Should eBay sniping be against the rules and should sniping software be too?

I believe this practice itself (bidding at the last second, whatever the amount and whether the bid wins or loses) is what has acquired the name sniping. Whether it is done by hand or software is not relevant.

 

Okay, so it's just whining because they weren't fast enough. Thanks.

 

I have on numerous occasions sat in a physical real world auction gallery, put up my card and won a lot for $10 where I was fully ready and expecting to spend $200 or more. Or held that card up while the auctioneer counted off his standard increments until I won at $50. eBay is no different - you know the eventual winner's final bid, but not what his intentions were beyond that.

 

I believe this thread originated from another one here on the forum:
http://forums.stevehoffman.tv/threads/programmatic-buying-at-amazon.386282/

Apologies for cross-posting, but since this discussion is so popular, here I go again:
Is anyone aware of a Sniper for Amazon that would watch the prices and shoot/email/buy once a desired price is reached?

Please post on the original thread (see above).

 

It's the only way to bid, unless the item has a "Buy It Now" on it.

 

No, there is no such thing for Amazon.

 

In my experience, there's only three ways to win an actual auction on Ebay:

1. Make a bid so ridiculously high that last-minute snipers give up trying to breach the wall.

2. Bid on stuff no one else in the world wants.

3. Snipe.

I rarely try anything on Ebay that's not Buy It Now, but when I do, I wait till the last possible minute to bid. Otherwise, the odds are seriously against you. A few months ago I bid on two auctions well in advance just for the heck of it; one was for an LP set of all Beethoven's symphonies with a BIN of $75 and the other was a pop album from the 60's. I bid on both on the same day and when the auction ended a week later, I took the Beethoven set for under $10 and lost the pop album to one of a pair of snipers that appeared in the last two minutes of the auction. Now, granted the final bid was more that I could have afforded at the time, but I think that I'd have had a better chance if I'd waited for the last minute like the winner did.

I have no problem with "sniping" in principle, but I don't use any sniping software. That seems a bit dickish.

 

That's a little strong isn't it ? As others have said, if you're busy, and not going to be available when the auction ends, this is a technology that takes care of it for you. It's no more " dickish " than any other form of technology we use to make our lives easier.

 

Apparently not, since there were two other people interested in the item who were willing to pay more than you were.

 

No. Not unless your max bid was higher than the winner's max bid.

There is really only one way to win an eBay auction:

1. Enter a maximum bid higher than anyone else.

 

Per wiki...

Proxy bidding is an implementation of an English second-price auction used on eBay, in which the winning bidder pays the price of the second-highest bid plus a defined increment. It differs from a Vickrey auction in that bids are not sealed; the "current highest bid" (defined as second-highest bid plus bid increment) is always displayed. In a standard first-price English auction the winner pays the amount of their bid, regardless of competitors' bids, and it is therefore desirable to place a bid that exceeds the current highest bid by the smallest possible increment. Under proxy bidding, however, the price paid is determined only by competitors' bids and not by the amount of the new bid, and so there is no economically rational incentive to place a bid below the amount one is willing to pay, or to place multiple increasing bids. An "economically rational" bidder will therefore bid the maximum amount they are willing to pay on their first bid, and never raise their bid. This approach however, in the context of eBay, reveals the bidder's limit to rival bidders early in the auction, which can sometimes artificially inflate the price of the item higher than its actual intrinsic value, and ultimately encourages the practice of auction sniping.

 

Only problem is that some people actually have a life and can't sit in front of their computer at the end of every auction.

 

One of the many cases where what it says on Wikipedia, although written as if it were authoritative, is not what happens in real life. A bidder's limit is not revealed to anyone until someone else exceeds it, either on eBay or in real life. All that is revealed is that the current highest bidder has met the opening bid, or bid one increment over the underbidder (if there is one).

 

Ummm, ok. Why?

 

It would probably have been helpful if you managed to include the whole post in your response..

"This approach however, in the context of eBay, reveals the bidder's limit to rival bidders early in the auction, which can sometimes artificially inflate the price of the item higher than its actual intrinsic value, and ultimately encourages the practice of auction sniping."

 

The use of auction snipers only increases the price for all bidders, which is exactly what eBay wanted when they allowed them. It introduces an arms race between bidders to set higher limits on their final bids. It is only a useful tool at the moment because not every bidder on eBay uses them. If a sniper is involved, I find it's not usually an auction worth winning in terms of value.

 

So should everyone stop bidding at the one-minute mark, for fear of being labeled a " sniper " ?

 

If eBay allows it, I have no problem with snipers. I simply think eBay should ban them for various reasons.

 

I did quote the whole message, including the factually inaccurate part you repeated just above. Since the premise of the sentence (that the bidder's maximum is revealed) is incorrect, the conclusion drawn from it above is flawed as well. So if you have some other reason, maybe one stated in your own words, to support that "proxy bidding sucks", my earlier question is still on the table, why?

 

eBay takes bids on any particular sale within a stated window of time. This doesn't allow or disallow bidding at the last minute, it just says that this period of time is when bids are accepted. If anything, a flexible auction ending time is what would increase the price paid by some bidders over the way things are now.

 

Psychologically putting in a maximum bid early isn't the best way to get something for cheap. Of course this doesn't apply to all situations and will probably not impact items that are highly desirable (that NM Zeppelin II from a reputable dealer is gonna go for big bucks regardless of the bidding strategies). But for "off the beaten path" items (music, hardware, books, whatever else) in the 15 years I've been on Ebay I have consistently paid less using sniping software for these kinds of items vs ones where I put in the same max bid early on and forget about it. I would estimate my savings are in the several thousand dollars.

The reason is there are bidders that either knowingly or unknowingly be willing to pay more for an item by putting in numerous smaller incremental bids until they are the high bidder. By leaving them alone and sniping at the last minute you bid more than them and win the item. By putting in a max bid early they will see they are outbid and bid again.

 

The complaints against sniping are ridiculous. For some reason, some people get more upset if they lose at the last moment.

Bid your actual top price to begin with, either up front or with a sniping service yourself. It doesn't matter if you're outbid at the last second or with two days left.

 

I said, "seems", as in, "seems that way to me." I don't care what other people do, it's not my business.

 

Well, all I can tell you is that many, many times I've not bid until the last two minutes of an auction and won what I was after and got a great deal. Bidding ahead of time only works if no one else wants what I bid on. And I'm not complaining, if I was dead-set on getting what I bid on in both of those auctions I would have handled it differently, but I wasn't in dogged pursuit.

 

Yes, I think that bidding early often increases the attraction of an item, and entices some to incrementally bid until they have the high bid. Sniping is beneficial because it avoids that.