Thread: eBay User, show yourself!

Hal,

I agree with you. I'll watch a razor sitting there at $15 for several days then in the last 30 seconds it goes up to $90 or more. I think this hurts newbies more since making a jugement as to value is hard in the beginning. Right now I look at the razor figure out what the most I want to or can afford to pay and enter it as my max bid. I just hate seeing no activity and then getting beat at the last second by a bid $1 more than mine. Oh well way of the world. I tell you though I really don't bid on a razor until the last day anyway.

RichZ in NYC

I understand what you're saying Hal, but eBay isn't a proper auction anyway as its under a time limit. A real auction ends when the price has gone as high as anyone is willing to pay - eBay doesn't work like that. Thats why people start sniping because its really annoying to put in a bid properly as RichZ does above and then get beaten by 1 penny.

That may explain why people want to snipe. You may argue that ebay is not an "real" auction too. It surely won't be anything remotely resembling an auction, if sniping becomes the norm. Sniping only works within the auction atmosphere of ebay; that is to say, so far as there are participants who are not using sniping software and bidding against known values. Consider the hypothetical situation where there are _only_ snipers and no bidders. How would a seller act in a situation like this? No more NR listings with high list prices or simply BIN.

Hal

Very well said Hal,
The more popular the sniper programs become the harder it becomes to effectivly snipe and the only one who truly "pays" the price is the seller. I think we will see a trend where ebay will effectivly become a retail site more so than an "auction" and quite frankly you can see that trend happening now.

The only on line auction I activly participate in is Gun Broker. They have a 15min rule where if there is any bid with in the last 15min of the auction the time is extended for 15min. When, at the time the auction is scheduled to close, there has been 15min lapse with no bidding activity the auction then closes. I think this is the most fair way to conduct an online auction to all partys and it closely resembles the "Going once, Going twice... " model of a real auction.

I go out of my way to avoid ebay for just this very reason... no "deal" I've ever gotten has been purportional to effort involved in trying to out bid a program.

Sniping won't destroy Ebay as an online auction environment. It will change it to what it really should be, anyway, a blind bid auction. All bids get submitted and then when the bidding time is up, they get opened and the highest one wins. There are times when it's a buyer's market on Ebay and there are times when it's a seller's market. Whether Ebay is great or whether it sucks like a Clinton Intern depends on whether you're buying or selling and to which the market is giving a big kiss on that day. Someone usually ends up feeling like they got a great deal even though both parties may not. But that's part of the fun of the auction, right?