I’ve been digging my nose, sleeping or busy at work many times while sniping auctions. That is what sniping services are for.
And if you’re worried that the sniping service might not place your bid, then use two of them at the same time and just snipe/bid the same ammount with both.
It’s obvious why eBay is not set up that way. Without the pickers and nibblers, the final prices wouldn’t go as high. If Joe Picker doesn’t know he’s outbid, he’s not gonna come back and keep picking at his bid. Picking at bids is what drives up the price. That’s good for eBay, because their fees are a percentage of the final price. And sellers like it for obvious reasons, and will tend to use eBay more. So why would eBay want to change the system? People aren’t espousing sniping because they think that’s how eBay ought to be structured; they’re saying that the way it is structured, sniping is the best way to win auctions for the lowest possible price.
And guess which system dominates the on-line auction market?
People who lose auctions to snipers on eBay complain that it’s not fair because they did not have a chance to bid again after the sniper has bid. Well, they did not lose because they did not have a chance to bid; they lost because their bid was too low! If they had originally made their maximum bid, there should be no regrets about losing to a bid that is more than theirs. Of course, I admit that the flaw in all this is that people generally do not know their maximum bid, or if they do, they want a “bargain”. I always do my research on a reasonable market price (eBay and retail) for something before bidding. I’m guessing most people don’t do that.
I don’t see why my suggestion would have a detrimental effect on competition. There’s still a time limit, it’s still exciting in that respect. The only thing my suggestion does is to allow someone who’s been outbid a little thinking time, the “going once, going twice…” idea. You say if I’m watching anyway why not just snipe it? Sure, if I’m the only one sniping on this particular auction, that’s fine. You usually bid two minutes before the end; has it never happened that during that two minutes, another sniper bids higher? Are you saying that you’ve never been out-sniped, never had someone else get the high bid in leaving you no time to respond? Isn’t that the whole idea of sniping, to get the bid in and leave effectively no time for other bidders to respond?
You say that you’d use eBay a lot less if you couldn’t snipe. So that means that you like the fact that you can win an auction at a price that is, in fact, lower than what some other bidders would have been willing to pay if they had the chance to bid after your winning bid. So it still seems to me that a grace period would be good for the seller, because there would be a good chance that the final bid would be higher than when the bidding is cut off by a time limit.
Current system: you snipe at $50, I have no time to respond, so the seller gets $50. My suggestion: you bid $50, I have a few minutes to think and decide to bid $51. The seller gets at least $1 more than he would have under the current system, possible more if you then use the grace period to bid even higher.
That’s the whole point of having a Vickrey auction. Given an infinite amount of sniping that can be done by all the bidders, at what point would each one stop bidding? Well, then, the winning bidder would bid just above the point where the #2 bidder would stop bidding. So with a Vickrey auction, the winning bidder pays exactly what the #2 bidder bids, which would be the point at which they would have stopped bidding. That way, if you win a bid, you know you haven’t overpaid, and the person doing the selling knows that there wasn’t at least one more person who would have been willing to up their bid at the very end just to win.
Get real, though. Regardless of what other systems or models for auctions that exist, eBay has a winning situation with more and more people signing up and the arrival of whole “eBay companies”. eBay isn’t going to change anything because they’re doing just fine. Sellers are happy because they are selling their items, many of which would be otherwise collecting dust in the basement. Buyers are generally happy except for a few lazy ones who, for some unknown reason, refuse to snipe. Don’t gimme the bit about staying up late having to watch the computer. Auction sniping software is easy, reliable, and has many features over and above (e.g. bidding for you on multiple similar auctions until you win one at your price). Perhaps people are distrustful of sniping services? Must have been a real nail-biter the first time they entered their CC number online, huh?
The bottom line is: I want a deal. Yes. I want to pay less than others are willing to pay. I admit that the Vickrey auction would, indeed, fairly determine the highest price someone is willing to pay. I, for one, would use it FAR FAR less. eBay is very much a bargain hunting service. Always has been. If I wanted to pay the fair market value, I could go buy retail.
I doubt very much if the major reason for that is the auction system used.
Exactly right, which is why the current eBay system is fine for you but not for me. But let me ask you this: Given that you do your research and have (I assume) a fairly rigid maximum bid, how does my suggested system hurt you? I mean, if your maximum is $50, and you bid that at the last minute, and then the grace period kicks in and I outbid you at $51, by your own admission you honor your maximum and stop. You lost the auction, but you lost because I was willing to pay more than your maximum and by your own reasoning above you should have no regrets about losing. But you seem to prefer the current system whereby you can snipe and if you’re close enough to the closing time, you prevent me from outbidding you.
So again I say that you like the current system because it allows you to win in cases where there is, in fact, someone willing to outbid you but that person just doesn’t get the chance to do so.
Sure, I’m not suggesting that eBay would change their system, I’m pointing out that it does have an inherent unfairness, and I think my suggestion is more fair to all parties. I don’t realistically think eBay would take my suggestion.
Ok, so let’s bring some facts back into this. I’m someone who has used eBay only occasionally, and I mostly do the “Buy it Now”. Sniping sounds like it’s great if you are the only sniper on an auction. But what happens when there are two snipers? Say an auction is sitting with a bid of $40. You come in at the two-minutes-to-closing mark and snipe it to $45. But I’m sniping too, and so I snipe it to $50.
Correct me if I’m wrong out of ignorance, but it seems to me that one of two things is going to happen: Either a) one of us is going to hit our real maximum before the time fully runs out, and stop, or b) the time is going to run out while both of us are willing to go higher, and the auction will then go to whichever one of us happened to get their bid in during the last millisecond before the time ran out.
I submit that if the outcome is a, then there is no effective difference between the current system and my suggestion; each bidder had the chance to up the bid, and one of them voluntarily stopped. However, if the outcome is b then of the three parties involved (the two last-minute bidders and the seller), one of them “won” because he got the item for less than the other bidder was actually willing to pay. But the other two parties lost; the seller got less money than he could have, and the losing bidder lost the item even though he was willing to pay more for it than the winning bidder.
Is there a flaw in that reasoning?
Right, so in other words, you’re saying that you like the current system because it gives you the opportunity to artificially restrict other bidder’s ability to outbid you. That is, after all, what the current eBay time limit does: If you snipe close enough to the end, you prevent anyone from outbidding you, even if other bidders are willing to pay more than your winning bid.
They have a chance; they just don’t get to change their minds an infinite number of times.
What’s unfair about it? Everyone has the same chance to win. You have ample opportunity to enter your maximum, and the system automatically bids by proxy for you. If you didn’t win, it simply means someone else was willing to pay more for the item.
What’s unfair is, when I win the auction, for you to be able to come in after the ending time and bid $1 over my winning bid. That only favors losers who have nothing but free time to sit at their computer and place bids 14 minutes after the close of auctions. What’s fair about that?
Sorry about 3 posts in a row, but I just wanted to add that such a system would undoubtedly result in a rash of people who keep picking at the winning bid, $1 at a time, getting more and more worked up, until they finally exceed it, then all of a sudden realize they didn’t want to pay that much, and flake out on payment. Non-paying bidders is already a huge problem on eBay; that’d just make it worse.
And in my experience that’s exactly what happens. How much fun do you think it is to sit at your computer for an unspecified length of time bidding up by 1 increment while someone else is doing the same thing?
Not very. It becomes a contest of stamina.
Full disclosure: I worked at AuctionSniper.com for 6 months back in 2002. Before I worked there I had never purchased anything on eBay. After, I’d never buy anything on eBay without using a sniper, especially considering that (with AuctionSniper at least) I only have to pay a fee if I win the auction. Sniping is basically the same as sealed bids. If everyone could simply enter their bid and have no information until the end of the auction, sniping would disappear. However, sellers (and as a result eBay itself) get more money when there’s a bidding war, so that will never happen.
As for DrDeth’s list of negatives, they’re mostly not reasonable. eBay crashes are extremely rare. Sniping services have redundant backups (not just backups of data, but also multiple server locations so that one server failure won’t mean snipes are dropped) and even measure latency to make sure they’re adjusting sniping times based on current traffic to and from eBay (trust me, I helped implement some of that stuff).
And, as more and more people move to sniping services, people who don’t use them will wind up being shut out of auctions. Once everyone is sniping, it will effectively be a sealed auction. In addition, it will begin to put a larger and larger load on the eBay servers. EBay could nip all of this in the bud by allowing (not forcing) sellers the option of using Vickrey auctions, and giving an explanation of why it’s to the seller’s benefit to use one.
Not that I’ve got a Cassandra complex or anything.
Where is the benefit to the seller in a Vickrey auction?
How will non-snipers be shut out of auctions?
If everyone were sniping it would be the exact same thing as a Vickrey auction. eBay has opened up their SDK more so that services (like snipers) can do their work while putting less load on eBay. Furthermore, eBay can scale their servers as demand goes up.
There is one final reason why sniping will never end: many people don’t trust eBay. They have a financial incentive for sale prices to be high and many people believe that if they give their full bid to eBay early, it may be misused (I don’t agree with them, but these people exist). These people will always use a third party to bid.
Are you insinuating that I like the current system because it gets me things cheaper? You would be…absolutely correct.
It is inherently FAIR because everyone is afforded this same option (i.e. sniping).
And another good reason to not snipe- it’ll cost ya. my WAG- 90% of the auctions on ebay don’t need to be sniped. I admit that in a few- sniping can be very handy.
And emarkp only told us that crashes aren’t a big danger- i showed several other reasons where sniping can & will fail.
Is sniping immoral? No. It is useful on some auctions? Yes. Is it always the best way to bid? No.
There are free sniping services. You only have to pay if you want premium services, like bidding 10 seconds or less before the end of the auction, or if you use the service extremely frequently. The charge is nominal, though.
Nothing needs to be sniped; you’re just more likely to win, and likely to get a better price if you snipe.
What’s a better way of bidding?
No one is suggesting that it is. There is no best way for every situation. But under the present eBay rules, sniping is the way to win more regular auctions at a price that is acceptable to you, and with the least effort (yes, use an automated service). If you don’t agree with this, then you’ve either haven’t done a lot of bidding on eBay, or you’re in some kind of denial. This is from my experience as an eBay buyer with a feedback of >500. Of course, there will be instances where the best way to win is to just do a BIN if the BIN price is within your acceptable price range. And Dutch auctions are another story.
The “fairness” argument against sniping doesn’t hold because all bidders must abide by the same rules. Everyone has the same opportunity to snipe or not snipe, nibble bid, etc.
As to the suggestion for an indefinite end time for an auction, that would probably turn off a lot of bidders. For one thing, it seems that this change to the rules will only benefit (1) sellers (they can only get a higher final price from bidders who still want to participate in the auction) and (2) buyers who are not willing to bid their max until they see the price near the end. Why is the system fairer by rewarding this selected set of users? Even eBay’s Buyer Guide says that a bidder should just make his/her maximum bid and then let the proxy-bidding system take over. That’s exactly what snipers do, towards the end of the auction. Secondly, does not having an indefinite end time give the seller more opportunities for shill bidding? What if the seller is very unhappy with the “final price” after the regular end time (say, it is way below what was expected) and decides to bump it up a bit? That could only result in an eventual higher ending price (if someone else jumps into the bidding in the add-on bidding window) or a no-sale (minus the listing cost, which would be fine for the seller since he/she was not happy with the original final price). True, this can also happen with a fixed ending time, but not in an open-ended kind of way. The fixed ending time that looms over an auction adds an element of finality that works for me.
You missed the point entirely. There’s no way I’m going to pay a sniping service. I generally buy inexpensive items, and not too terribly many of them. You take this all much more seriously than I do.
I make my bid and forget about it most of the time. I don’t want to have to be online when it closes. I don’t want to come back and visit eBay a dozen times. I look at something and say, “Hey, if I could get that for ten bucks, I’d be happy.” I subtract the shipping from the ten bucks, bid that amount, and I get an email sometime later letting me know whether I won.
Why then you should use cniper.com, it’s free and I havn’t had it fail on me yet.
I actually just checked by bid log on cniper, I’ve made 11 snipes and won all except one (I was outbid).
This is for items in the price range from $3 to $250.