I just got schooled on Ebay.

[Brian May]

 

Dude, I think you've misunderstood the fine art of sniping. Snipers (and I'm one of 'em) don't bid some ridiculously high amount. Instead, they try to *guess* what the minimum bid required to win would be, and then they wait until the last possible moment to make that bid. If an item has a current price of $200 and you're willing to pay $235, then instead of announcing your intentions, you bid $235 with only 40 seconds left in the auction. Nuttin' wrong with 'dat.

 

 

 

40 seconds? Thats too long!! You need to do it in 10 seconds or even 5 if you got a fast internet connection/pc. I've left it to 15 seconds once on someone elses PC...but the damn thing was so slow that it took 15 seconds for their pc to get to the next page "confirm bid"...:mad:Never had that happen on mine though.

[ashasha]

 

Yeah but your entire post is predicated on the idea that you know what that other guy is thinking. I'm saying you can't possibly know what the other guy would have done. There is every bit as much chance that some other guy is snipping just like you at the end of an auction by bidding 302 dollars leaving you equally pissed off. Or the first dude in your equation really just didn't want it anyway. Or he did and was always going to come back at you from the get go. Maybe you've lost some auctions where you bid high early and you think that because some guy had time to think about it then he came back and out bid you. But judge based on a few events like that. I'm sure given enough time and auctions you have just as many cases where your bid stands up and people don't come back on you. Like in Poker people only remember their bad beats and not many of the good hands they've won. I just think the whole idea that you guys base this around is trying to "out think" some other guy but you can't possibly know what his intentions are. In that aspect bidding is not poker at all. The only variable you can control in this situation is yourself. Your last point is valid. But it still seems to me like you are relying on others for your level of commitment. If you see one you like, and bid on it and then another one comes along that's better and cheaper...well...that's life. If you made a commitment, stick too it.

 

 

I agree that if the guy's willing to spend more than me than he can have it. I just have a feeling that if I put my best shot out there prior to the very end that emotions come into play. Plus if that guy is sitting there bidding it up $1-5 at a time until he is the leading bidder than he probably won't be there in the last 30 seconds. Why jack the price up at any time?

 

It isn't just about winning the auction at my cap it's trying to win it for as cheap as possible.

 

Either way it works very well for me. I have my max and if I win it for anything less than that I am happy.

[noisebloom]

Damn- I'm about to ebay some stuff. By the sounds of it, shill bidders could be doing me a favour Why would someone shill bid though? Doesn't that mean they're then paying more for my stuff?

 

Shilling is sometimes used as a carrot by a seller to lure interested bidders into bidding further. A shill bid will raise the price on a bid by just enough that it's beatable, and tries to keep the bidder interested in winning. It's trying to incite competitive bidding. A seller may try to pump up the action on an auction with shill bids, trying to raise the final bid price for the maximum possible profit.

 

Shill bidding can also be done to begin the bidding on an item that hasn't had a bid yet, in the attempt to generate interest for the item.

 

Shilling can also come late in an auction, simply to pump up the final bid price (by sellers or perhaps vengeful bidders), or also to try to get some late activity going for a higher selling price.

[soundcreation]

 

It isn't just about winning the auction at my cap it's trying to win it for as cheap as possible. Either way it works very well for me. I have my max and if I win it for anything less than that I am happy.

 

 

Yeah I know. I've done it myself as well....a couple times...lol. But what that tells me is I haven't really set a maximum price...what I've done is set a range that I would be happy with and hope to get it at the lower end of the range. In that case I do agree that bidding/sniping in the last few minutes would be preferable.

 

My point only is that if you set your true Max price...that price being the lowest possible end of your "range", or your "great deal" price, then sniping becomes totally irrelevant for reasons which should be obvious.

 

As far as shilling goes that is something that should be policed and dave's suggestion still stands that if someone shills up to your bid and just over then cancels...all their bids should be erased. But even then...if you've put your best deal price as your maximum and stick to it, you'll still think you are getting a great deal...and even the shilling, while irritating, still won't really affect your attitude cause you got a great deal.

[jhorne]

 

I hear you - if he cancels his bid, it should cancel all his bids, so that your high bid goes back to before he started running it up.

 

 

This is the way I have always seen it work. If someone bid multiple times on one of my auctions, then they canceled their bid, or if they ask me to cancel their bid, it actually cancels all of their bids, not just the last one.

 

I haven't seen this lately, so maybe something has changed, but it really doesn't make much sense to just cancel the last bid...

[ido1957]

On a recent ebay auction, I was too anxious to win (I admit it). I bid high early on and I swear the seller shill bid it up to my max (which was too high to start with). I ended up paying way too much but i got what I wanted so I guess there's a silver lining, though a costly lesson. Same seller sold a second exact same item for less than half what I paid the following week. Ticked me right off! I reported the shill bidding but eBay did nothing about it. Why am I not surprised? I'll never bid that high that early ever again. I'll wait until the last few seconds next time.

[Sheraton]

Fool me once; shame on you. Fool me twice; shame on me.

 

Good lesson, I hope it wasn't too costly. My problem with lessons like that is that every time I look at the item I bought, I don't see the item. I see the stupid mistake I made and end up selling it to purge myself of the reminder of my stupidity.

[DeadNight Warrior]

Yeah, I was bidding on an old Ibanez RG (770 maybe? don't recall) and the bidding got a bit questionable. I'd already pulled out, but the figure was just starting to get a bit . Started snooping around a bit, and managed to figure out that the guy had another account (or a buddy with an account maybe), and was bidding on his own auctions to jack the price up. Reported it, auction got pulled, and then when he relisted it went for nowhere near the $ he was aiming for the first time around.

 

Was a bit of a pain to figure it out though, what with Ebay obscuring names and whatnot all over the place.

[Philphine]

i snipe now. ebay makes it wasy to do without an extra snipe program if you already have a bid in.

 

the reason i do it is, say someone else is interested in what you're after. if you throw your bid up too early the other person has time to reconsider if he wants to pay more. maybe he was gonna hold at $250, but you went $255 with hours or days left. he has time to think what's another $5.

 

you throw your bid up with 8 seconds left, and you may lose if you misguess any other high bids. but if it's high enough, there's no time for any one else to think about it.

 

now if i see something i want i put in the lowest bid i can, just to be on the board. then i watch it and come back at the end and throw in my max. if you're already on the board it lets you do a "one click bid" any time in the last hour of the auction and even shows the time running down. i tried it once at around 4-5 seconds and it didn't register my bid, but at 8-10 seconds it works.

[Philphine]

oh, and on shill bids, i think if someone cancels their last bid, all their bids should drop off so the price goes back to where ever it was before they effected the auction.