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

Discussion in 'Marketplace Discussions' started by The Spaceman, Oct 18, 2014.

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  1. kwadguy

    kwadguy Senior Member

    Location:
    Cambridge, MA
    No. Use a snipe bot and just set it to bid the most you'd possibly want to pay. Set and forget and in the end either you bought it or you didn't

    The rest is psychology. The reason you don't want to bid early is it gives everyone else time to think "if someone else wants it, it must be worth more" or else encourages overbidding for other reasons. I don't want you whether I'm interested in paying until the last minute, and you should feel the same way.

    The only entity that any "solution" to sniping would benefit is sellers.
     
  2. Veech

    Veech Space In Sounds

    Location:
    Los Angeles, CA
    I learned a while back to not bid up an ebay item days or even hours before it ends. That just drives the price up, imo. If it's something I really want, I'll place one low bid to "mark" it, then leave it alone until literally the last minute. If the price has gone beyond what I want to pay, then I just forget it. Otherwise, I will bid the next increment and place a max bid amount in to ebay's machine and hit submit at around the 30 second mark. It is rare that I get sniped and lose the auction. I have gotten sniped at the last 2 or 3 seconds increasing the price quite a bit, but still my max bid still covers it.
     
  3. Dave Garrett

    Dave Garrett Senior Member

    Location:
    Houston, TX
    A long time ago, back in the Dark Ages when eBay was a much more open community and still allowed you to use your email address as your userid, I had another user email me after I'd won an auction. He expressed his antipathy to sniping in no uncertain terms, decried the ethics of anyone who'd choose to employ it as a bidding strategy, and rather menacingly suggested that I should reconsider my actions in future eBay transactions. I gave his comments the consideration they deserved by declining to give him the courtesy of a reply.

    There is an image that immediately comes to mind as representative of those who object to sniping.

    [​IMG]
     
    Myke and Gene Parmesan like this.
  4. sgb

    sgb Senior Member

    Location:
    Baton Rouge
    Good for you! There is this car show on the Velocity channel that shows these dealers in Texas going to auctions to buy old junkers to fix up. One of the characters in it deliberately raises the bid whenever one other main character in the show expresses interest in one of the cars. It shows the real value of sniping, and, in the end enables the buyer to, potentially, save himself a lot of grief and money.
     
  5. Dave Garrett

    Dave Garrett Senior Member

    Location:
    Houston, TX
    Ah, yes, Dallas Car Sharks. Not one of my favorites, but I've seen it quite a few times as I'll often tend to stay on Velocity through gearhead inertia if I land on it while channel surfing. :cool:
     
  6. marcb

    marcb Senior Member

    Location:
    DC area
    Almost....

    1. Enter a maximum bid higher than anyone else by more than the incremental difference of an earlier bid.

    I've lost bids where I actually had the highest bid, but I lost by mere pennies because someone else had bid a slightly lower amount before me. This is one of the downsides of sniping.
     
    Dinstun likes this.
  7. Myke

    Myke Trying Not To Spook The Horse

  8. MLutthans

    MLutthans That's my spaghetti, Chewbacca! Staff

    I remember the good old days of getting screwed out of stuff because my job didn't allow Ebay access at work. (The site was blocked.) I discovered Esnipe, and my work-imposed disadvantage was removed from the process. If I would have bid $80 (or whatever) without esnipe, I bid $80 via esnipe. My actions are not changed at all by Esnipe. It's merely a convenience, nothing more.
     
    TLMusic and Myke like this.
  9. Myke

    Myke Trying Not To Spook The Horse

    Before I retired, I had this coworker who had never been taught the art of subtlety. As a guy in his 60s, I expected more out of him, but...this ***** sat in plain view of everyone walking by his screen, and eBay was up 85% of his time. Of course it was only a week or so before it was blocked permanently. Oh ! State Government on top of it ! :doh:
     
  10. quicksrt

    quicksrt Senior Member

    Location:
    Los Angeles
    There is a difference and that difference can be major. I've experimented with not snipping and then snipping.

    When you place you max bid upfront in advance you do several things. 1) you let the world know somebody wants that item. This is not good if you hope nobody notices that mono logo at very corner of the jacket or label which the seller has failed to note anywhere in the listing. But now since it has a bid on it. Other potential buyers want to know why and will read and look at this item closer.

    2) other buyers have time to place a bid. They then realize that the bid they just thought would put them at the top has failed to do so, so now they must put in another bid. While it raised the price, it still failed to top your bid. Other bidder is now going to give it his all with both guns blazing, and sure as shift he is now the top bidder.

    There is three hours left to go, so you bid again and decide to spend more, and you win the item after all.

    Had you snipped the item coming out of the woodwork with all guns firing 2 seconds till closing you would not have given Johnny come lately his second of third chance to up his bid.

    3) you would have shut him out and won item (he underestimated anyone's desire for that item, his first bid proved that), and you would have gotten it for less, much less, because he blew the bid and never saw you coming out of the dark in last 2 seconds.

    4) shill bidders work on knowing when an item is hot, and going to have potentially large bids. If you come charging out of nowhere at the very end, you have left the shill bidder no idea where they should shoot for.

    So if you bid high and bid early you are still able to win an item, but you most likely pay more for it.

    Once one person sees an item that others want, they want it more than they did previously.

    Jimi Hendrix pressings on Track records UK used to be available at decent prices $40 to $65. But the newbies saw that they were always selling for higher prices than other pressings, and have driven the cost of these LPs to the $160 to $375 range. Had the newbies never seen these listings and just bid what a good LP should sell for, then they would be $70 LPs today. There is a perception that if someone else wants something then you want it too! And you may want it more than you used to want it now the you know Joe wants it.

    Snipping gets rid of all this nonsense and keeps your knowledge (private research results) to yourself and makes everyone else have to do their own work to appraise the value.

    This is not unethical, it's sports played out without showing your hand.

    Sorry if this is full of typos I am typing on a iPhone.
     
    Last edited: Oct 28, 2014
    no.nine, ArpMoog, riverrat and 2 others like this.
  11. Dinstun

    Dinstun Forum Resident

    Location:
    Middle Tennessee
    A very good point.
     
  12. R. Totale

    R. Totale The Voice of Reason

    It's the timing that counts - I've also won by less than an increment (pennies) when sniping by setting my bid between increments. The live on-site bidder hand sniping or the normal thinker who only bids in round numbers can lose in this scenario. Say the item is at $12.00, increment is 50 cents and my snipe bid with 4 seconds to go is 12.73. If you bid 12.50 to beat the onscreen number with two seconds to go, you'll lose.
     
  13. riverrat

    riverrat Senior Member

    Location:
    Oregon
    It's one thing to say sniping is unethical. I certainly don't think so but to each his/her own.

    It's quite another thing to try to argue there's no point to sniping. That argument is a huge fail. Anyone who tries to make it is either inexperienced or has not thought it through, or both. Quicksrt clearly laid out all the reasons why.

    End of argument.
     
  14. SoporJoe

    SoporJoe Forum Resident

    Location:
    British Columbia
    There is an easier fix already in place. Just bid the most you are will to pay from the get-go. Either you'll win or you'll lose to someone willing to pay that you are. It's not that hard.
     
  15. ptfranzis

    ptfranzis Member

    Hi, the way I look at it is it is an auction. If you went to a live auction, you would not place a bid and walk away, also if you had a max bid in mind, you would wait to see where the bids were going first. I usually wait until the last seconds and place my max bid. If someone is using an automated bid and they want to bid more, then they win. It is frustrating though when you get outbid in the frenzy.

    New member by the way, hello everyone!
     
  16. eelkiller

    eelkiller One of the great unwashed

    Location:
    Northern Ontario
    Right we have to sit here at the computer and defend our sniping activities. :D
     
    Muzyck likes this.
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