No, I think you’re missing the point. The service is free, and simple to use.
That’s why you use the free service.
Again, the sniper bids once. If you bid more than once, you are by definition not a sniper.
That’s perfectly fine; you’re just not getting the best deal you can. If you like overpaying for things, then there’s no problem.
But you have a misconception about sniping. You seem to think it’s somehow extremely difficult and that you “have a life” because you don’t do it. Nothing could be further from the truth. It’s no more difficult than the way you are using eBay. The only difference is that you are either losing more auctions, or paying more when you do win.
No, it might mean that, but it also might mean that I was, in fact, willing to pay more, but that because the other bidder put in their bid at 10 milliseconds before the close of the auction, by the time I saw that I was outbid, the auction was closed. The fact remains that I was willing to bid higher, but was not able to.
It’s exactly the way a real, live auction works, and I’ve never heard anyone say that a live auction is unfair. Do you think that a live auction is unfair? Does a live auction have a hard time limit for the bidding on a particular item? No, a live auction has the auctioneer say, “I have a bid of $50, do I hear $51?” The auctioneer then starts a clock, of sorts, as he says, “$50 going once, $50 going twice…”. If I then bid $51, what happens in a live auction? The auctioneer resets his clock and starts over with, “$51 going once, $51 going twice…”. If you then bid $52, what happens? The auctioneer yet again resets his clock and says, “$52 going once, $52 going twice…”. And that cycle of auctioneer announcing the “going”, the bid goes higher, the auctioneer resets the “going” clock, continues until the “going” clock has the time to fully run out.
From that standpoint, sure, it’s fair because everyone COULD use sniping if they chose to. My choice of the word “fair” was a bad one. It sounds like you do agree, though, that those who snipe have an advantage over those who do not. The eBay system essentially has two “levels” on its playing field, and while there is nothing preventing everyone from using the same level, the fact is that many choose to use the “lower level”.
I did not mean to imply that those who simply take advantage of that disparity are themselves being unfair, and I apologize to anyone who took my posts as saying that. I do believe still, though, that my suggested system has a more level playing field, it does not inherently provide a way that gives one type of bidder an advantage over some other type of bidder.
Ok, another factual question: If it’s free, how does the company make money? Surely cniper.com is not a charity. (This is is not meant to be confrontational, I’m really just asking the simple question of how does a free sniping service make money, because I’d like to know).
Then you should have put in a higher maximum bid in the first place. I don’t understand why the most money you would possibly want to pay for an item would be contingent on what someone else bids. Is the item all of a sudden more valuable because some yokel made a bid on it? The fact is, in that situation, you were able to bid higher, you just chose not to. The fact that you don’t have unlimited opportunities to change your mind once you’ve made your best offer is not intrinsically unfair.
You certainly don’t get an extra 15 minutes to wring your hands about it. And it’s not a valid comparison. In a live auction, you don’t bid by proxy. On eBay, you do. A more valid comparison would be if you send an agent to a live auction to bid on your behalf, with instructions to stop at $100, and when the auction goes to $105, your agent asks for an extra 15 minutes so he can call you to see if you want to change your mind. The auctioneer would simply say “no”.
That all happens automatically on eBay - the computer checks each bidder’s maximum and automatically bids on each bidder’s behalf until each bidder’s maximum is reached. The computer does not stop until each bidder has bid, by proxy up to their maximum amount. If you don’t understand the proxy system, it might seem unfair, but it’s not. You can’t compare it to a live auction, because it’s not a live auction. It is a proxy system. It is neither a live auction, nor is it sealed-bid auction. It is a third type of auction that is dissimilar from the other 2 types.
It’s free, but it’s also very basic, there is pretty much no help (not that it is really needed) and there is no fancy graphics.
This might come as a surprise but there are lots of free services and software out there, sometimes what motivates people to create something is not money, but the thrill and enjoyment of accomplishment.
But there are really three levels. There are those who simply see an auction, put in their maximum amount, and wait until the end of the auction. If everyone did it this way, then sniping wouldn’t be necessary. The problem is, there’s a second level where people put in a lowball bid, then continually re-visit the auction page to see who else has bid. Whenever a bid comes in that beats theirs, they illogically re-evaluate their estimation of the value of the item. They think, “Gee, someone else wants this, so now I really want it.” So they up their bid by small amounts until they again take the lead. It’s completely unneccessary to bid in small increments, because the proxy system does that automatically; but they do anyway. They continue to re-visit the page over and over, continually upping their bid by small amounts. Since they bid illogically, not based on the value of the item, but only reacting to the bids of others, early bids by others only drive up the price of the item. After driving up the price, this type of bidder then returns in the final seconds of the auction, refreshing their screen at a dizzing pace to try to beat any bids that come in. Sometimes these bidders are simply ignorant people who don’t understand the proxy system. Sometimes they are shill bidders who are deliberately inflating the price to benefit the seller.
The third level is sniping. Sniping is only necessary because of the existence of the second level of bidding. It’s the second level that keeps the playing field from being level.
I agree. A very easy and effective way to figure that out is to do a search of completed items similar to the one you’re bidding on. Then you can see what that type of item actually sells for.
I’d have to disagree. There are logical reasons why you might want to bid market value. Market value is what the market will pay, yokels included.
As I said at the outset, I don’t doubt for a moment that other people’s bids are useful information as to market value. I just think that under ebay’s current rules, I have no obligation to provide that information to my competitors.
Not necessarily. I have certainly been to real estate auctions where the auctioneer will wait for a bidding agent to get instructions. It’s a matter within the auctioneer’s discretion, and if he thinks that the bidding agent may well come up with instructions to go higher, it would be a breach of the auctioneer’s duty to his seller client not to wait. Of course he has no obligation towards the bidder to do so, and in a fast moving auction of pissant little items he isn’t going to, but he can.
I disagree. In my experience, people tend to get swept up in the excitement and bid way over market value. I constantly see used items sell for more than what you could get it for brand new in a store. I don’t think “paying more than the retail price” is a reasonable definition of market value. In my opinion, it is unwise to base your estimation of the value of an item on what other people are willing to bid for it, especially in the heat of the moment. It is much more prudent to do your research before placing a bid. Unless you like paying too much for things, that is.
My point was not that it’s impossible for that to happen; my point was that I didn’t think the analogy between a live auction and eBay was apt.
One must distinguish between whether particular thing is evidence of something and what weight one should give to that particular piece of evidence.
Other persons’ bids are evidence of what the market will pay. Whether they are strong evidence, whether you should also take other evidence into account etc is a different issue.
Most of my experience on ebay is in buying comparatively uncommon books. The books aren’t sold very often. Every book is in different condition. I’m not much of an expert. So it’s very hard to say what market value is. What people are bidding is pretty much all you have to go on. Obviously I try to look at previous auctions, but sometimes I can’t find a single example of that book being sold before, and even if so, condition won’t be precisely the same as the auction I’m interested in.
Don’t get me wrong: I’m a sniper for sure. I put together what evidence I can find, decide what I’m going to pay and snipe.
But what I’m saying is that it is wrong to say that other persons bids are not evidence of market value at all, ever, and that it is completely irrational and unjustifiable to regard them as such.
blowero’s second tier bidder certainly annoys me more than a true “One bid. One auction.” eBay sniper. Especially if they start doing their smallest-increment-until-outbid attack in the last few minutes of the auction.
If you think about a live auction, though, it does seem to play out with a back-and-forth until someone doesn’t want to go any higher. However, getting into a bidding war with an auto-bid system seems kind of odd, which is why I think most people find the behaviour annoying.
I’ve been thinking about ways to modify the system, but I don’t know much about the details of selling things on eBay. Most of my early ideas would be great for the bidders, but wouldn’t benefit sellers.
The current idea involves changing the bid increment based on the number and rate at which losing bids are made.
Alice has the high bid of 300 and a max bid of 400. The normal bid increment is $5. Currently, Eve could come along and bid 305, 310, 315, etc.
I think it would be better of Eve could bid 305, but if Eve tried to bid again immediately, the minimum bid would be 315 (bid increment of 10, not five). And then increments of 15, 20, 25, or some other progression. Bob or Charlie could, of course, step in and bid with the normal increment of 5. If Eve stopped bidding for an hour or so, her increment would return to normal.
Overall, eBay strongly favors the buyers already. The long auction times allow a lot more people to see the items and get involved in the auction through proxy bids, but the fixed ending times chop off the repeated frenzied back-and-forth bidding you see at the end of a live auction.
Roadfood’s idea could work very well, but 15 minutes is way too long. If each bid after the last two minutes reset the clock two minutes out, automated sniping wouldn’t work so well anymore and buyers wouldn’t get as many deals, but I think sellers could make a heckuva lot more money on their items.
When I’m the buyer, I like the current system. When I’m the seller, I feel like I’m leaving money on the table.
With the indefinitely extendable end-time idea, though, I think we’re forgetting that not everyone is necessarily going to be available to be sitting at their computer when the auction is ending. eBay is available world-wide; in different time zones, auctions might be ending in the middle of the night for certain bidders, and I imagine that the system was designed with that in mind. So I think we need to forget about comparing eBay to a live auction. In a live auction, all participants are present in the room in real-time. I think it’s meaningless to talk about what’s “fair”; each system would have advantages for some, and disadvantages for others. Neither is intrinsically more “fair”. People keep arguing that hard ending times favor the buyer, but I could just as easily argue that indefinitely extendable end times favor the unemployed, home-employed, those with internet access at work, or those who happen to be in the same time zone as the seller. With that kind of system, people who have busy lives will always lose to people with too much time on their hands. I just don’t think that’s intrinsically more “fair” than any other system.
Here are a couple of problems I came up with when I considered (and rejected) a “grace period” solution.
First, “The Longest Running Auction on eBay!” There would be people that would just keep bidding back and forth to keep auctions going indefinitely. If you cap the grace period, you’re not in a signficantly different situation than you are now.
Second, Who gets to bid? What if I make the first bid, have had the highest bid for 90% of the auction (via autobid), but then multiple snipers pounce on the auction at the last minute and eventually outbid me? Do only the snipers that happened to have the last two highest bids get access to the grace period? Everyone who bid in the auction?
Actually, that’s last bit is an interesting idea. Close the auction to the public at the given time, and then anyone who had already bid would be allowed to continue bidding in the private auction.
I was just saying that it’s not a good idea in general to base your bid solely on what others bid. I think you make a valid point that with rare collectibles and the like, all you have to go on is what people are willing to pay for it. There is no “retail” price in that situation. So yes, there are situations where you might have to use other people’s bids as a source of information. I wasn’t trying to say it’s never useful, just that in general, it shouldn’t be the only thing you rely on.
but there are lots of free services and software out there, sometimes what motivates people to create something is not money, but the thrill and enjoyment of accomplishment.