK for a buyer to want to pay as little as possible, even though both play within the rules. Where is the fairness in that? Face it, an auction is a game of chance. The reason most sellers use the auction format is because they hope people will bid irrationally and pay more than the item is worth; likewise, buyers typically participate in an auction because they hope they can get something for less than it's worth. That's the nature of the auction game; it's not about trying to buy or sell as close as possible to the item's true worth. People interested in buying or selling at a fair value would use a fixed price format (e.g., ebay's buy-it-now option) or a negotiated price format, not an auction format. (Rare or unique items for which a fair price is difficult to determine are an exception, but the vast majority of items sold on ebay are neither rare nor difficult to value.)

As for all buyers having an equal chance, someone in the auction will always have an advantage, whether it's a fatter wallet or more time to spend at auctions or a better bidding strategy or even a willingness to bid more than an item is worth. As far as advantages go, sniping doesn't really offer that much. In the first place, anyone is free to use a sniping service or place a bid at the last minute, so everyone has "an equal chance to bid on the item", to use your phrase. And as others have pointed out, with proxy bidding there's no way a sniper can beat you unless either (a) he pays more than you think the item is worth, or (b) you yourself were trying to buy the item for less than you think it's worth (i.e., attempting to "cheat" the seller). So there really is no unfairness to other bidders.

Since anyone is free at any point during the auction to bid the maximum they're willing to pay, the only thing sniping really does is reduce the chances of hysterical bidding near the end of the auction that could result in someone paying much more than the item is worth. I don't see why you think that reducing the seller's chance to cash in on bidding hysteria -- i.e., to make more than the item is worth -- is somehow cheating him.

What it comes down to is that an ebay auction and a traditional auction are two different games. It's rather pointless to complain that ebay doesn't follow the rules of traditional auctions, just as it would be pointless to complain that pro football doesn't follow the rules of college football. It's also rather pointless to complain about people doing everything possible within the rules to win the game, or to label it cheating when they do so. You might just as well complain that a seller who uses a seven-day auction or who sets his auction to end in the middle of the day is "cheating" the buyer out of more money than he would have paid if it had been a three-day auction ending in the middle of the night. The thing is, it's not cheating if you're playing WITHIN THE RULES.

Your idea about extending the auction is interesting, but I doubt that it would eliminate last-minute bidding or sniping; it might simply provide an advantage to a different set of players: those who have enough spare time to sit around for one fifteen-minute period after another, increasing their bid incrementally at the end of each period, waiting for everyone else to become bored or frustrated or to run out of time.

One final point: The growth (or should I say, explosion) of ebay suggests that sellers who feel cheated by the ebay rules comprise a very small minority.

Bert

Dave H>>>

I believe there is something that every child should learn by the age of five.

Life is not fair, and there is no justice in the world.

But, we get these ideas that when something goes wrong, we can cry out, and all will be mended.

"He took my truck."

"She hit me."

We go to adults seeking fairness and justice. From there, we go to adult figures or authority figures to get settlement of an issue.

Those who find out very early that life is not fair, and there is no justice in the world do much better than those who don't. They don't live their lives wearing Pollyanna glasses and spending so much time crying and snivelling.

It's not that ebay isn't fair.

People are people.

HTH, but I doubt it.

Steve

Greetings and Salutations...

On Tue, 05 Jul 2005 17:32:23 GMT, xray wrote:

As has been explained elsewhere, that is the way the proxy bidding by the system works. Since the smallest timeslice is a second or so, it simply LOOKS as if there were multiple bids with no other bids in between. I suspect that if Ebay cared, they could tweak the software to add a sequence number to ensure that even "immediate" proxy bids would get listed with the correct interleave. As for the flame wars following on Sniping...I have to say that I tend to snipe, but, mainly because I have become convinced that there is a cadre of bidders who search for the auctions I am bidding on, and, immediately run up the selling price to retail or more. It has happened QUITE a number of times when I have bid a max amount well before the end of an auction. As for whether or not sniping is an attempt to defraud the seller...This sounds more like complaining about not being able to sell stuff for as much as one would wish...which is NOT an Ebay problem. As things stand now, there are three ways to get the amount one might want for an item: 1) Sell it retail on Amazon, or a personal website, and don't use Ebay at all. 2) Set a reserve price on the item. 3) Set a minimum opening bid. The alternative is to start with a low opening bid, and hope that competition will kick in, so that one or more folks will decide that the item IS their's, and, they will have it no matter what they have to bid. As a seller, my goal is to make the item so sexy that several folks will decide their lives will be incomplete unless they have it. This ensures that a bidding war will kick in. As a buyer, my goal is to get the item for as close to free as is possible. It is the same mindset that I have when I go to the boneyard at a hamfest, or a fleamarket. I don't care what the seller has listed as a price. I will decide what I want to pay, and offer that. If the seller is more interested in taking cash home than the items they brought, they may take it. Alternatively, they may refuse...no problem. The good news is that no matter what you see on Ebay now...there will be another one coming down the road, so if one does not win THIS one...there will not only be another chance down the road, but, there will be one FEWER person competing for the item. Regards Dave Mundt

How so?

Yes. And if you're manipulating the system to make sure that the winning price is lower than it would be if everyone had a chance to bid, then you're lowering that end price. Do you dispute that?

Right, you're defending and describing it but you don't do it. Gotcha.

And by sniping, you deny other people of the ability to do exactly that.

Everyone does -not- have an equal chance. The snipers know damn well taht the goal is to get in the last bid and not give others that chance to still win the item.

Yes, I'm the one who made that point.

Transactions take time. The sniper gets in last-minute or last-second, there's no time for the next transaction. That's why they snipe.

See the above response.

Yes, I understand the whole "name on the post" thing, thank you. An awful lot of people defend sniping, and then weasel with "Well, I never said _I_ did it". They also don't say they don't do it.

Well, 602 would still be being an asshole, 625 wouldn't, I would guess. I haven't given it much thought (shrug?).

Like I said. People are gonna keep doing it, and since most of what I sell doesn't fit on eBay anyway, I go to a couple sites where I can extend the auction if late bids come in. I feel it's the most fair to the bidders _and_ the seller, when everyone who wants to bid, can bid, until the price is determined by the desires of the bidders, not a contest of who sneaks a bid in at the last second.

Dave Hinz

I think the bidders should have an equal chance to decide when they're done bidding.

Right, which explains why nobody does it. I understand now.

And there's always some asshole who comes in with "Everyone else is doing it, so screw you". Yup. Doesn't mean I have to bend over and take it.

What do you propose to do then?

Best regards, Spehro Pefhany

Dave, consider 'sniping' as such (putting ones maximum bid in at the last second or two) to be the moral equivalent of a sealed-bid auction.

Everyone decides what they want to pay for an item, tops. Each writes that number on a slip of paper, and the slips go in a hat.

At the end of the auction, the bid with the largest number is accepted.

Of course, there are minimums, and reserves. Plus you have folks who do indeed bid up during the auction.

But ebay has decided that those are the rules of their game, and eveyone follows them. There are other auction houses online, and real, live auctions, that extend bidding times once that 'one last bid' shows up, so folks have the chance to trump it.

If sellers really felt that ebay were screwing them out of money, they would sell some other way. I like ebay's rules as they are now, and would not bid in online auctions unless there were a set time limit. So I don't.

Jim

I've stated my proposal a couple of times; maybe you missed it. Give sellers an option for their auctions which will automatically extend the end-time of the auction by 15 minutes if any bids come in within 15 minutes of the end of the auction. Gives the buyers a chance to win the auction without turning it into a contest of who has the fastest network connection, or the best sniping software. Just like a real auction - they keep the bidding open until nobody else wants to bid. Last person to raise it, gets the item.

I mean, it's been done that way for a few centuries at least, maybe there's something to it.

Other auction houses do this right now. Folks can sell and buy using them - but I never would. Ebay gives the sellers enough advantage because of the huge buyer pool. The other auction houses (that extend auction times) don't have that buyer pool because folks recognize that ebay does provide some benefits for the buyers because auctions do end at a particular time. This is a good example of true free-market economics at work.

Jim

But, it's _not_ a sealed bid auction. The sniper can see what's in the other envelopes, or at least, who else is bidding. They're looking at some of the other guys' cards, without showing any of theirs.

Yup.

And in fact, I have decided that, and am selling on other sites, for that reason.

Well, like I said, if there was a seller's option for automatic extension following late bids, I'd use it. If it's visible, and the snipers decided not to bid on that item, well, that's just fine.

govliquidatoin.com does it, and I hate that -- but the prices cannot be beat... (at least sometimes)