I think she meant she had a bid in for 4.99 and was willing to manually bump it up in competition with somebody else as far as $50. NOT that she’d entered an actual eBay bid of “4.99 max 50.00”.
Yes, they only won by one bid increment - on ebay you can never win or lose by more than that. But there is *no *chance that they won for less than the maximum bid you had placed. They won for one increment over your maximum. That’s the very heart of how ebay works.
I truly don’t get this. Why are you angry with the sniper, rather than with yourself for not bidding the maximum you were willing to pay? If you’d done that, then no sniper could ever have beaten you unless he was willing to pay more than you were - and there’s nothing you can do about that.
You can beat any sniper who’s not willing to pay as much as you are. Just bid your maximum, at whatever point in the auction suits you. Ebay will only use enough of your bid to keep you in the lead for as long as possible; you won’t pay more than you need to. And you’ll automatically beat anyone who bids less than you. And if they’re willing to pay more than you are…again, there’s nothing you can do about that, at any point in the auction.
No, eBay works automatically. If she really bid $50 in advance on the eBay website itself she should have won even if the other person bid $6.25 in the last nanosecond. Even if the server didn’t fully process the bid string until after the auction was over, it would’ve still fully calculated through her maximum bid to make her the winner, based on the timestamp of her putting in that bid long before the auction ended. If she properly bid higher and they won, it’s a server error on eBay’s part and they should be contacted.
Some of the best vintage guitars sell between 2 and 5AM with Buy It Now. They get snapped up before anyone even wakes up.
How do I know? I have saved searches that email me. The listing will already be sold before I even get to see it.
This is absolutely not true. The program reacts automatically, within nanoseconds, comparing the two max bids and putting the higher one in the lead by one increment (or as near as possible, if they’re very close). And you don’t see the intermediate ‘bids’.
Say the auction starts at $25, and Macca26 bids $50. He takes the lead at $25. (Ebay will only use as much of your bid as is needed.) The bid history looks like this:
Bidder 1 … $25
Then I come in and bid $40. Ebay compares the two maximum bids, uses a bit more of Macca26’s as needed, and puts Macca26 in the lead at $41.
The bid history will look like this:
Bidder 2 … $40
Bidder 1 … $41
The interim ‘bids’ won’t be shown, because they were never manually placed.
If the auction ends there, then no one will ever see the rest of Macca26’s maximum bid. But say I find $20 on the street and decide to rebid at $60. Ebay instantly compares this new bid with Macca26’s maximum and uses enough of mine to put me in the lead by one increment. Now the bid history looks like this:
Bidder 2 … $40
Bidder 1 … $50
Bidder 2 … $51
I’m pretty sure kittenblue means that he/she was willing to pay $50 but hadn’t actually bid that amount - he/she had only bid $4.99. The bid increment at that level is 50c, I think, so the auction would have ended at $5.49 (putting the other bidder one increment ahead of kittenblue’s maximum).
If kittenblue had actually bid $50, then it wouldn’t have been possible for him/her to lose the auction at $6.49.
Say there is an item for $99 bucks, and bidder1 bid $99.
If I were to prematurely bid my max of $150 now the item will be at $100. With six days to go.
Sooo bidder1 (being an idiot) bids $101. Not enough.
Then he bids $102
$103
$104
$105… still not high enough so he bids $125. Still not high enough
$126
$127
$128
$129
$130
Now he’s angry because he is spending $30 bucks more than he wanted to when it was just $99.
I wouldn’t be too happy either! However in real life I never do this and instead wait until there is 5 seconds left and snipe it with my max of $150. If not one else snipes it I win for $100. If I get outbid well… them’s the breaks.
That is why you snipe.
Yup. If everyone who used eBay only ever bid their absolute maximum, never a penny more, never upped their bids, and only bid once, then yes there would be no advantage to sniping. But that’s not how many people use eBay. In reality, people’s emotions take over and even if they think “I will only spend $50 for this item!” if they are outbid they may try just $1 more, because really what’s $1? Oh damn, I was outbid, let me try $1 more again because maybe this time I’ll get it, etc.
So the item was listed for $4.99, you put in a bid of $4.99 (even though you would have spend up to $50 for it) and you were then surprised when you lost the auction? When any single other bid for that item would surpass you? And if the final total really was $6.49 that meant more than one other person bid on it.
So basically you bid the smallest amount possible near the start of the auction. Probably the worst bidding strategy I can think of.
Emotions are a terrible driver for shopping.
At least the former strategy guarantees that you never spend more than you want to, and never let anybody else snag something you wanted for less than that.
The problem is the huge number of people who hear the word “auction” and the only model they can imagine is the [open outcry, last highest offer takes it] model.
No matter how many times you explain that eBay is really a [sealed bid Dutch auction], no matter how carefully you describe it and no matter how many times they nod their head, when you get to that last word and say “sealed bid Dutch … auction”, they dump everything they just learned and reset their brain to thinking [open outcry, last highest offer takes it] again.
Or at least that’s been my experience.
Maybe if eBay banned all use of the word “auction” in their materials or any postings by any seller or buyer. Just call it a “sale-maker” or a “deal-picker” or something. Anything but that overloaded term “auction”.
IMO, YMMV, no warrantees expressed or implied.
Just like the sniper, eh?
If the deadline keeps getting extended, that can continue indefinitely. I’ve only seen the illegitimate auction sites extend deadlines. You know, the kind where you pay for the right to bid or force you to pay whether you win or not.
As someone who buys a fair amount of stuff on eBay (multiple odd cars, so I can’t exactly walk down the street to the parts store), I find an item I want, do a couple of minutes of research on what it should be worth, and then bid. Maybe little less than my researched value if it’s commonly available part, maybe more if it’s a really hard to find. I bid, and I walk away. I don’t look at the damn thing again, don’t let myself get pulled into a bidding war. I win or I lose. Simple.
If someone is willing to pay more than me, I could give two shits whether they bid two days before auction end, or two seconds.
Exactly.
More than that: snipers would be at a mild disadvantage. If there’s a tie, the earlier bid wins, so if two people value an item at the same amount and they actually bid that amount, the early proxy bidder will beat the sniper.
Most people don’t realize that there are multiple kinds of auctions… they think “auction”, and they think of the classic English auction.
Ebay’s not actually a Dutch auction- the big defining characteristic of a Dutch auction is that the price starts high and is lowered by the auctioneer until someone is willing to pay. This can take the form of a bunch of like items and bidders, which IS something Ebay used to do, but has moved away from.
Ebay seems to be a classic English auction, but with added proxy bid functionality. What this means is that the actual bids are actually visible, and highest bid wins at the end of the time frame… BUT there are the max bids which aren’t visible, and the system will proxy bid for you up to that limit.
Here’s what it boils down to:
If you REALLY want to win an auction, proxy bid as much as you are willing to pay. This ensures that you’ll have bid (or tried to) as much as you were willing to pay. So if you just have to have that in-box Steve Austin 12" figurine with the bionic eye, bid however much you’d be willing to pay. You won’t necessarily get a deal on it, but you’ll have the best chance of actually winning the auction.
If you’re looking to save money, the best bet is to snipe at the last second, and hope that the winning bidder doesn’t have a proxy bid set higher than your last second snipe. By doing this, you get your bid in, and prevent anyone from outbidding you by way of the timing, except for proxy bidders, who will always beat you.
Pretty much any other strategy sucks; you neither give yourself the best shot at actually getting the item, and nor do you actually set yourself up to get the best price.
Yeah, I misused the term “Dutch”. That’ll teach me to go from memory on something I don’t use every day.
IMO, *the *defining characteristic of eBay auctions vs. the naïve notion of “auction” is that the winning bidder doesn’t pay their full bid. Instead they pay the minimum increment over the first runner-up’s bid.
So if there are only 2 bidders, one at $5 and one at $500, the winner pays $6, not $500.
You term that automated proxy bidding. Coupled with widespread sniping that leads to my working definition of everybody doing a sealed bid and the highest sealed bid is the winner but the price is the first runner-up’s bid plus the relevant increment.
The folks who bid in public are, at least in the presence of sniping, doing it wrong.
For practical purposes a public bid of $1 with your actual max bid included behind the scenes gives *almost *the same effect as sniping at your max with no public bid.
Sorry to double-post …
I think the thing that upsets the non-snipers & non-proxy-bidders is that they enjoy the anticipation of watching time run down while it looks like they’re about to make a steal. And then to have it snatched away at the last minute by somebody else bursts their bubble painfully.
It’s the same emotional / psychological reward system as the slot machine that *almoooost *lines up all the jackpot symbols. That has been empirically proven to be very effective at motivating players into feeding a lot more money into losing slots than makes any rational sense.
Bottom line: the eBay system works fairly well for rationale knowledgeable buyers pursuing reasonable purchases. It isn’t well-suited to folks who like the gamesmanship of the typical auction and are more interested in the thrill of the hunt than the economics.
[QUOTE=kittenblue]
The last time really hurt. I don’t usually have time to sit hunched over my computer clicking refresh, but this was an item I really, really wanted, so I wanted to feel the thrill of the win. My bid was $4.99, my max bid was $50. No one else had placed a bid, so I didn’t increase my max bid right before the end like you all will probably say I should have. Since the item was an old bathtub toy, and no one else had expressed any interest, I didn’t figure on some sweaty old guy hunched over his computer waiting until the last ten seconds to place a bid. (That’s how I imagine the sniper who snatched victory from my hands after a ten-year search for this toy. And it’s never been relisted.) So it’s not like the seller got that much more money…I believe the final price was $6.49. I wouldn’t have minded a bidding war as much as I minded being sniped that close to the end. Two minutes I could have dealt with. Under ten seconds it was impossible to rebid. Knowing that it was some damn program possibly makes me even angrier, to be honest.
[/QUOTE]
This is a perfect example of why sniping works so well. Here we have an eBay user who doesn’t understand the game theory of the auction involved, fails to bid their actual maximum, and is quite emotionally involved. The trifecta!
I think it’s hilarious that you’ve chosen to personify the person who bought something that you wanted to buy as “some sweaty old guy hunched over his computer”.
I think that’s it on the head- most of the people who get steamed about sniping are upset that they didn’t “win” because of last-second snipes, not because they just didn’t get the item in question. There are some, like kittenblue who really did want the item in question, but who apparently didn’t set up their proxy bid to $50, ensuring they’d get the item in question, and got sniped out of it as a result.
Hey! I am not sweaty nor hunched over a computer. I’m freshly showered and in my pajamas curled up with my smartphone and a cup of decaf whilst stealing away your precious desirable item.