Thread: I HATE EBAY

I was celibrating because I had thought I'd won an auction for 2 razors and lost in at the 5 second mark. That's just not fair.

Not that I've ranted, I feel better. Oh well didn't really want to spend the money anyway.....really......I didn't.....

I have a love-hate relationship with ebay.

To snipe or to be sniped, that is the question. Unless you're JimmyHAD who likes to fire the enter key at the very last second his reflexes can take him.

Chris L

I know how you feel. Ebay really Pi**es me off sometimes. I don't snipe, but I work for the Gov't. I have an ultra high speed connection, and I work night, when most of the auctions go off. I've got bids in the 2 second mark....So, I really don't need to snipe. I've never lost an auction I actively bid on. The down side is, If I'm asleep at the switch. It happens. What really gets me is when I lose by 2 bucks....As it was put, I too have a Love-Hate relationship with Ebay...

Originally Posted by zib

I know how you feel. Ebay really Pi**es me off sometimes. I don't snipe, but I work for the Gov't. I have an ultra high speed connection, and I work night, when most of the auctions go off. I've got bids in the 2 second mark....So, I really don't need to snipe. I've never lost an auction I actively bid on. The down side is, If I'm asleep at the switch. It happens. What really gets me is when I lose by 2 bucks....As it was put, I too have a Love-Hate relationship with Ebay...

if you're bidding at the 2s mark, then you're sniping. your post only states that sniping has been particularly effective for you.

also, as the second highest bidder, it is never possible for you to "know" that you lost by two bucks because, as the second highest bidder of the auction, all you get to see is the next legal price higher than yours; only the high bidder knows his max bid and your max bid, and thus only he knows how much you lost by. even the seller doesn't know the winner's max bid.

example: you bid $100 on an auction that is taking bid increments of $1.00 (bid increments are determined by a given auction's present price and increment amounts are divided into brackets, like our US income tax bracket) and you see that the winning bid was $101. Say I am the winning bidder (it doesn't matter whether I bid before or after you since my max bid was higher than your max bid). From your end and the seller's end, I won by $1; you lost by $1. But you cannot tell whether my max bid was $500 or $101 because per ebay auction protocol I only have to pay the smallest amount greater than the your max bid so long as it is less than my max bid.

as a real life example, i sniped an auction today for $70. my final price was $41. i sniped for $30 more than i need to pay because the runner-up bid a max of $40. he acutally "lost by" $30, but the dollar increment was $1, so I my price is $1 more than the runner-up's max ($41) even though I bid $30 more than he did..

I think sniping is ok. After all, doesn't the saying go 'Alls fair in love and war'? The obsession we show towards razors and shaving stuff is kinda like love, isn't it?

Bottom line is that you are not bidding enough to win the item sniping or not. EeBay is not my preferred method of obtaining straights. I prefer local finds but I am not hunting any particular straight at the moment!

When I lose a $49 Auction by $0.01, I lost by $0.01, right? There is a certain amount of skill is doing that, I think.

Originally Posted by Pyment

When I lose a $49 Auction by $0.01, I lost by $0.01, right? There is a certain amount of skill is doing that, I think.

You may have lost the bid by a penny but you don't know what the other person's max bid was, just that that person was willing to pay more than you. You could have bid another $5 and still lost by $.01. Think about it. On the auctions you have bid on did you always pay your max bid and how much did you win by?