eBay bid sniping -- any possible solutions?

[Ed Oscuro]

I've been considering this question every now and then...is there a way to keep last-second bidders from pushing the price up just enough to get that coveted item without paying far too much or, more importantly, having to weather the attacks of other bidders? Could there be a way to get people to actually pay something closer to what an item's worth and not sigh as you consign another rare artifact to a sale considerably lower than your expectations? Maybe (never mind that the real problem is they don't do auctions like ours--open post bids that don't end at a set time, but I suppose they have to cater to people who don't like price inflation because somebody is a collector who absolutely won't compromise).

My personal idea is simple: After the bidding time has ended, every person who has bid on an item before anyone else has bid twice, including themself (explain this later) has a chance to put in one last bid, without any knowledge of any bid besides the last public one (i.e. all these bids are made sight unseen).

Of course there are ramifications to such an idea -- but they all tend toward overspending, something that eBay and its various components (PayPal) would like, and that the seller would surely welcome.

There are still problems to look at.

My original idea, "anybody who has previously bid on an item can bid again" cuts out people who haven't bid, but it lets people throw in one bid and feel that they don't have to fight to keep there item--which would lead to prices being less than they should be, and would result in wild bids at the end.

Instead I opt for "anybody who has bid twice" -- thus, if one person has put in a large bid and another person tried to creep up on that price with $.25 increments -- they've already had their chance. Likewise, people who bid once early on (say $10 when the final price was $50 or maybe even $1000) before the real competition starts don't have a chance to try and hoodwink everybody else. Of course, there should be an option to let anybody bid again, so as to open it up again.

This is certainly not for everybody. I think it would be much more aggressive, and isn't an option that I would ever want to be accepted into normal eBay auctions, for people who only want to put in a single bid and be done with it.

So yes, that's my crazy idea for the day. People, don't be bid snipers, it sucks :P

[kainemaxwell]

Try to beat them, or join them is all I can say...

[jonjandran]

So yes, that's my crazy idea for the day. People, don't be bid snipers, it sucks :P

If sellers just put a reserve on their items then this is not a problem is it ?
They either will at least get what they want or they can re-list it and try again.
Why is it the snipers fault for not driving up the prices ?

[sisko]

If sellers just put a reserve on their items then this is not a problem is it ?

No. A reserve price says that if they item didn't get this amount, I don't have to sell it.


There are only 3 solutions to this problem:

1) Put your maximum proxy bid ahead of time.
2) Be better at it than they are.
3) Ignore it.

If youre selling, use a BIN.

I snipe because its the best way to do things from a buyers perspective. I'm not a lameass who has to get a program to do it for me though.

[Ed Oscuro]

Try to beat them, or join them is all I can say...

Well, I suppose I have to publicly admit that's the case. People are naturally going to try sneaky tricks. I personally don't like bidding before the last hour, and when I was on eBay I would hold out and stay around until the end. Still, I'm starting to wonder if eBay is really the place to go for VG stuff of any sort anymore. I'd rather play it safe, pay a flat rate, actually pay what something's worth, and not have to deal with the silliness.

@ Jonjandran

Only partially right. I'm going to chalk this thread up to my being bugged about something that happened to an auction by somebody who posts here just today...the reason I say "only partially" is that if you put in a reserve, people don't like to bid. You can disclose your reserve, but once again you don't stand a chance of getting the bidder who's casually interested to come in and set a base price "This better not go for less than this, 'cause I'm vaguely interested" from which hardcore types will come in and set the final price.

Later bids are supposed to go to people who are very interested in an item, and if you've got no reserve (to try and let anybody bid on it and get that base price) and a low starting price you've potentially got an item that could get away for a fraction of what it's worth, and what's more -- you have people feeling "I woulda payed more than that, if only I could bid again."

[jonjandran]

No. A reserve price says that if they item didn't get this amount, I don't have to sell it.


The point is , he's complaining that a seller doesn't get as much as he could because of sniping.
Putting a reserve solves this problem because the sniper won't get the item unless he bids over the reserve.
Then you can re-list and hope for a better outcome.

And I totally agree that it's easier to just pay a flat rate. That's why I never bid. I only buy with BIN . :D

[Ed Oscuro]

If sellers just put a reserve on their items then this is not a problem is it ?

No. A reserve price says that if they item didn't get this amount, I don't have to sell it.

Interesting -- I was always under the impression that sellers don't ever sell if the reserve hasn't been met, and you know what...they usually don't! I actually didn't know they could sell without the reserve having been met. You could always say that you'd possibly sell without having the reserve met...pretty good way to shoot yourself in the foot though...but I think that if people see that "reserve not yet met" they're less likely to look at an auction. I see the reserve as a real barrier to getting bids, especially an undisclosed reserve.

That said...that's just what I think. I thank you guys for writing about this as it's been interesting to read.

[Flack]

I don't know the specifics of the auction you're referring to, and I know how frustrating it can be to get outbid at the last moment on an item you were wanting to buy, but ultimately, here's how eBay works:

Bid what you're willing to pay. If someone outbids you, whether it's one one minute after you bid or one minute until the auction ends, they are now the high bidder. In the big picture, they were willing to pay more than you were.

I've thought of several systems myself, from "only allow one bid per bidder" to "only allow 3 bids per bidder" to "only allow one bid per bidder the last hour of any auction." All of them would make eBay more fair, but none of them would completely aleviate sniping.

Sniping makes eBay both exciting (when doing it) and frustrating (when done to you), but the bottom line is it drives up prices, which is good for sellers and good for eBay's commissions. Any rule that stops a person from raising any price is stopping eBay from making a higher profit.

You know what they say, "when in Rome, do what the Romans do." I hate bid sniping and I do it on almost auction I bid on now. I used to bid at the beginning of every 7 day auction I was interested in, and that only shows people that you're interested and makes them get ready to snipe ME. Now I'll either bid the last day or so and watch the traffic, or just set my timers/alarms and bid the last few minutes.

When in Rome ...

[sisko]

No. A reserve price says that if they item didn't get this amount, I don't have to sell it.


The point is , he's complaining that a seller doesn't get as much as he could because of sniping.
Putting a reserve solves this problem because the sniper won't get the item unless he bids over the reserve.
Then you can re-list and hope for a better outcome.

And I totally agree that it's easier to just pay a flat rate. That's why I never bid. I only buy with BIN . :D

Ah. I understand what you meant, and its an excellent point.

@Ed, you're right, I just worded it differently. I've gotten emails from people wanting to buy my things that haven't met my reserve though. It got to $200, and the reserve was $1800. I said no thanks :D Thing is, you might get in trouble if you do this for circumventing eBay fees.

I saw one person that completely "disallowed" sniping. He promised to end the auction early at any undisclosed random time, so if you wanted to bid, you had better do it now. Personally, I think he shot himself in the foot as a seller. 1) He didn't get as much as he could have and 2) He came off as a real prick.

Also I'm not sure if that is against eBay's policies either. I've never dealt with an auction that has ended early.

[Flack]

From eBay:

Sometimes something goes wrong and you can't complete your listing as planned. If needed, you can choose to end your listing before the scheduled date. If there are bids on your item, you can cancel them.

Reasons for ending listings early include:

The item is no longer available for sale.
There was an error in the starting price or reserve amount.
There was an error in the listing.
The item was lost or broken.

Note: Sellers are not permitted to cancel bids and end listings early in order to avoid selling an item that did not meet the desired sale price. This is considered to be reserve fee circumvention. Although there are legitimate reasons for ending a listing early, abuse of this option will be investigated.

"Punishing bid-snipers" does not appear to be a valid reason, although I've seen auctions end early (especially car auctions) and ended one early, none of which fell into the above categories.

I have bid on several cars where the reserve was not met. I have been e-mailed each time by the seller, informing me of the reserve and asking if I was interested.

I've also had people e-mail me more than once, saying they are in a hurry and wanted me to end an auction early. Usually I say no and just tell them to bid, but I did do it once on an item that had no bids, six days left, and the buyer wanted to pay me about double what the item was worth.

[NE146]

I don't understand why some people don't like sniping. There's absolutely nothing wrong with it, and heck it never 100% means you'd win the auction anyway.

Put it this way, in the past week, I've bid (ok I SNIPED) a good five auctions, each of them on the last 3 seconds and I've LOST every one of them. The reserve bid was simply higher. But that's the way it goes.

So I bid at the last second.. the guy with the higher bid still won. What's wrong with that? :?

[Ed Oscuro]

Great points all around! Especially Flack's "they're willing to pay more than you did" -- that snaps you right back into a frame of mind where you shouldn't allow yourself to play with an inverse slippery slope, where you just start randomly guessing what things are worth. With that, I really don't have anything else to bring up; I believe in the "put down what you want to pay" though. It might be painful to pay extra money that you think "if only I had bid sniped I could have bought this and something else" but at the end of the day you're being honest...that philosophy agrees with me.

[Zaxxon]

If youre selling, use a BIN.
.

BIN is great until some zero FB asshole using mommies PC goes through all your auctions pressing the BIN button. I'll never use BIN again.



I snipe because its the best way to do things from a buyers perspective. I'm not a lameass who has to get a program to do it for me though.

I guess that makes everyone who has a job/college and can't stay at home on their PC 24/7 a lameass.

[sisko]

I snipe because its the best way to do things from a buyers perspective. I'm not a lameass who has to get a program to do it for me though.

I guess that makes everyone who has a job/college and can't stay at home on their PC 24/7 a lameass.

You know, I never once had to use an automated sniping system while I was taking 18 credit hours at the university, and work 45-50 hour weeks simultaneously.

[Zaxxon]

I used to bid at the beginning of every 7 day auction I was interested in, and that only shows people that you're interested and makes them get ready to snipe ME. Now I'll either bid the last day or so and watch the traffic, or just set my timers/alarms and bid the last few minutes.


The problem with not bidding on a rare/U item that there aren't any duplicates of on Ebay, is that if it gets down to the last day and there are still no bids the seller often gets spooked. They don't want their item getting snatched at the lowest possible bid price so they yank it to sell outside of Ebay or relist it with a high reserve. If you place the very minimum bid, it's now locked-in and the seller can't yank their auction without selling to you.

[Zaxxon]

I snipe because its the best way to do things from a buyers perspective. I'm not a lameass who has to get a program to do it for me though.

I guess that makes everyone who has a job/college and can't stay at home on their PC 24/7 a lameass.

You know, I never once had to use an automated sniping system while I was taking 18 credit hours at the university, and work 45-50 hour weeks simultaneously.

Well, you must be able to find auction that always have convenient ending times that fit into your schedule.


while I was taking 18 credit hours at the university, and work 45-50 hour weeks simultaneously

BTW Do you use cocaine? @_@

[jhd7]

Just my two cents...

From a sellers perspective, sniping doesn't bother me. I usually expect the price to jump at the end, but I don't count on it. For rare in-demand items, I start the bid low, knowing it will go high. Hey, I started NWC1990 at a penny. On less popular items, I just start the bidding at the amount I want and hope for one bid. No biggie. I try to keep eBay fees low, and reserve price is treated like a starting bid, if memory serves correct.

From a buyer's perspective? Sniping pisses me off big time. Yes, it's legal. Yes, it's common. Yes, it's a way to keep the price down. 99 times out of 100, when I see an item I want, I bid my maximum amount right then and there. Yes, as the week goes by, I may rethink my budget and bid a little more. But the pisser part is being high bidder for 6.9 days, then seeing someone yank it away with seconds left.

Yes, it's legal. Yes, they're willing to spend more than me. But to see my name as high bidder for so long and so close to the end... and then having it yanked away... it feels like a sucker punch. I've been at eBay for 6 years and have a rating of over 850, so don't try to educate me on the way of the world. I've seen it all. And sniping still feels like a cheap shot, common or not.

Real life auctions don't have a timer... they end when all but one bidder drops out. My idea? Ebay could offer an option to the seller: allow extended auctions. If someone bids in the last 5 minutes (or 10 minutes, or 30 minutes, or hour), the seller can allow the auction to be automatically extended for 5 or 10 or 30 minutes or an hour. It's fair to the seller, it's fair to all bidders.

btw - another pisser: getting the outbid email saying "you still have lots of time to bid!'" after the auction has ended.

Just my two cents.

[NE146]

99 times out of 100, when I see an item I want, I bid my maximum amount right then and there. Yes, as the week goes by, I may rethink my budget and bid a little more. But the pisser part is being high bidder for 6.9 days, then seeing someone yank it away with seconds left.

Then you weren't the high bidder on that auction I sniped yesterday.. Because he was high bidder for the entire 6.9 days. Then I sniped at $80... he won the auction at $86. Guess his bid was $120+ right out the gate :P

[E Nice]

What about a time bumping feature? I'm not sure but I think Yahoo Japan uses it, might be wrong about that though. If someone bids within the last ten minutes the auction is extended another ten minutes and so on for any bid that occurs within the ten minute end time.

[partanimalpartmachine]

I guess that makes everyone who has a job/college and can't stay at home on their PC 24/7 a lameass.

Not everyone, just you.

[Ed Oscuro]

What about a time bumping feature? I'm not sure but I think Yahoo Japan uses it, might be wrong about that though. If someone bids within the last ten minutes the auction is extended another ten minutes and so on for any bid that occurs within the ten minute end time.

Huh, that's a simpler way of doing things actually, and doesn't sound bad at all.

[DogP]

Yeah, snipe stuff on ebay all the time... it's the only way to do it. Everyone else does, so why should I get sniped. I figure what is the advantage of putting my max bid in at the beginning of the auction compared to putting my max bid at the end of the auction? It makes no sense to do, unless I like losing auctions, or at least paying more than I want for it. Not that I always win... because my max bid is the same either way, and other snipers or even bidders that bid earlier sometimes have higher bids, but I definately win a lot more than I would if I didn't snipe.

I think if ebay wants to get rid of sniping, just extend the auction if someone bids within the last few minutes, like Yahoo does. I've sniped something from Yahoo... and it scared me when the time jumped up to 5 mins... but it's a kinda interesting idea (although it's possible that ebay can't use it because it'd be copying Yahoo, like that BIN thing that they got sued for).

DogP

[maxlords]

IMO, sniping SAVES me money, as I'm likely to buy things that I really can't afford, and often, a sniper snags em. Poor impulse control do I have :)

I don't see it as a bad thing. I pull my auctions if I get no bids, every time, unless I've listed it at the minimum I'm willing to take, rather than super cheap. I also snipe sometimes, and sometimes I just bid my max and leave it. I win about 60% of the time both ways, so I don't see why it matters. Just put up with it.

[KJN]

When buying try to be prepared for snipers. Auctions that use counters that update every time the page reloads is your friend. Check the counter when it's about 15 minutes or so left, wait, check your watch and update the page when it's about 5 minutes left. If the counter has risen a lot in those minutes (say from 25 hits to 48) you can be pretty sure there is someone constantly updating the page just wating for a bid to be placed so he can snipe. If you want to reload in order to check for other bids open the bid history page in a new window and use that since it wont affect the counter.

[bensenvill]

well the sniping solution that would make the most sense for ebay to do is that whenever the auction closes, the bidding will continue until no bids have been placed for say.. 15 minutes. That would make sniping pointless and increase ebay's revenue. Its such a simple solution that I'm shocked they arent using it

and my solution for when I snipe auctions is to set the max bid at something like 8.11 instead of 8.00. I cant tell you how many times I have won auctions by 11 cents over the other guy.

~Tj

[Sylentwulf]

Can't stand these discussions. Bid what you want to pay. If the bidding goes higher than that, regardless of WHEN someone else bids, then it was more than you were willing to pay. Plain and simple.

Why should the amount of time left in an auction determine the amount of money you're willing to pay for an item?

[Eric Dude]

"Why should the amount of time left in an auction determine the amount of money you're willing to pay for an item?"

Right.

So bid what you're willing to pay right when you see the auction. :)

[Rogmeister]

I admit to sniping simply because it saves me money. If I see an item I'm interested in, I'll bid on it right away (especially if no one has bid on it yet) and if I'm overbid I'll then wait until near the end of the auction as I don't want to get into a bidding war. By waiting, I often get something for a considerably lower price than I would've if I'd done it the other way. Of course, I've been sniped myself. I was bidding on a lot of over 30 SNES games yesterday and in the last 30 seconds, the bidding went from $65 to $108...luckily, I'd already been overbid and decided not to bid again or I might've been upset but I try not to be. After all, if I snipe others, it's only fair that I get sniped sometimes myself...

[kainemaxwell]

BTW Do you use cocaine? @_@
No, do you?

[Zaxxon]

Is your name sisko? Why are you responding to a question that wasn't directed at you? :roll:

[Zaxxon]

I guess that makes everyone who has a job/college and can't stay at home on their PC 24/7 a lameass.

Not everyone, just you.

This is what you stop lurking to post? :roll: You're not really a lurker, you're mommy just doesn't let you use her PC often, right kid-o. LOL

[kainemaxwell]

Zaxxon, may I sugges tthat you keep your nose clean and not insult other members here or our collecting and other intrests. You're on your way to being banned and that should be a warning to you to strighten up as it is.

[Zaxxon]

I wasn't insulting anyone you dumbass. Here's some advice, go fuck yourself and then learn how to read. geez :roll:

[kainemaxwell]

Bye. Nice knowing you.

[digitalpress]

Bye. Nice knowing you.

Right on, Kaine.

You can deliver the boot. This guy is gone.

[kainemaxwell]

He is the weakest link.
*Boots Zaxxon out into the street*

We now resume our regular debate already in progress.