I have read a bunch of threads about eBay sniping here, but I haven’t noticed the answer to this particular question:
I see an item on eBay. Nobody else has bid on it. I figure that if I can get it for the minimum bid (plus shipping), it’s worth having. Otherwise, nah. Should I make a minimum bid or snipe it at minimum?
Here’s why I think the normal logic might not apply: There are other people like me. If they see the item with no other bids, they might pop in a minimum, in which case I don’t get the item by sniping. If I bid the minimum first, however, those folks will go away and I will get the item.
All of this is predicated on nobody else thinking the item is worth more than the minimum, either.
I think there is not enough information about people’s bidding behavior to give a decisive answer. However, the thinking behind sniping is that many people don’t really know what their true maximum price for an item is. If someone bids $0.99, would they also be willing to pay $1.04 for it? How about $1.09? Very few people will be like you and only pay the minimum, starting bid. This, I believe, eliminates the idea of you bidding the minimum right off the bat and thus scaring away all the other “bare minimum bidders” as in your OP. I would think most people would come back with the +.05 or +$1 bid.
If there haven’t been any bids by the last few seconds of an auction, snipe it. Bidding a super-lowball price early on only serves to stoke the competitive element in other watchers. In fact, it is that early, single, low-ball bid that makes sniping work in the first place.
The normal logic of sniping is that if you bid X, you will encourage others to think that the value of an item is at least X and therefore possibly X + at least one bidding increment, and by sniping you cut out the possibility of anyone acting on that encouragement.
One of the disadvantages of sniping is that you will lose to someone who forms precisely the same view as you as to the worth of an item, but who bids earlier.
My view (and that of other snipers I know) is that the first consideration is very real, and the second is rather unlikely. Just by the laws of chance, most other bidders are going to bid either more than you or less than you, and worrying about a losing a tie on the basis of who bid first is a bit fanciful.
When you analyze your situation in more general terms, what you are saying is that for this particular item, you have formed the view that many other bidders are going to think that this item is worth precisely what you think it is worth, namely the minimum.
I would suggest that that is unlikely and that the usual normal sniper logic still applies. I would suggest that it is more likely that there are other bidders out there who:
1/ are somewhat interested in this item and will think that if you bid the minimum, it must be worth at least that plus a bit and who will therefore bid accordingly,
than there are who
2/ will only think this item is worth bidding the minimum on, but absolutely not worth bidding even one bidding increment more than that, and who will therefore only bid if you don’t.
“sniping” means placing a bid at the last possible second, to avoid a bidding war. There are web sites and software that place the bid for you a few seconds before the auction closes. I’ve used one such service, bidnapper, with pretty good results.
Sniping is effective because many bidders look at the current highest bid to judge what the object is worth. Consciously or unconciously, they think “someone’s bid $30 on it, so it must be worth at least $30 - so I’ll bid $31.” I can’t think of any case where sniping is not effective.
As for the OP’s scenario, I think the theory is flawed because people who think it’s worth the minimum bid will think it’s also worth the minimum bid plus a tiny bit extra. If the minimum bid is $30 and you place the bid well in advance, most likely someone will bid $30.50 (or whatever the smallest possible increment is) and win it. Whereas if you snipe, that other bidder may remain unsure it’s worth $30 and not bid at all.
I’ve been trying to weigh up the pros and cons of putting in a minimal bid early to discourage casual bidders then waiting till the end to start any sort of a bidding war.
One person took umbrage at me for waiting till the end of an auction to bid for a book at a price not significantly lower than the price it would have been in the shop (I preferred the cover art of an older publisher) and accused me of using sniping software. An email he sent me threatened all sorts of bidding wars against me until I pointed out I just really wanted the book and he relented :rolleyes:
Let me phrase the question a bit differently, then. Most of my eBay activity has been selling rather than buying. When I buy, it’s usually small stuff, and very casual. I place my $2.50 minimum bid, and if I don’t get it, I really don’t care. On the average, I probably buy less than $10.00 per month on eBay.
I looked at several sniping programs a while back. One was free, but I’d have to give my eBay password to an individual I don’t know. The others all charged fees that are pretty significant given my low volume and the way I bid.
I’m trying to decide if it makes sense to buy a sniping program (or service) in my situation.
Did you remind him that sniping is not against eBay rules? I don’t see anything unethical about it either.
However there was one case where early bidding seemed to lower the price. I was selling an expensive and rare bicycle, and a well-known (and rich) enthusiast bid on it early on. Apparently the message was that he’s prepared to fight and win a bidding war. Nobody challenged, and he got it for the minimum bid price - which I felt was a bit low. But this is a special case, in a small community of enthusiasts.
All sniping services need your eBay password because you are asking them to bid on your behalf, using your account.
This may be a bit of a hijack, but I recently got an email from a would-be bidder whose sniping software had let him down, so he didn’t get his bid in on an item I was selling. (He was writing in hopes of still getting the item if the winner didn’t honor his bid.) I did think it was odd that this item was on a number of people’s watch lists, yet it ended up with only one bid. So it seems those sniping programs aren’t foolproof.
I’ve sniped manually a few times on eBay. Earlier this week, I’d bid on something a couple of days earlier, and was online when someone bid about 40 seconds before the end: I managed to get a new bid in 8 seconds before the end, and won the item.
But usually I don’t bother, especiallywith items that arfen’t going to be hotly contested. I just bid the minimum, and try to check in an hour or so before, to see how thngs are going. If I get sniped, too bad: the item will probably get offered again another day, or perhaps I didn’t want it that badly.
When I bid I actually put in my actual max bid. I don’t bid very often and I’m usually not around for a close anyway to deal with tryin to snipe. Sometimes I do get beat but it since it was above my max, I don’t have any heartburn about it.
More often I see a run-up in the bids at the last second by would be snipers that don’t match my bid. I’m not looking for dirt cheap deals generally, and I only bid on stuff I actually really want.
So am I doing it wrong? Even if I had the time, how would sniping help me at all?
There are a couple problems with this theary. There are so many items on eBay, that sometimes you’ll be the only one interested in bidding anyway. Next, IMHO- I think very few bidders use the bid to judge what an item is worth. Perhaps in some types of items, sure. Sniping then only really helps in two situations- “nibblers” and “bidding wars”. Nibblers for some reason will find an item, bid a small amount, then keep increasing that bid by small increments over and over until they get the high bid. They are rare. A bidding war occurs when you get two bidders that have lost sight of the item itself, and are indulging in aggressive “I need to win” behaviour.
Smart bidders bid what they are willing to pay, then don’t bid again. For example if you see an item, and the Minimum bid is $20, and you think it is worth $30- then if you place a bid of $30, eBay shows only a bid of $21 (and you have only bid $21 at that point), and then will automatically bid as your “proxy” up to $30. Using eBay’s Proxy service is the smart way to bid, IMHO. This is perhaps the most common form of bidding (but not by a large amount, since there are so many Naifs and newbies), and here Sniping helps not at all. In fact, since the Proxy bidder bid is in first, the sniper will lose if they bid the same amount (or within a certain range). Here is one case where sniping is not effective- it helps not at all, and in fact will lose out in some cases.
Then as Biffy the Elephant Shrew pointed out- sniping services can fail. Either eBay has a short time outage just as the auction closes, or the Sniping Service has a probem either with their own program or with their Server.
And of course, if the item has a “buy it now” option, your snipe won’t keep the auction open, and anyone can waltz in there and take the item for the BiN price.
Finally, some sellers get paniced when there are no (or only a few, and it’s going for WAY less than they want/need/hoped) bids on their item, and it is getting close to the final deadline. Often then a vulture buyer will swoop in, offer a price slightly below the Minimum bid, and the scared seller will accept, “withdraw the item”, and sell it outside eBay to the vulture. Here, Sniping actually is a losing proposition.
One problem with using any bidding strategies is that so many items on eBay are really not being auctioned at all. Most commonly is an item where the “minimum bid” is the FMV, there are scads of them being sold-and the seller is really just offering it for sale. Same goes for a Buy it Now auction where the BiN price is only a small amount more than the Minimum bid. Rare- but very annoying- is when the seller has no real intention of selling the item at all, and is simply using eBay as a good way of getting their item appraised for free. You can sopt these by auctiosn with very high reserves, or those where the sellers withdraws the item at the last moment.
One of my "pet peeves’ about eBay is that eBay (and the seller cabal) constantly states “your bid is a contract”. If a buyer withdraws a bid, he is marked with a “bid retraction” on his Feedback rating, and if the buyer decides to not go though with the deal after he wins, he is marked as a “NPB”, and those can get you banned from ebay. However, if a Seller cancels an item, there is no corresponding bad mark on their FB, and if they decide to back out of the auction after a buyer has won, the buyer has not real recourse. Thus, the buyer is held to their side of the bargain, but the seller really isn’t. :mad:
if I want something with no bids on it I bid the minimum. Then check on it about 10 minutes before close. If the item is going for more than I want to pay I let it go. if it’s still within reason I open another window to bid with and wait till the last 10 seconds to bid higher. I refresh the other page to make sure the bid hasn’t gone up.
I don’t know about others, but I often put items in my watch list that I have no intention of bidding on for a few auctions, just so I can see what kinds of prices they generally go for.
It reduces the amount of time for other bidders to chip away at your bid. Many eBay bidders bid simply to bid - they see that someone else wants something, so therefore they want it.
Of course, all of this is operating under the assumption of “Even if I had the time”.
Using software strikes me as unethical. If you want to snipe, glue your butt to the chair and fight for the item yourself. For several tools that were listed low but I feared would go nuts in the last minute I did just that, timing my refresh rate to cram in a winning bid at the very last second.
I think there’s another reason to snipe: an early bid calls attention to the item. Some categories are full of bogus or overpriced items with no bids. A bid makes the item stand out as a potentially legitimate and reasonably priced item.
Also I think nibblers are more common than you imply. It’s an understandable behavior. Initially the nibbler only needs to ask himself, “Is the item worth $30 to me?” When the price climbs up to $40 he asks again, “is it worth $40 to me?” which is a much more difficult question. But he may eventually conclude that it is worth $40. By sniping, you deny him the chance chance to ask that second question.
I’ve heard this several times from different people. Care to elaborate? It’s not against eBay rules, and everyone has equal opportunity to take advantage of it.
**ethical **(adj.): Being in accordance with the accepted principles of right and wrong that govern the conduct of a profession.
It strikes me as unethical in that you’re using a service to perform in your stead. I never claimed that it violated eBay protocol. As I believe my previous post made clear, if you want to win an auction, you should personally participate, not passively participate via a program.
