2 May
2018
2 May
'18
12:56 p.m.
On 05/02/2018 05:10 AM, Gordon Henderson via cctalk wrote:
On Tue, 1 May 2018, Hagstrom, Paul via cctalk wrote:
This.
I use a program called esniper - sometimes I win, sometimes I lose,
but when I lose thats OK, because the item sold for more than I was
willing to pay.
Recently however I was unable to use esniper (ebay changed something
that broke it) so put in my max. bid the old fashioned way. I was
winning for a day or so.
Then something very odd happened: very close to the end of the auction
a brand new bidder came in and bid 100x the going rate - that
immediately maxed out my bid - however the seller more or less
immediately cancelled their bid. They waited 10 minutes then did it
again, and again the seller cancelled their bid. My guess is that they
wanted to see if I'd upped my bid. Then a sniper came in and bid more
than me at the last minute. I did feel cheated there though and will
never bid on items from that seller again because I felt they somehow
had a hand in this bidding but I can't prove it, but then again, it's
a sellers market and ebay don't care because they get money from the
sale anyway.
Due to the speed the bid was cancelled I'm more or less convinced it
was the seller doing this and not the winning bidder, however it did
let the winner see my max. bid so may have influenced them. Who knows.
So snipe, "by hand" or with a program and if everyone does it, then it
becomes the same as blind auction then it becomes fair again.
Until the seller withdraws the auction 5 minutes before the end
because "the listing was incorrect", and re-lists it, trying to get more.
I don't like real auctions.? I think it is a stupid way to sell things.?
I certainly wouldn't
agree that this further abomination of the concept is of an value
whatsoever.? If
one has something to sell one should offer it at the price they think it
is worth.? If
someone agrees you have a deal.? If no one agrees the seller needs to
decided if
it is worth lowering the price.? That's business.? Can you imagine of
all business was
done the eBay way?? Your house? Your car?? Your food?? Scary....
bill
On May 1,
2018, at 6:06 PM, Bill Gunshannon via cctalk
<cctalk at classiccmp.org> wrote:
Personally, I find all of this hilarious.? ebay has been shady for
as long
as I have watched it.? I gave up seriously bidding on "auctions"
years ago.
Seems every time I bid and ended out the top bidder it would stay that
way till the auction ended and then suddenly someone beat me by a
dollar.
That's just the way eBay works.? You'll win anyway if your bid is
higher than the other person's snipe.? eBay auto-bids only whatever
it takes to beat you, so one increment higher.? You'll notice that if
you bid $1000 on something with a $10 opening bid, eBay displays this
as a bid of $10, and the time runs out with no other bids, you pay
$10.? And if someone else bids $20, they lose to your new
automatically placed bid of $21.
I don't think there's any advantage to not sniping, since bidding
calls attention to a thing and does encourage people to bid it up
even if your top snipe bid would beat them.? But this is just
basically how the eBay game is played.? I used to snipe by hand, now
I usually let a bot do it. It bids in the last couple of seconds, so
it can look just like what you describe. Sniping wouldn't work if
auctions didn't have a hard end time, but since they do, that's how
it works and they state it all quite clearly.? Maybe sometime
something shady happens though I've yet to see any convincing
evidence of it myself (only people claiming it happens all the time,
all the time), but sniping is not itself shady.