Sniping is a myth

[xyzzy]

A common eBay complain that I see, and one that I've seen repeated here, is that people don't like eBay because they get sniped or people snipe their auctions to keep the price down. I contend that sniping is just a myth. First off, when you bid eBay states that you should enter in the maximum that you are willing to pay for an item and that they will only incrementally bump up your bid if necessary (you are outbid). It doesn't say to place your bid for 1 dollar over current, then watch it like a hawk and hope someone doesn't go 1 dollar over your bid. If you follow the instructions, you would have entered in the maximum amount that you were willing to pay. If someone outbids you, last second or not, it was more than you were willing to pay. Now lets look at the sellers side. When you establish a auction, you are in control of the starting price. If you think that people are getting off cheap, it's your fault for not establishing the correct starting price or setting a reserve.

 

Sorry for the rant (especially with my first post here), but people who are victims of sniping only have themselves to blame.

 

xyzzy

 

A hollow voice says "Fool."

[MrRetroGamer]

It is nice to see, once in a while, that the sniper does NOT win because the high bidder's max was still higher!

[NE146]

Well if you REALLY don't like getting outbid, just enter your bid at an ultra high amount.

 

I've actually won auctions by bidding about $500 and up for relatively cheap items (that I REALLY wanted). Of course the amount I've ACTUALLY ended up winning the auctions at was about $7 minimum up to $60 at most. Of course it's a risk because quite honestly if the price went over $100 I would have choked hard. i.e. If someone had bid like $150- $200, I would have been screwed and had to pay some ridiculous amount. But that's the risk I guess I knew that no one else would bid past around $50-$70 and I really wanted that particular item.

 

Of course I don't recommend doing this unless you're nuts or are like me and REALLY REALLY want a particular esoteric item.

[NE146]

oh and yes.. for the $60 item, the item was at around $35 for days and during the last sixty seconds was bid up by frantic snipers to around $59. Of course little did they know, that the amount couldn't beat my $500 bid though, so I won it at $60

[AtariKen64]

what if someone else bids $9999 over your bid?

[Callipygous]

My attitude when browsing eBay is that they are not really auctions. Call them "eBay auctions" or some other designation but clearly they are a different animal from a normal auction house. Its the failure to make this distinction leads to the complaints you describe. Bidders who mistake eBay for a real auction get offended when outbid at the end. This of course could not happen in a true auction, but they have not recognized the difference and feel wronged. Just realize going into an “eBay auction” that a lot of bidding is likely at the end, so adjust your tactics accordingly.

[fmctm1sw]

I couldn't agree more. But I think it is human nature to not bid way over what the price is at. It must not be, because I am usually successful with the old "snipe."

[NE146]

Well then they'd win and end up paying $500.50

 

That's the risk though.. I'd be totally screwed if someone bid over $100 (which in that particular item I would NOT have been willing to pay).. what more if they had bid $490??

 

It's all up to you how you play the game

[MoonlightKnight]

Time for my two cents,

 

@MOB

 

You are right when you say ebay auctions aren't like real auctions. It's because of the time limit. Think about it, at a real auction the auctioneer takes bids and then when people stop bidding the item is then "sold." An eBay auction is over in 3, 5, 7 or 10 days from the second it was posted. That is what makes it different. What makes them the same is the fact that (assuming the auction wasn't a fraud to begin with) now an exchange of funds and items must occur. Unfortunately for some (both buyers and sellers are affected,) one of these people might get burned. That is where feedback comes in. When used (both wisely and properly) it becomes an effective tool for gauging a users trust level (i.e. the amount of trust they are given.) As a person who has completed over 500 transactions on eBay, I consider myself to be pretty trustworthy and hope that those that I deal with see me that way, too.

 

@xyzzy

I agree that sniping is a myth. If you don't bid your maximum, you stand the chance of getting outbid every time. I have sniped things away from people simply because I was willing to pay $1 more than they were. In some cases I have even placed bids 10-15 minutes before the auction ended for $1 more and NO ONE challenged me for it at all. Before I got my first copy of Waterworld (and before I had a ton of cash burning a hole in my pocket, thank you I.R.S.) my standing maximum was $75. If I got outbid I didn't come back (and I got outbid every time), but I didn't worry about it because someone else was willing to pay more

 

@everyone else

 

The phenomenon you speak of could be referred to as "bidder's frenzy;" get swept up in the actual "trying to outbid this guy" to even realize the crazy amounts you are bidding. I experienced this myself when I got my first Waterworld and $365 later was kicking myself for letting it get out of hand like that. I was happy I won but I never intended to spend THAT much on any one game. Thankfully I had the money or I would have really been up a creek! And thankfully I was able to pick up a second copy for a more reasonable price (and in better condition) and resell my first one to get some of my money back.

[Kenshi]

Yeah, it's easy to get caught up in the last minute frinzy. When I bought Final Fantasy VII International on E-bay, that's what happened to me. I would put a maximum bid about $5 over the other guy because I didn't want to spend much money on it. Then I'd get overbid. The more the clock ran down, the more I wanted the game. It finally got into the $70's which was over what I had in the bank. Finally I realized I had $10 in Paypal, so at the last minute, I bid over him by $1 deciding if he beat it, he could have it. He didn't and now I own the game. (Unfortunately I can't play it because I screwed up my Playstation putting in a mod chip and don't want to try on the new one, and I can't get ePSXe to compile in FreeBSD for some reason.)

[Callipygous]

MoonlightKnight wrote:

 

quote

 You are right when you say ebay auctions aren't like real auctions. It's because of the time limit.

 

Exactly the point, the highest bidder may not win because time ran out and the seller may not make the most money because of that. Not the definition of an auction at all! Suspect the original concept of the time limit was to produce some drama from a lot of humdrum items that would not ordinarily generate much excitement. Given the discussion about "frenzy", the strategy apparently worked. At this point, however, eBay should give sellers the option of extended time -when someone bids in the last minute, the time is automatically extended. This would help higher priced items reach their maximum price. Other auction sites have implemented this feature.

[liveinabin]

I always enter the maximum I want to pay about 1 minute before auction end. Never had any problems with that. Nothing wrong with ebay at all - its just another tool that you have to know how to use.

[xyzzy]

Mario's Other Brother,

 

I would disagree with your position. If everyone follows the directions and puts in the maximum that they are willing to pay, then the person who is willing to pay the most will win. The problem is that many people don't follow the directions and bid just over the current price. I feel that this failure to follow the directions (or more likely the inability to overcome learned live auctioning behavior) is the reason for the number of disgruntled bidders that lose at the last moment.

 

xyzzy

[Callipygous]

So everyone would have only one bid? Is that an auction in any sense of the word? More or less, it describes a sealed bid system.

 

[ 04-12-2002: Message edited by: Mario's Other Brother ]