All you people bidding for tuners and players on ebay, you might want to give this website a gander: http://www.bidnapper.com

Dan

Seems a bit dubious to me as the sign up page is asking for your ebay userID and password, so someone else can 'bid' for, just think someone could buy a mstation and you wouldn't even know!

Hi.

I have had good results with esnipe (http://www.esnipe.com obviously).

cu,
sven

Crazy. I thought ebay had banned auction sniping scripts a LONG time ago. I'm surprised they are letting this fly.

Hi.

Even though eBay might not like sniping scripts, how would they ban those?
Sure, they could say that they are not allowed (and probably really say so), but there is no (at least no obvious) technical solution that allows automatic blocking of sniping scripts.

cu,
sven

Agreed. Knowing people even use this (or manually snipe) makes me less likely to ever use eBay again and I think it is in their best interst to try to block it. I know that some sellers try to jack up their prices too (which is how some people justify sniping) and that should be stopped within their power too. Maybe I'm asking the impossible, but they are losing credibility.

Eh I dunno. I think people make this Ebay crap a lot more complicated than it is. You put in the maximum amount you want to pay for an item, and if someone wants it more, they make a higher bid. It's an auction. That's it. All this supposed complication with "sniping" and jacking up prices is irrelevant, it's all about how much you want to pay for an item... How is it any more complicated than that???

Hi.

I agree with you in some way, but have to disagree partly, too.

If everyone was doing it that way, all would be well, but actually, auctions just don't work that way. Think about the following scenario:

Someone sells item X.
Now (A) wants X, and is willing to pay 200$ for it.
I also want it and am willing to pay 210$ for it.
If nothing more would happen, I would get it for 201$, but if I enter that 210$ amount (long) before the auction ends, (A) gets some time to thing wether he would be willing to pay more than 201$ for for it (the current high bid). Let's say he is willing to pay 215$ for it after some thinking, what is going to happen? He would get it for 211$.
Now, I might even be willing to pay 220$ for X after some thinking, ...

This happens quite often. But as I don't want the prices to go up to much unnecessarily, I usually place my bids only minutes (or even seconds) before an auction ends, just to not give my "opponent" any time to think about possibly paying more than he was initially willing to.

Mind you, I only use esnipe pretty on rare occasions only.

cu,
sven

I recognize and understand the theory behind sniping is to maximize your chances of winning the auction. However, I stand behind my point that regardless of what person X will pay, if you go in having a maximum amount you want to pay, it doesn't matter what they pay. If you submit your bid of $210 and they go up to $215, then they want it $5 more than you do. Your whole definition revolves around the phrase "after some thinking" while I contend that you should just pick the price you want it at, enter that bid, and walk away. I guess I just don't go to EBay for stuff I absolutely need, and usually I find better deals on the Internet shopping sites than on EBay. Your mileage may vary.

The other thing is that nowadays *everyone* is sniping, so it defeats the purpose. Like if you were the only person sniping, you'd have an advantage, but so many people are doing it now it's ridiculous. I sell more than I buy from Ebay, but almost all of my auctions have been sold to people who sniped into it... At that point your 1 or 2% increase in chances of winning just barely justify the effort required to watch the auction or use a 3rd party sniping service. Lots of work to save maybe $5 on an auction.

it's all about how much you want to pay for an item...

That's the main point to me whether it's shopping for a car or something on eBay. If I set a maximum bid at $25 and somebody got it for $25.50, why should I be unhappy?

How is it any more complicated than that???

I think it is a *bit* more complicated because sniping tools essentially turn open auctions into blind auctions where you can't look around the room to see what others are bidding -- you only turn your cards over at the end. I have used sniping tools and don't have a problem with blind auctions. The problem is that you have people participating in auctions with two different "rulebooks". Folks who are playing with an "open" rulebook may be disappointed when they watch their $14.99 bid for a Dell Latitude hard drive carrier sit for 6 days only to find out that the item was won for a $15.49 bid that they never saw (true example from yesterday). If, on the other hand, somebody had sniped $25.49, I'd be out of luck.

The fact that eBay can't control stuff like sniping seems like, well, a fact of life. With all fo the knocks on eBay and some of the opportunities for abuse, I still find it a great utility. Dell didn't have this part listed, so I feel lucky to have found it (and probably for 1/2 what they would have wanted.)

Ebay could stop sniping by having auctions extend 5-10 mins if there is a bid in the last few mins. This would not make sniping obsolete, but would take a lot of the advantages away. The points is, the could, but they don't want to. Their current model has brought them great success and it is still growing, why would they change it?

Hi.

Actually, when eBay started in Germany, they did just that: extend the auction by 2 Minutes if a pid was placed within the last minute. Don't know why they turned that of though (and never implemented it for the other national platforms).

cu,
sven

Sniping and tracking tools make auction management easier, not more complicated. If you really want an item, you'd have to watch the auction yourself. That's a PITA. And often there are multiple auctions ending at the same time.

When I was last buying CDs on eBay tehre were some four auctions ending within seconds of each other. Because the one seller had used a tool to list them. So, I used a tool to win all of them.

I was trying out iSnipeIt whcih is a client-side application. Over the course of a week I had it monitoring and bidding on about 50 auctions for me. That wouldn't be too handy to do manually. Plus the management features of being able to sort by seller and keep things in their own folders. Makes consolidation a breeze. There are even better tools available for management, which include both selling and buying aids.

Fairness at eBay is a secondary concern. Primary is what will bring them the money. And if people like what's there now, that's what they'll keep doing. As membership numbers climb so will eBay's service charges. They've got everyone by the balls right now. There is no other auction site that can even begin to compete. Not Yahoo and not Amazon. eBay is built on old codebase that many other people also run. You could set up your own eBay clone in a couple of days. But they still have the 20+ million blood-thirsty users that no other site will ever have. Lastly is the golden rule. He who has the gold, makes the rules.

Bruno

Don't know why they turned that of though

If people developed /bidding snipe tools that were smart enough to keep rebidding as the auction was extended, it would seem that (up to a point) it could start a nasty feedback loop and that the number of bids/transactions per auction would be a lot higher. But maybe I'm just imagining that!

I still don't understand the point of this. There's a maximum amount of money one is willing to spend in order to acquire the item. Enter this amount as the bid. If he gets it, then he's spent that amount or less. If he doesn't get it, then it cost too much for him. Period.

I guess the problem might be that there are doofuses out there that just don't understand this, so they continue this sniping bullshit instead of just entering their maximum bid to begin with, and that means that it looks like under certain circumstances that the price the non-sniper paid to acquire an item got jacked up at the last minute, and he got screwed. But that's not really the case, because if that sniping idiot had just entered his highest bid at the beginning, then the non-sniper would have paid the same price, but just known about it for longer. Sniping from other people, on average, should actually lower the non-sniper's end cost because of the fact that the snipers miss the auction sometimes and that they often, even in the snipe, don't enter their maximum purchase price.

Sniping does a number of things. People often complain that they are being "shadowed" by another user. This is using ebay search feature to follow what a person is bidding on. Rather than finding a cool item on their own, they let someone else do the work. Sniping prevents this by not giving the shadowers a chance. Sniping also stops "nibblers" . If you place your max bid on ebay long before the end, there usually are people that keep placing bids until they A) can't pay any more $$ or B) beat the person by one increment. This raises the cost of the item for you. If you snipe, the nibblers don't get a chance.

Okay, I was unaware of this ``shadow'' issue. I understand the point here, somewhat. But this should be a concern for eBay security.

The ``nibblers'' problem is irrelevant. If the nibbler had just bid his maximum amount at the beginning, just like you did, the same outcome would occur. If you can show me how this is not correct, please do so.

"If the nibbler had just bid his maximum amount"

IF is the key word there. They don't, so sniping is quite useful.

Okay. Show me how them nibbling is more detrimental to the honest bidder than if the nibbler had bid honestly as well. In the worst case, it is the same. In some cases, the honest bidder gets the item for less, so it's actually beneficial.

Edit: To expound, you've already stated that the nibbler has a maximum amount he's willing to pay. It's your option (A) from above. First, assume that your maximum is greater than his. If he enters that amount as his maximum bid to begin with, you pay that amount plus one. If he continues to nibble away, you either pay that maximum amount plus one, or the auction runs out, and he's not able to get to his maximum amount, and you pay less. Next, assume that his maximum amount is greater. If he bids it at the beginning, you lose. If he nibbles away and gets to it, you lose. If he nibbles and runs out of time, you get the item.

In both of those cases, you do not lose any ground due to the nibbler, and, in some cases, you're better off.

I think this summarizes the whole thing nicely.

http://www.geocities.com/stevesheriw/bid.htm

In responce to your edit,. If you snipe, the nibbler won't have a chance to enter a bid, which results in you winning at a cheaper price. You say "if the nibbler runs out of time, you get the item" Exactly!

The ``nibblers'' problem is irrelevant. If the nibbler had just bid his maximum amount at the beginning, just like you did, the same outcome would occur.

That's a pretty big if. I don't think all bidders follow this approach. I can't know what is going on in other bidders' minds, but I'd say I base what I do on my informal opinions on buying/bidding psychology (which may be totally wrong)

Let me use my successful Friday snipe bid for that Dell laptop par (It's actually not a perfect example, so I'll tweak it a bit). Let's say that the other bidder was my long-lost twin Bob.

I want that Dell part and I'm willing to pay up to $25. I find an auction with one day left and the last bid is 5 days ago for $14.49. For all I know that bidder (following your rule) has set a firm limit of $15 and will absolutely *not* outbid me if I bid $15.01. However, I consider what Bob might do if I place an open bid and he gets an e-mail saying that he has been outbid. There is the opportunity for him to say "Gee, on second thought I'd be willing to pay $18 for that part" and revise his bid accordingly. I don't know what the likelihood is of that occuring, but it isn't zero. Also, I think that behavior is in keeping with some common observations about auction psychology (again, I may be wrong!) In that scenario, I would have increased the probability that I would pay more than the $15.01 I did pay and conceivably even not win the item for the $25 I decided it was worth to me.

One reason I like sniping is that it is "fire and forget". I *do* behave according to your "pick your bid and stick with it" and I avoid any temptation to monitor the auction and marginally increase my bid to edge somebody out. If I win, I win. If I don't, I don't. I didn't want it that bad

What surprises me about this whole thing is the revelation that Ebay removed the "going going gone" auction-extension feature. This single feature (which used to be there as I recall), made sniping, nibbling, shadowing, etc., completely irrelevant.

I haven't bid on anything on ebay in a long time. Is this true, did the feature really get removed? When, and why?

From what I understand is the US one never had the extension, but I could be wrong. smu said a few days ago that ebay germany had it, maybe that was a testbed?

The last time I ordered from the US ebay, the extension feature was present. This was, however, quite a long time ago.

So, by your definition, sniping is entering your maximum bid at the last moment. I suppose that that makes sense, since it tends to avoid people whose apparent reason for bidding is to screw other people. I understand your point now. I was thinking under the assumption that each person was interested in purchasing an item up to a certain amount of money. I see that that's not necessarily the case. Some people seem to be interested, albeit possibly subconsciously or indirectly through ignorance, in harming other people.

This reminds me of a social experiment I indirectly heard about. A researcher gathered a collection of x number of people and had them play a trivia game for reward (money, I think), based on their scores at the game. The players didn't interact with each other during the game. At the end of the game, all of the players were allowed to see the scores of all of the players. Then they were given two options. Either take the reward based directly on your score, or forfeit a portion of your reward in order to also reduce the rewards of all of the other players. To be clear, the only ``advantage'' to reducing your reward was that the other players rewards would also be reduced. Over two-thirds of the players chose to reduce the rewards.

I hate people.

It occurs to me that eBay bidding should be totally blind. Bid your maximum amount. No one gets to see that you've bid, or what the current maximum bid is. When the auction is over, all is revealed. This would be the most honest way to deal with this sort of proxy auction. It could be more honest than live auctions. But it's not probably in eBay's best interests to do that sort of thing.

> Some people seem to be interested, albeit possibly subconsciously or indirectly through ignorance, in harming other people.

I don't think it is malicous, it's just that some people think that this is Las Vegas. They have a desire to win and are not really thinking about the cost anymore in a rational way. It's that human desire to be on top in any competition, even if perhaps at some point the competition is not something they would want to win anymore if they stepped back and thought about it.

"Never attribute to malice that which can be adequately explained by stupidity."

I always snipe at my maximum. So some of what you wrote is moot. Again, read my intial post for benefits of the software. I don't have the time/patience to individually track auctions. I rely on the fact that most people will NOT bid their maximum. Everyone is always trying to get something for as little money as possible. So they often will not bid their maximum, fearing someone will push it up. eBay is a little different than non-automated auction systems. A lot of people don't understand that either.

Auctions have high and low-traffic periods as well. When selling it pays to do your research to know when and where to list. When buying, nothing beats the last second snipe.

Hey, before automated sniping, I used to see if a competing bidder was online and then I'd see if they had bid on any other auctions. I'd purposefully bid on their other auctions to occupy them while I manually sniped the one I was interested in. This worked numerous times. This was strategy, nothing more, nothing personal.

And Tony, if eBay has extensions it would have been a long time ago. I don't remember that feature being around in 1998.

Bruno

The thing is that everyone would come out on top if they just bid their high bid to begin with. The only advantage to nibbling would seem to be to push an honest bidder's bid higher while still losing, or as protection against the current high bidder responding with nibbling. While this is likely to not be intentional, it's still malicious.