24 Apr
2003
24 Apr
'03
8:02 a.m.
From: Mike <ipscone(a)msdsite.com>
This hurts the seller and should make no difference to the bidder.
NO ONE should ever bid more than they are willing to pay. But with
sniping, people often bid a little higher just to protect their bid. If
there is an extention bids will still not rise higher than anyone is
willing to bid.
I have seen auctions go for $400 on items that normally wouldn't sell for
$300. One bidder contacted me because two people bid that $400 and he
said, "I guess I got stuck. I was just trying to protect my bid." He
paid the auction but clearly bid more than he ever expected or wanted to
pay.
The people that whine the most about sniping, NEVER win auctions, unless
they are the first to see a "low" buy-it-now, on popular items. They just
NEVER bid high enough and would lose anyway.
Hi
I'd once sniped a bid with a value of $145 for an item I wanted.
Knowing the current going rate for the item, $120 was about the
highest I'd seen. The winning bid, also a last minute bid, went
for something over my highest. A couple of days latter, I got
a note from the seller. The asked if I was still interested.
They didn't specify a price so I told them that I thought
a fair price would be 1/2 between the my high price and the
next lowest below me( it was $90 ). They said that I should
pay the full $145. I told them that that was a proxy bid that
wouldn't have been exposed if the other bidder hadn't backed
out and that if I'd won the bid at that price, I'd have
honored it but since I didn't, I was not obligated to pay
that amount and that it was inappropriate for them to demand
that I did, considering that it was not a completed auction.
They claimed that I was wrong and that I was obligated to pay
my high bid.
Anyway, later, I found that the same buyer had purchased
a number of different items from this seller. What was strange
was the variety of the types of items they bought. To be
honest, it really looked like it was a shill bid. Now I tell
sellers that I will only purchase through eBay and not
after bidding when the other seller backs out.
There is more to the story but this gives you the idea.
Dwight
a much
preferred model for me. It is where the sale is extended by a
minute or two
when each bid comes in at the end of the auction.
24 Apr
24 Apr
8:26 a.m.
Why sniping is good:
Many people get upset about having auctions sniped. All this garbage about
extending auctions an extra minute, blah blah blah, is just a dumb idea.
The reason I regularly snipe is purely psychological: If you enter a bid
early on in an item, you're expressing an interest. This likely drives the
price up, since *most* people seem unwilling to set hard prices and stick to
them.
My procedure it to set the price when I notice the item, basically, what's
worth to me. I then track the item, and don't bother bidding if it goes
over my limit. However, if the closing time comes around, and it's still
below my limit, I want until about 3 seconds before close, and submit.
If you're not fast enough, or haven't set a higher price, you lose. I have
no moral quandries about this. There is nothing that I have, do, or know
that makes me a better bidder than anyone else. Simply the ability to stick
to my price, and not show early interest, driving prices up unnecessarily.
And as for the "no interest" technique, no one can gripe about that. I've
seen plenty of buyers at junk stores, hamfests, auctions, etc, that
desparately want an item, but make it seem like "eh, whatever". Why?
Because they *know* if you say "Damn, this is the coolest widget ever, one
of only 5 ever made, I *have* to have it!" they're quite likely to clue the
seller in, or in any case, drive the price up.
Buy low, sell high. To do otherwise is a Enron-esque business model, and
just plain nuts.
--John
9:29 a.m.
Since this seems the time to air eBay gripes, I thought I'd add mine.
Little complaint about the system on the face of it. But my main complaint
is on the oft published figure of 1 fraud out of 10,000*. Now, I've done a
LOT less than that number of purchases, and in that time I've seen enough
frauds to make me want to push the number closer to 1:200... That's a
pretty big difference.
Secondary to that is just the hilarious lack of control over how the seller
will disclose his acceptable payment methods, or shipping price.
Some will leave everything out of the eBay system and send a personal
eMail, Some threaten "Do Not use Unified Checkout", others will send
nothing and rely completely on Unified Checkout... while still leaving off
the shipping price. Then there's the sellers who claim to accept
Check/Money Order on the offer page but the UC'out will Only have
PayPal. Makes me think its all a mess sometimes.
So, they should be more honest about fraud, and they should make
Unified Checkout work for everyone.
just my $0.02 bid
John A.
*may have even been 1:40,000. Anyway, way off.
10:33 a.m.
The way Checkout is set up, it cannot work for everyone as it does not
allow for all the variables that can take place; various shipping
methods (ups, usps, etc), shipping costs (vary by zip code), insurance
(tied to carrier and amount of insurance), international shipping, and a
host of other issues including privacy concernss.
Fraud is most certainly an issue. Ebays response is basically "trust us"
when they haven't earned that trust, and in fact, have done a number of
things to give reasons for *not* trusting them ... as well as their new
acquisition PayPal.
John Allain wrote:
Since this seems the time to air eBay gripes, I thought I'd add mine.
Little complaint about the system on the face of it. But my main complaint
is on the oft published figure of 1 fraud out of 10,000*. Now, I've done a
LOT less than that number of purchases, and in that time I've seen enough
frauds to make me want to push the number closer to 1:200... That's a
pretty big difference.
Secondary to that is just the hilarious lack of control over how the seller
will disclose his acceptable payment methods, or shipping price.
Some will leave everything out of the eBay system and send a personal
eMail, Some threaten "Do Not use Unified Checkout", others will send
nothing and rely completely on Unified Checkout... while still leaving off
the shipping price. Then there's the sellers who claim to accept
Check/Money Order on the offer page but the UC'out will Only have
PayPal. Makes me think its all a mess sometimes.
So, they should be more honest about fraud, and they should make
Unified Checkout work for everyone.
just my $0.02 bid
John A.
*may have even been 1:40,000. Anyway, way off.
11:33 a.m.
There was only 1 auction I didnt go thrrough on, this was for some old
memory I wanted that was cheap. The auction specifically stated checks were
ok. Once I won the guy said he only wanted a money order. I didnt feel like
getting a money order at the time since I was busy as hell so I told him
forget about it. If you state a check is ok, then its OK. If not keep your
item.
These days I pay mostly by paypal. I have never got burned on a transaction
so far from EBAY, newsgroups, or from people I talk to on swaplists or
websites. I must be lucky.
I even had one computer show up DOA (purchased on ebay)and the guy sent me
another one even before I shipped the dead one. I also purchased an old ISA
video card needed for a game rig from a guy on a newsgroup that was doa but
he replaced it without any fuss.
I think the most I ever spent on 1 item was maybe $200. I guess if your
buying more expensive items the chance of fraud goes up quite a bit more.
Expecially on any graded collectables like stamps,coins,porcelin etc...
----- Original Message -----
From: "John Allain" <allain(a)panix.com>
To: "CCTalk" <cctalk(a)classiccmp.org>
Sent: Thursday, April 24, 2003 2:26 PM
Subject: Re: eBay sniping
Since this seems the time to air eBay gripes, I
thought I'd add mine.
Little complaint about the system on the face of it. But my main
complaint
is on the oft published figure of 1 fraud out of
10,000*. Now, I've done
a
LOT less than that number of purchases, and in that
time I've seen enough
frauds to make me want to push the number closer to 1:200... That's a
pretty big difference.
Secondary to that is just the hilarious lack of control over how the
seller
will disclose his acceptable payment methods, or
shipping price.
Some will leave everything out of the eBay system and send a personal
eMail, Some threaten "Do Not use Unified Checkout", others will send
nothing and rely completely on Unified Checkout... while still leaving
off
the shipping price. Then there's the sellers who
claim to accept
Check/Money Order on the offer page but the UC'out will Only have
PayPal. Makes me think its all a mess sometimes.
So, they should be more honest about fraud, and they should make
Unified Checkout work for everyone.
just my $0.02 bid
John A.
*may have even been 1:40,000. Anyway, way off.
10:21 p.m.
On Thu, 24 Apr 2003, TeoZ wrote:
These days I pay mostly by paypal. I have never got
burned on a transaction
so far from EBAY, newsgroups, or from people I talk to on swaplists or
websites. I must be lucky.
I only had one bad experience buying something through a newsgroup. I
advertised a want ad for an Apple ][. Some guy came forward and said he
had one. He said it worked. Ok cool. We negotiated a price of $75.
When I got it, the CPU and socket looked like it had been ripped from the
motherboard. There was no way this thing "worked". So I brought it up
with him and he insisted that he didn't know how it happened. And it
obviously couldn't have happened in transit.
I told the guy to give me my money back and to pay for the shipping of the
unit back to him. He balked. So I went on the newsgroups and posted a
few messages about the transaction. That changed his tune quick. He
complained that I was ruining his reputation. I told him I wasn't saying
anything that wasn't true (which was correct). I made the offer that if
he sent me back $50 I would post a retraction. He did, and I did (I
posted that we had settled the dispute satisfactorily).
The moral of the story: people will always be stupid.
--
Sellam Ismail Vintage Computer Festival
------------------------------------------------------------------------------
International Man of Intrigue and Danger http://www.vintage.org
* Old computing resources for business and academia at www.VintageTech.com *
10:33 a.m.
At 18:23 24/04/2003, you wrote:
All this garbage about
extending auctions an extra minute, blah blah blah, is just a dumb idea.
I dispute that - the "extension" idea is what happens in a "normal"
auction. The auctioneer will take bids until all competing bidders back
out, leaving the one winner. This, naturally, maximises the sale price
(which is good for the seller & the auction house).
As for sniping itself, I personally have no real problem with it (and do it
myself, frequently). It's also interesting (from a psychological POV) as a
seller: I sell very little on eBay, but I find myself watching my own
auction(s) coming to a close & wondering how many snipe bids there'll be...
Personally, I'd like to see eBay introduce the *option* of self-extending
auctions, which continue past their deadline until 5 mins (for example)
after the last bid is placed. That way, as a seller, I get to choose
whether I want sniper bids or not. It's entirely possible that an extending
auction will /reduce/ the final sale price (since people are less likely to
get completely carried away with a top bid); but for popular items I
suspect the reverse is true, since more people are likely to bid for longer
right at the end.
Uninteresting (probably) collarary: I recenly won two Sinclair Cambridge
Programmable calcs, both in excellent condition, one of them in the
original (and remarkably un-battered) box c/w instructions, etc. Normally,
tatty un-boxed examples of these machines go for around £45 each. I got
both for £25.01. Chuffed, I was. However, the usual last second malarkey
was going on, and I'd only bid £25 at the start, fully expecting the price
to hit about £50-£60 or so before the last-second rush. Obviously, though,
the professional snipers were away that day, since there were only a few
bids upping the price towards my £25 limit. When it hit £24, though, I
panicked & bid again (with 2 seconds to spare), thus raising the price over
my own bid by 1 pence...
Duh!
--
Cheers, Ade.
Be where it's at, B-Racing!
http://b-racing.com
10:57 a.m.
At 18:23 24/04/2003, you wrote:
Absolute nonsense! In a normal auction, there is no specified "end time."
These are two completely different formats. In a normal auction,
everyone shows up at the same time and bids. Bidding is only for a few
minutes.
In an eBay auction (a completely different format) everyone has a very
long time to decide.
If you had an extended time feature (or pathetic idea) no one would bid on
a 10 day auction until day 10. There would be no need to, unless you just
couldn't be around.
What you are trying to do is have a completely new format for an auction.
Specified end time with extended provision. You don't have any such
"NORMAL" auction like this.
The only reason people place early bids on eBay is because they are
thinking like this is a "NORMAL" auction, which it is NOT. This is like a
sealed bid auction because the auction ends at a specified time and the
winners will be those that place last second bids (i.e. not seen by
others).
All this garbage about
extending auctions an extra minute, blah blah blah, is just a dumb idea.
I dispute that - the "extension" idea is what happens in a "normal"
auction. The auctioneer will take bids until all competing bidders back
out, leaving the one winner. This, naturally, maximises the sale price
(which is good for the seller & the auction house). 
11:06 a.m.
On Thursday, April 24, 2003, at 02:54 PM, Mike wrote:
If you had an extended time feature (or pathetic idea) no one would
bid on
^^^^^^^^^^^^^
That's rude, gratuitous, antagonistic, escalatory and uncalled for.
Regardless of agreement/disagreement with the proposition, there's no
point or profit in being uncivil about it.
Doc
2:10 p.m.
Adrian Vickers wrote:
I'd only bid ?25 at the start, fully expecting the price to hit
about ?50-?60 or so before the last-second rush. Obviously, though,
the professional snipers were away that day, since there were only
a few bids upping the price towards my ?25 limit. When it hit ?24,
though, I panicked & bid again (with 2 seconds to spare), thus
raising the price over my own bid by 1 pence...
To save any confusion, I should point out that raising your (already
winning) maximum bid doesn't normally raise the current price for an
item. You only got caught out because the previous bidder's non-winning
bid was less than one increment off your winning bid. Any new bids have
to beat current bids by at least one increment.
Hmm ... maybe that didn't unconfuse things! I'm not going to reveal your
eBay name here, Adrian, but if you go to http://vt100.net/rebay and type
in the appropriate auction number, you'll be able to see a blow-by-blow
account of the auction, in time order.
- Paul
8:40 a.m.
--- "Dwight K. Elvey" <dwightk.elvey(a)amd.com> wrote:
Hi
I'd once sniped a bid with a value of $145 for an
item I wanted.
Knowing the current going rate for the item, $120
was about the
highest I'd seen. The winning bid, also a last
minute bid, went
for something over my highest. A couple of days
latter, I got
a note from the seller. The asked if I was still
interested.
They didn't specify a price so I told them that I
thought
a fair price would be 1/2 between the my high price
and the
next lowest below me( it was $90 ).
In this situation I always offer what the final
auction price would of been if the top bidder didn't
exist, that is, the high bid of the third bidder, $90
in your case, I am suprised you offered more then
that.
(well its actually $90 + bid increment, probably
$91.50 or so)
The New Yahoo! Search - Faster. Easier. Bingo
http://search.yahoo.com
7760
days inactive
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10 comments
11 participants
participants (11)
-
allain＠panix.com -
avickers＠solutionengineers.com -
celigne＠celigne.freeserve.co.uk -
doc＠mdrconsult.com -
dwightk.elvey＠amd.com -
gkicomputers＠yahoo.com -
ipscone＠msdsite.com -
jcwren＠jcwren.com -
marvin＠rain.org -
teoz＠neo.rr.com -
vcf＠siconic.com