How to Win on Ebay: Snipe 676
grammar fascist writes "A study by South Korean physicists confirms what some of us have taken for granted for a long time: a single bid at end of auction nets the most wins. From the article: 'Plugging all those data into the model and testing the outcome in terms of how the auctions turned out, the team found that the probability of submitting a winning bid on an item indeed drops with each bid. "Our analysis explicitly shows that the winning strategy is to bid at the last moment as the first attempt rather than incremental bidding from the start." The study appears in the current Physical Review E journal.'"
And this is indeed a serious problem with EBay... (Score:5, Insightful)
Not only that (Score:5, Insightful)
Sure, but... (Score:3, Insightful)
Sure, but does that get you the best price? The whole point of eBay's bidding system is that you supply your maximum bid, and they bid for you up to that amount. Thus, you spend less time spamming F5, and you get the best possible price (assuming your max is high enough). Sniping is best used for snatching rare items for which money is no object and using it on any old item is both a waste of time and possibly money.
Physicists? (Score:3, Insightful)
First off, we needed a study to tell us this? Second, these were physicists? Pardon me if I'm not seeing the physics in online auctions.
If this story were on Fark.com, I think it would merit the 'still no cure for cancer' tagline.
Did they miss the obvious? (Score:5, Insightful)
If you only bid once on an item, it could be the only bid. I wonder if they controlled for that.
I've always wondered this... (Score:2, Insightful)
Easy solution? (Score:4, Insightful)
But why doesn't EBay operate like flesh-and-blood auctions? Keep the bidding open for the normal duration of time, but then extend the auction time whenever a new bid is placed? You know, like "going, going, gone!" Fairly easy to add 3 or 5 minutes to the end of an auction -- and those who haven't set incremental bidding can still get in on the close if they want to.
Re:And this is indeed a serious problem with EBay. (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:And this is indeed a serious problem with EBay. (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:And this is indeed a serious problem with EBay. (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:And this is indeed a serious problem with EBay. (Score:4, Insightful)
Exactly why I don't bother with eBay ... (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:And this is indeed a serious problem with EBay. (Score:5, Insightful)
Wouldn't eBay's automatic bidding prevent that? If you were willing to bid $20 and it was currently at $10, th esniper needs to bid $21 to win, which is in theory more than you were willing to pay. Personally I'm suspicious of such tools, but the idea is in the event of a tie the earliest bidder wins, right?
Re:And this is indeed a serious problem with EBay. (Score:5, Insightful)
If the dumbasses that got their auction "stolen" at the last minute didn't put in the absolute maximum that they wanted to pay for the item, then that's their own fault. Either your willing to pay more than anyone else or your not. If you don't put your maximum bid in straight off and keep incrementing your bid, you are really just engaging in really inefficient sniping.
Adding a ten minute extension wouldn't really solve this. It would work great for sellers because the emotionally invested bidders would run up their bids more than they otherwise would. The buyers however would be better off just joining the snipers rather than fighting them. If everyone sniped it would basically revert to the pre-sniping days.
Exactly: money is no object (Score:5, Insightful)
By sniping, they lower the final price by hiding the information of what they're willing to bid. The auto-bidding feature is supposed to do that for you, but information still leaks out: it tells you the value of the second-higest bid, which is probably close to that of the highest bid. It's a good proxy of the actual price, and you're raising that.
Personally, I don't get too bugged about the snipers. I know what it's worth to me and let the auto-bidders handle it. If I get sniped, it means they were willing to pay more than I was. The seller gets screwed a bit, because the sniper was hiding their willingness to pay more (and therefore probably more than they ended up paying.) But the only thing being done to me as a bidder is that I got my hopes up.
So I don't get my hopes up, and I don't bid on eBay for anything I really, really want. I use eBay not for its auction, but for its flea-market: the ability to get stuff I can't get elsewhere. I usually just pay the "buy it now" price.
Re:And this is indeed a serious problem with EBay. (Score:3, Insightful)
Your solution would certainly appear to be of benefit to sellers on the surface, but it would stike a blow against one of the main attractions of EBay -- the chance to snag a deal! EBay is unlikely to add a feature that reduces the number of bidders it attacts, because this would hurt EBay and the sellers far more than a bit of sniping.
Re:And this is indeed a serious problem with EBay. (Score:5, Insightful)
thing with the auction concept is you're SUPPOSED to bid what you'd like to pay if no one else is running up the price (rinse. lather, repeat) until you reach your wallet's limit. eBay's modification imposes a time limit to keep auctions from taking forever, but with the maximum bid concept it brings its 'auction' back towards the original.
the reason people snipe (vs. just bidding their personal maximum to start) is fear of being run up by shills. it's a survival mechanism for your money, if such a thing isn't self-contradicting on eBay...
If you call that "winning" (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:And this is indeed a serious problem with EBay. (Score:5, Insightful)
pay more, but getting sniped at the end of the auction you really wanted sure sucks, so in that way the buyer
wins.
If you "really wanted" the item, why wasn't your maximum bid price higher?
When I buy something on eBay, I always bit the most I'm willing to pay for the item. The items I win are usually nowhere close to what my maximum bid could have been, and the items I don't win sold for more than I was willing to spend.
Snipers cost people like me nothing. The only way they can hurt you is if you are compulsive spender who suddenly wants something even more just because somebody else was willing to pay $1.50 more than you originally thought it was worth.
Re:And this is indeed a serious problem with EBay. (Score:5, Insightful)
eBay has certainly considered and rejected this idea. If this were an auction type offered on eBay, every rational seller would choose it.
The reason it's not offered is that eBay is more dependent on bidders than sellers at the end of the day. Yes, sellers pay the fees to eBay, but sellers are less mobile than buyers - if a seller is not going to use eBay, what will they use? No other auction site has traffic within an order of magnitude of eBay. Most sellers' only other rational option is a local fixed-price sale through, e.g. craigslist - not an acceptible option to many sellers. Thus, how the sellers feel about sniping is immaterial to eBay - they're the only game in town and the sellers will come anyway.
OTOH, buyers care less about where they buy things than sellers do about how they sell them. Change the rules on eBay at this point and they will alienate their base of idiots^Wbuyers - the traffic that keeps eBay the only game in town. They already have a major fraud problem that's driving sales of some especially fraud-prone categories like computers and electronics to sites focusing on local cash deals like craigslist. The last thing they want is to change anything else that might alienate buyers.
(Yes, some buyers hate sniping, but most buyers hate bidding wars even more. Anything that helps sellers raise their average sale price hurts buyers, and since the buyers are what bring in the sellers...)
-Isaac
Re:People are strange and irrational (Score:5, Insightful)
This isn't as irrational as you might suppose.
I might bid a maximum of $75 on an old computer that's hard to find, but once I find out that 4 other people are willing to bid higher than that, the perceived value of the old computer has now risen in my eyes, based on the perceived demand. I therefore might be willing to spend more money on that old computer, knowing that the market is large enough so that I could sell it back if I wanted to.
Re:Sure, but... (Score:3, Insightful)
Often it does, it depends on the other bidders and human nature.
Ahh, but the thing is human nature is to not bid your absolute maximum bid right away but to test the waters. Generally people who bid early bid only the minimum, or a small amount above the minimum even if they're willing to pay much more than that. Sniping just takes advantage of human nature to try and win the auction cheaper. Snipers generally do bid their absolutely maximum bid but do it at the last moment. The people who bidded earlier and didn't put in their max lose and are dissapointed, but it's their own fault that they lost. You can quite easily beat a sniper as long as you're willing to pay more than they are and you bid your maximum bid, no matter when you place it. That's the key, you have to bid your real maximum.
Incidentally sniping doesn't always result in low winning bids, especially not if multiple people snipe the same auction. The bid can jump up significantly in the last few seconds that way. So occasionally sniping benefits the seller as well.
Auto-extending the auction after the last bid? (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:Sure, but... (Score:5, Insightful)
Exactly (Score:2, Insightful)
The story is wrong. The best way to get something is not to bid at the last moment, but to bid the most money. It works for me.
Re:And this is indeed a serious problem with EBay. (Score:3, Insightful)
As long as you bid your maximum amount whenever you bid then sniping isn't an issue. The thing is human nature is to not bid the max at first, but to just test the waters and bid the minimum or a bit over it. I think people are thinking they can always bid higher later. (I've seen people who know about sniping do this too, so it's human nature not just newbies to eBay.)
You are correct, in the event of a tie the earliest bid wins. Also the increments can get odd when eBay's automatic bidding decides things, so you can lose by a penny if the other person's max bid is even a penny more than yours. The set increments only matter when placing a bid, you have to bid at least one set increment higher than the current winning bid, but the final winning bid doesn't have to be by a set increment, just higher than any other bids.
Re:And this is indeed a serious problem with EBay. (Score:1, Insightful)
Theoretically the auction mode that eBay uses guarantees that the winning bidder pays the minimum increase above the second highest bid. The winning bidder never pays his own price. He pays the second highest bidder's price + $1. So, if you pay someone else's highest bid, maybe you can influence that bid? That's what sniping does. You influence what the second highest bid is by keeping the price low until the end of the auction. If everybody predetermined their maximum bid, that wouldn't work, but that's not how people bid on eBay. When people join the auction, their bid depends on the current top bid. Some people get carried away and bid more than the item costs in the brick & mortar store around the corner, if they see that otherwise they won't get it. Sniping means that you don't give them that impression until it's too late for them to bid.
Re:And this is indeed a serious problem with EBay. (Score:5, Insightful)
From my perspective, I don't like that model because I know how much it will inflate the price of items on eBay. The reason I snipe is because I learned years ago that people get attached to the particular item they're bidding on, and if given the chance will end up ratcheting the price well beyond what it's actually worth because they got caught up in trying to win.
If eBay implemented a system like you describe, I think that while they would make more money from each auction, total use of the system would decline because most people aren't interested in paying high prices.
Re:And this is indeed a serious problem with EBay. (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:And this is indeed a serious problem with EBay. (Score:5, Insightful)
That is why it is always worth bidding an oddball amount slightly higher than your target bid, like $20.53 instead of $20 even.
Re:Easy solution? (Score:3, Insightful)
The sniping phenomenon is a solution to the problem that bids are visible to other users. In effect it transforms the auction into a blind auction, except for those people that don't understand it that well.
Another thing to note is that even ebay is by far no perfect market. A lot of items I look at have been viewed less than 25 times, and the amount of bids will also stay fairly low. With such low numbers in a sample, the variation will go through the roof. And because of buyers' bias (never buy an item over the 'real' value) that variation is distributed very uneven at the low side.
Re:Exactly (Score:5, Insightful)
I'm still trying to figure out why "putting in the max value you mean to pay as soon as possible" is not the optimal strategy. I don't eBay much, but I don't get sniped, because I do this. All sniping does is raise the amount I have to pay (but still at or below my max) at the last minute in a way I completely expect, or causes the amount to go over what I'm willing to pay, in which case I shrug and move on with life.
This whole sniping thing is one of the larger gigantic wastes of time and fury I can think of. Use the system as designed and it all works.
Re:And this is indeed a serious problem with EBay. (Score:3, Insightful)
Which would be fine... (Score:3, Insightful)
If you need evidence of this, just take a look at some bidding histories on eBay and see bids being increased between two or more people.
thing is (Score:5, Insightful)
the result is they overpay for the item and you don't get it at all, the only winner is the seller.
sniping does not encourage this behaviour as by the time they see thier outbid its too late.
Re:Easy solution? (Score:2, Insightful)
In the early days when there wasn't only ebay, there used to be auction sites that use the traditional method of ending an auction
Re:Exactly (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:Exactly (Score:5, Insightful)
Your problem is that you don't realise that there are a lot of nonlogical people out there, who don't bid their maximum price, but put in a bid, then if they see they've been outbid, put in another one and so forth. To minimise the inflationary effect of those fools, bid as late as possible, not as early as possible.
That's why sniping is the smart move. It's not the snipers that are the cause of the "problem", it's those incremental bidders. Snipers are just keeping your price DOWN (despite all appearances to the contrary) to the benefit of all bidders...
Re:Exactly (Score:5, Insightful)
You got caught up in the game of 'obtaining the product'. You do not go to an auction to obtain the product. You go the STORE to obtain the product. Anyone can "obtain the product" at any auction. I can beat your silly Snipig strategy simply by offering 10 times the value of the product as my max bid.
Only a fool would do that you say? Of course. Any strategy that is the 'best strategy to win an auction is by definition something only a fool would do. That is the nature of auctions. When you go to an auction the point is NOT to obtain the product.
Instead the point is to get the product at a CHEAPER price than standard
Any time there are people out there sniping on a product than whoever wins the bid is BY DEFINITION THE LOSER, not the winner.
I used to hate being sniped, but then I fell in love with it - it protected me from over-paying for something.
The real way to 'win' at the auction is instead to find a product that has so little interest that people are not sniping. You also generally have to totally avoid 'business' sales and look for the UN-professional, individuals doing the selling. Key things to do are to look for mis-spellings, and poor pictures.
Re:And this is indeed a serious problem with EBay. (Score:5, Insightful)
Then $10.00 wasn't really a maximum value was it? The fault would be yours for not bidding $10.05 in the first place. If you bid your absolute maximum amount on every auction, then when you get outbid you won't feel bad for losing the auction.
Works for me - I see something I like, then I bid my max and forget about it. If I get an email later saying that I won the auction, I go back and pay. I turn off those uselsss "you have been outbid" emails.
Re:And this is indeed a serious problem with EBay. (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:And this is indeed a serious problem with EBay. (Score:4, Insightful)
where the auction would extend 10 minutes after the last bid. Most of the profit on items came during this "extended"
period of time, and the bidding could get quite furious.
From a technology view-point, this made the closing auction logic complicated (which then affects category pages and
search results).
From eBay's perspective they've already captured the listing fee, and the 10-20% movement in price achieved by
extending the auction nets them (eBay) only a few more pennies on their percentage of selling price, so why
would they bother? It's the same tension as real-estate agents - they'd rather get a $100,000 sale 10 days into
a home's listing than a $120,000 sale 60 days in e.g. a $5000 (assuming 5% commission) at 10 days than $6000
at 60 days. Can you blame them?
-Slak
Re:Exactly (Score:5, Insightful)
Look, what would have happened if they also tested the "Moron's Ebay Strateg". That strategy is simple - offer 10 times the actual value of the item. See a computer worth 2,000? Put in a Max bid of 20,000.
Guess which strategy 'wins' the auction?
The study is flawed, it asked the stupid question, not the smart one.
If you want to BUY something, go to the store.
If you want to "Pay less money than at a store", then go to Ebay, and DON'T TRY TO WIN THE AUCTION.
If you consistently win the auction, that means you paid too much money for the item.
Instead, keep using the "Put the max value you will pay", and do it in the RIGHT auctions.
How to find the right auctions?
Look for NON-businesses. (They put in a floor and are just wasting your time 90%) Look for mis-spelled products. And look for things that have few bidders. And be ready to LOSE MOST of the biddings to fools that paid too much. And be ready to accept a product that is not exactly what you wanted, but satisfies your needs for much less than what you expected to pay.
Re:ebay's fault (Score:4, Insightful)
I have read that if eBay were to implement this rule, then eBay would fall under more U.S. states' auction regulations.
Isn't this how eBay already works?
Re:And this is indeed a serious problem with EBay. (Score:1, Insightful)
What you describe is the reason why sniping works. People have a problem with the word "maximum". If $10 is the maximum amount that you're willing to pay, it means that you are not willing to pay 5 cents more. Otherwise $10 wasn't the maximum. Ebay auctions are set up in a way that doesn't make you pay your highest bid. Instead it makes you pay what the second highest bidder was willing to pay plus the minimum increase. Every single auction on ebay ends with someone not getting the item because someone else snagged it for just one dollar more. There is a limit where you wouldn't increase your bid by even one dollar. That is your maximum bid. More here. [slashdot.org]
Re:Exactly (Score:3, Insightful)
Caught up? I snipe, with the maximum amount I'm willing to pay, because I got "caught up"? This is precisely the opposite. You do not know what the hell you are talking about.
At the same time, the idea is to obtain the object at the lowest possible price, something which is at or below the maximum price I am willing to pay. Obtaining the object is the reason I go to ebay. Otherwise I could just read reviews and look at pictures - but I'm trying to GET the item. It's the whole point.
I haven't paid too much for something on ebay yet. Or at least, not more than I was willing to pay.
Re:Exactly (Score:3, Insightful)
Uh, no. The point is to get a product I want or need at a price I'm willing to pay. That price doesn't have to be cheaper than "standard", it just has to be a price I will pay.
Re:Exactly (Score:1, Insightful)
Re:And this is indeed a serious problem with EBay. (Score:4, Insightful)
The thing is, even if one bids the absolute maximum one can pay, 10 cents more is still just 10 cents more.
Unless you happened to bid your entire economy on an item, you'll always be able to afford 10 cents more with no problem whatsoever.
Sniping works because of competitive psychology (Score:3, Insightful)
The reason that sniping is the best strategy is because an auction is a competition. One way to help win a competition is to reduce the number competitors. On eBay that means not indicating your interest in an item until the very last seconds of the auction.
In a confusing environment like eBay, many people look for validation of their decisions. One way to validate their uncertain decision is by bidding on something that someone else is bidding on. It makes some people feel good that there is someone else that made the same choice as they did. If you multiply this out, you end up with auctions having 20+ bidders (the madness of crowds). That's a lot of competition. The chances of winning against that many bidders is poor.
If you want to have less competition, and thus win, do not indicate your interest in an item until you have to.
Re:And this is indeed a serious problem with EBay. (Score:3, Insightful)
You know, that really is how ebay should work. Would totally get rid of sniping for good.
Re:And this is indeed a serious problem with EBay. (Score:3, Insightful)
And even if I don't save money, i'd rather have an item for $121 than not have it at $120. I realize that this would be a bad strategy in a real auction, but eBay isn't a real auction.
-matthew
when to snipe and when not to (Score:3, Insightful)
If the item up for auction is a rare collector's item
and you are a collector and MUST have the item, then
snipe you must.
But if the item is readily available elsewhere and you
are just looking for a bargin, then just place a bid
for the highest price that you are willing to pay and
walk away.
Re:And this is indeed a serious problem with EBay. (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:And this is indeed a serious problem with EBay. (Score:1, Insightful)
Re:And this is indeed a serious problem with EBay. (Score:5, Insightful)
Before you put in your first bid, you should know EXACTLY how much you're willing to pay. And then you NEVER go past that amount.
But then you lose the ability to gauge the market.
Let's say, for example, that there is some old game on eBay that I want to buy. I really want it, and I'd personally pay $500 for one to get my hands on it. But, from the eBay past auction history, I see that they usually sell for about $100. Now I don't know about you, but if I know something usually goes for about $100, I'd rather pay about $100 and use the extra $400 on something else. (See that? I would pay up to $500, if that was what they sold for. But, since they don't, I'd prefer to pay less.) I would hate to be the person who won one for $475 when the ones the week before and the week after went for $100.
So I put my early bid in at the average selling price, about $100. If I see the price go up to $101 and it's less than a few hours before it ends, I might bump it up to $110. That's still well below my maximum, but it's reasonable to me. If it goes up to $115, I might bump it up to $120. Or, maybe by then another one is listed, and I'll move to it. Or, I'll see that I'm bidding against 5-6 others, and so I'll pass this one up and wait for the demand to die down. I can't do any of those things if I start out with a bid of $150 - maybe I'd lose it, or maybe I'd pay $149 when five more were listed during the week - oversupplying the demand - at $100 each.
What you suggest - bidding the absolute bank-breaking max that I might theoretically be willing to pay - would only work if A) people couldn't get friends to bump up their own auctions, and B) eBay let me, at any time, adjust downward the proxy margin I had previously placed on an item, so that I could adjust for market changes, without any penalty like those associated with withdrawing bids.
(Why don't I just snipe? I rarely remember to go back and check the items at the exact time of closing.)
Re:And this is indeed a serious problem with EBay. (Score:2, Insightful)
No. Any buyer with brains will determine an accurate value for an item, set his max bid appropriately, and let the proxy do his work him, and never re-bid higher than his maximum. If you get into the "I have to win this item no matter what" game, you will end up spending more money and overpaying and doing exactly what eBay wants you to do. It's a sucker's game.
Sniping only works if everyone else is sniping. If I set my max bid to $20 and that is the most I feel the item is worth, it doesn't matter how many snipers there are. If they want to snipe higher than $20 then I wasn't going to win the item anyway. And all the sniping in the world isn't going to get them the item if they snipe lower than $20. There is a huge difference between trying to "win" the item, and simply "buying" the item. Really smart buyers do not get emotionally attached to the auction, and let the proxy do all the work.
Comment removed (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:And this is indeed a serious problem with EBay. (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:And this is indeed a serious problem with EBay. (Score:5, Insightful)
Au contraire. Regarding the final price, sniping only works if there are non-rational bidders. Rational bidders bid once and put in their (current) true maximum bid. Intelligent rational people do so at the last minute. If there are only rational bidders, sniping still provides a small advantage because you don't commit to an auction and can always switch to a different auction. But if there are also irrational bidders, the type of people who think that the maximum is a number that can be increased if necessary, then sniping also likely results in a lower price. Since the behaviour of these people depends on the other bids, not putting in your bid until right before the end means that you don't contribute to the amount that they're willing to pay. Since Ebay auctions are second-price auctions, their price is the price you're going to pay (unless another rational person outbids them), and every dollar that they bid lower is a dollar you save if you win the auction.
Re:Sniper fees (Score:3, Insightful)
1. The presence of bids on an item increases its perceived desirability and also its visibility.
2. Once someone has bid on something, they are psychologically committed, and there's a chance they'll get into a bidding war with someone else.
If, as is claimed, sniping is the best strategy, then every successful snipe is preventing at least one higher bid that could otherwise have been entered and would have won. As a seller, that's not in my best interests.
Wrong optimization problem (Score:5, Insightful)
For many regular users of ebay, the purpose of ebay auctions is not to maximize economic profit on one single auction. The purpose is to maximize total economic profit across many dozens of auctions conducted over a long period of time. When you are a repeat participant, it can make sense to adopt a strategy which often leaves money on the table, as long as the same strategy has a small probability of winning a lot of money.
The effectiveness of sniping cannot be explained in purely economic terms; one needs a smattering of game theory. In pure economic terms, your strategy of always bidding your maximum leads to minimal risk: either you win the auction and pay less than your maximum, thus profiting the difference, or you lose the auction and do nothing. Obviously, under your strategy, you would always prefer to win the auction, since this is the only scenario that leads to profit. The problem with this strategy is that you are less likely to win the auction if you place your bid first, because
- Information is asymmetric: by revealing your bid first, you give other participants more information, and more information always helps their strategy (yes I realize eBay hides your true maximum, but nevertheless your bid leaks information -- if nothing else it leaks the information that you are participating);
- Other participants are irrational: The presence of your bid actually causes other people to bid higher than they otherwise would, for various unfathomable reasons which have no grounding in logic.
Because the impact of these problems (especially 2) is somewhat unpredictable and random, the bidding process resembles a type of prisoners dilemma, in which per-instance profit-maximizing play is often not long-term optimal. What makes eBay profitable for repeat buyers is the prospect of winning a small number of auctions at prices far far below the true worth of the items. The sniping strategy is the only way in practice to win an auction at a price dramatically below the true worth of the item, because if you bid your maximum at the outset then the other participants will respond (irrationally) in a manner that raises the winning price. In fact, ironically, the information asymmetry problem exacerbates the irrational bid-raising problem under the eBay auction model, since under this auction model one's true maximum represents a crucial piece of hidden information, and the only way to find out this information is to place bids yourself until you exceed someone else's maximum.For a repeat participant, it is rational and profitable to take the risk of losing (say) 10 auctions each at a price within $10 under the true worth of the item, in order to have a 1 in 10 chance of winning one of those auctions at a price $100 less than true value. Unless eBay changes their auction rules, sniping is and will remain the best way to maximize expected earnings across a large number of auctions.
If all of this doesn't convince you, then maybe the information asymmetry argument alluded to above will convince you. Since placing a bid reveals information to the other participants, you are always better off placing your bid as late as possible in order to minimize the information available to competing bidders. Doing so certainly never hurts you (if we ignore for the moment eBay's tiebreaker rules, whose effects are negligible, since the costs imposed by bidding second are less than the transaction costs of the sale), and it can sometimes help you if the other participants are irrational, which they are.
Re:And this is indeed a serious problem with EBay. (Score:5, Insightful)
Ok, let's say I feel like paying $20 and bid $20 early. Then some newbie retard (ebay is full of them) comes and says, "Hmm, that guy thinks it's worth $20, so I'll pay $25". Ok, I've now just lost the item. Alternatively, nobody bids on it and newbie retard says, "I dunno, I guess I'll bid $10, since maybe I'll get it real cheap". At the last second I can then come along and snipe my $20, and win the item. Same $20 top bid, but I lose on the first auction and win on the second.
Re:And this is indeed a serious problem with EBay. (Score:5, Insightful)
Why on earth do people bid over and over again, or wake up at a specific time? The eBay system is set up so you can put down the single bid you are willing to pay for an item. The automatic system does it for you. It doesn't show anyone what your maximum amount is; in fact the system is set up to the advantage of the buyer, because if I'm willing to pay $100 but the second bidder only bids $20, then the seller only gets $22 of what I was willing to pay and I keep the rest in my pocket. The problem with eBay is that people treat it as a conventional bid, believing for some reason that you should bid over and over again, just above the opposition. This is actually bad for the buyer, because it tends to draw people into bidding higher than they would originally peg as their maximum.
If you use the system as it is designed, then you cannot be "sniped". You can be outbid by someone who was willing to pay more than you, and it doesn't actually matter whether that happens a second after you bid or a second before the auction closes. If you're outbid, then someone was willing to pay more than you were; simple. However the masses simply do not comprehend this and continue bidding by the rules from another system, which are simply wrong here.
Sniping works against those who don't understand eBay.
Re:And this is indeed a serious problem with EBay. (Score:3, Insightful)
If you go into an auction without knowing the absolute maximum you will pay for the items you're bidding on, you're a damn fool who is going to get taken to the cleaners.
Chris Mattern
Re:And this is indeed a serious problem with EBay. (Score:3, Insightful)
True enough. However...
Sniping does get you bargains precisely because people don't put in their max bids. Try putting a test bid on an item that is just higher than the current high bid but lower than your max. Chances are the former high bidder will come back and outbid you again. If I was to put my max in early against such a person, he'd just bid up until hitting his max or until I was outbid. However, sniping against such a person can save some bucks. I just put my max in at the last minute/second. For me, sniping is all about saving a few bucks.
Re:That's partly because of our consumer-oriented (Score:3, Insightful)
eBay could fix this by a) having an auction extended by an hour if any bids come in during the last hour; b) not allowing anyone to bid during that last (extended) hour if they hadn't already bid at least once. This would tend to make people bid on an item earlier, which (since people are bidding irrationally) will tend to drive up prices, which will result in increased fees for eBay.
From the commentary in the USA Today article, they do acknowledge that sniping works because many bidders are naive or irrational. By sniping, you avoid giving these irrational bidders information as to how high you'd go, thus preventing them from overbidding what they would rationally bid.
The other good point in support of sniping is when you're trying to get one item, there are several auctions, and you don't want to commit to any one of them. However, I'd think a better strategy (absent the irrational bidders) would be to bid your maximum on the earliest-to-close auction, then bid your maximum in the next one whenever you get outbid on the first one, and so on. Again, eBay could allow you to make conditional/chained bids like this automatically.
Since sniping is basically just a sealed-bid auction, you're still going to get outbid by an idiot who wants to pay too much. The simple fact that I'm willing to pay more than the current next-highest bidder isn't really giving away a whole lot of information. They still have no idea how high I'm willing to go except to commit to paying more than it is currently. If they're willing to commit to paying more than I am willing, they were going to outbid me with a snipe even if I try to snipe it as well. However, as the article makes clear, what really is happening is that someone sees you want it at a certain price, and that actually changes what they're willing to pay for it.
It doesn't surprise me at all that "the more bids you make on an item, the less likely you are to win it", since you shouldn't ever need to make more than one bid, at the very beginning. If you do get into re-bidding, a) you're irrational and b) you're bidding against someone else irrational, and in that case you certainly are better off avoiding their irrationality and concealing your irrationality by sniping.
Sniping is GOOD for ALL buyers (Score:3, Insightful)
The whole idea of entering a maximum bid that the system will automatically bid up to causes the actual bid price to quickly escalate. That leaves time for human psychology to kick in and for the low-bidder(s) to change their mind about what their maximum bid would really be.
With "set it and forget it" sniping tools, there is no early bid escalation and thus no time to change your mind and do the "well, just 5 dollars more" dance. All snipers put in their maximum bid price and let the chips fall where they may.
I use a sniping service and I end up underbidding on at least 90% of the auctions I bid on. But that is OK by me, it means I was not tricked by the system into over-paying on those items (and my sniping service does not charge me for 'losing' bids). It also means that the guy who was the highest bidder probably paid less than if all the snipers had bid the "traditional" way. So he benefits too, regardless of if he sniped or not.
If you are sniping and you really absolutely must have the item, you can enter a ridiculously high max bid price and chances are that you will be the high bidder and that you will end up paying less than if you had just used the "traditional" bidding process and let ebay auto-bid for you as other bidders put in their maximums too.
So, no matter what the situation, sniping benefits all bidders - snipers and non-snipers alike - by helping to keep bid inflation in check.
Re:And this is indeed a serious problem with EBay. (Score:5, Insightful)
No.
You just proved his point beautifully. You obviously don't understand what's going on here.
Yes, in a perfect world, everyone would proxy bid like they're supposed to, and nobody would pay more than they're willing to pay for an item. Moreover, the person who was willing to pay the most, would win the auction.
But that's fantasyland. In the Real World(tm), there are two reasons why you should always snipe to get the best deal:
Example: your max bid on an item is $50. DumbJoe has already bid $30, hoping he'll get it for that. You come along and bid your $50 well before the auction ends. The new high bid is set at $31 by eBay's system. DumbJoe is notified that he's been outbid, so in the heat of the moment, he comes in and bids $40. Again, your proxy outbids him up to $41. DumbJoe decides he's not going to let you beat him, so bids $51. Oops, you lose!
Now, let's redo that with sniping. DumbJoe sits as the high bidder at $30 until about 20 seconds are left in the auction. At that time, you place your $50 bid. Price goes up to $31, auction ends, DumbJoe has no time to get caught up in the bidding war. You get the item, and at a damn good price, too.
Let's say many sellers are offering the item you wanted for a max of $50. You bid on the auction that DumbJoe is bidding, and he gets into his emotional bidding war. He drives the price up to your max of $50 before giving up. You win at $50, which is what you were willing to pay. No problem, right? WRONG.
Meanwhile, another auction ends a few hours later, selling the exact same item for $32. Oops! You could have saved $15-20 by either sniping on DumbJoe's auction, or deciding that its price had gone out of line with what the market was paying on other auctions for the same thing. You could take your time and wait for a relatively low-priced auction about ready to end and snipe that. The savings could be substantially below what your maximum price is.
Moral of the story: ALWAYS snipe. Lots of dumbass snipe because they don't understand the proxy bid system. Other dumbasses don't snipe because they don't understand their competition.
Re:Exactly (Score:3, Insightful)
Sniping won't hurt the rational bidders who put in an early bid at their true maximum price. The only ones who hurt that bidder are the ones who change their concept of how much they're willing to pay based on how much others are bidding (which isn't ENTIRELY irrational; that someone is willing to pay 20% more than you thought it was worth may be an indication that you undervalued it). Sniping avoids THOSE bidders, not the ones who put in their true maximum bid at the beginning, and since there are many auctions where those will be the only bidder, it makes sense to do it.
Re:And this is indeed a serious problem with EBay. (Score:3, Insightful)
But that's not the situation in the second case. The other user is willing to pay $25, but doesn't bid correctly by bidding $25. Instead they bid $10 and figure they'll just bid higher if somebody outbids them. It's them being stupid. Sniping is taking advantage of other bidder's stupidity in not originally bidding their maximum.
Being willing to lose a few. (Score:3, Insightful)
Unless you're looking for something that's no longer available through "standard" channels. In this case it's not just a matter of picking your auctions carefully, it's a matter of spreading things out over time.
Unless you want something very specific, or you're in a hurry, you don't have to rely on winning one auction. It's more like fishing with multiple poles. You cast out several lines over a certain period of time, and figure maybe 1 in 4 will actually catch anything. Who cares if line #1 doesn't get any fish, or even #2, if you get one on #3?
As an example: over the last few months, I've started picking up a series of comic books from the 1940s. You can't just go to a store and buy them, because only a small percentage of comic stores even carry books that old. Your best bets are to visit collectibles fairs, comic-book conventions, and online stores -- and even those tend to focus on the rare or higher-quality books that cost in the $100-$10,000 range. Ebay, on the other hand, has a steady stream of stores, individual collectors, and people who find old comics in their attics, selling everything from the ultra-rare first appearance of whoever to the torn, soda-stained but still readable random issue of series X. So for the most part, I just bid my max on any auction that fits the criteria, and figure I'll only win a fraction of them. So far it's worked out pretty well.
How it works (Score:3, Insightful)
Personally, I just Buy It Now.
One more reason - Avoiding Cheats! (Score:3, Insightful)
There is a group of rare wares - say, car parts. There's a thousand or more parts for each car model. A single part may spend a year on display before someone decides to buy it, no matter what the price - but when they decide they need it, they are ready to pay quite a bit. So they bid the amount the item is displayed for. Quite low, because keeping it up for a year would cost quite a bit, plus seems competetive. Then the seller uses a fake account, a shill, to bid higher. The buyer will quite likely battle for that single part which can be only one on the whole Ebay. And instead of paying $10, you'll need to pay $50 to outbid the shill and get the obscure rare part.
Not so with sniping. Shot the item 6s before the auction ends for $10. No time to cancel the auction, no time to place a bid by a shill, and even if one is placed, the shill will be the one winning the auction and the buyer will have a week or so to find the part, maybe from the competitor.
Re:And this is indeed a serious problem with EBay. (Score:5, Insightful)
You bid $100. It shows as $12. A stupid kid comes along, and bids $15. Your bid goes to $17. The kid bids $20. Your bid shows up as $22. After a while the kid bids $80 and your bid shows up as $85. You win and get to pay $85. Or the kid bids $105 and you don't get the item.
Now if you set up a snipe shot of $100 for that auction, the same kid comes along, bids $15 and leaves happily seeing his bid the highest. You win the auction and get the item for $17.
Re:Wrong optimization problem (Score:2, Insightful)
i snipe. i'm quite willing to pay what an item is worth or what I think it is worth (although i'm pleased to get it cheaper). i'm not, however, willing to pay what some moron thinks it is worth, and not at all willing to compete with morons in a bidding war. accordingly, i bid the maximum amount i'm willing to pay, once, just before the end of the auction. if i get the item for that price or less, then i'm happy. if not, then that means someone else was willing to pay more than i was and i was never going to get it anyway. another similar item will come along eventually and i'll have a chance at that. or i may find an alternative that does the job. or i may find that i didn't really need or want it anyway.
in short, it's mostly about avoiding stupid bidding wars with idiots.
that's the main reason i snipe. the other reason is that i feel morally bound to honour any bid i make - if i bid on an item and i win it, then i feel that i have no honourable option but to complete the transaction whether i still want it or not. by delaying my bid until the last minute, i am also delaying my committment to buy until the last minute. this gives me the opportunity to change my mind without inconveniencing the seller or other bidders (strictly speaking, it allows me to change my mind, period. inconveniencing the seller by changing my mind after the fact is NOT an option), and also allows me to take advantage of a sale or bargain that i might run across before the auction ends.
this 'bargain' may be another auction of the same or similar item on ebay, or it may be an item sold at a local shop or garage sale or whatever. doesn't matter. sniping allows me to take advantage of it without risking a double purchase.
nothing needs to happen (Score:4, Insightful)
You go on the auction 5 minutes before end, post your max amount 10 seconds before end and - either get it or not - often you time out till after auction end.
Now - if everyone does it that way and 10+ folks are posting at the last 10 seconds, it becomes a lottery.
The server has a certain processing time and does the bids sequentially - probably doing atomic locks on some auction resources. Well, there is a cutoff time where working off the queue stops - the highest offer wins at that point.
There are delays in bidding of up to 10 seconds at times - maybe they are doing it on purpose - add a random delay of a couple of seconds to every bidder the last 30 seconds before close? Internet does it by default anyway if the net is busy.
If the sellers are unhappy about the price they get - they can enter a minimum bid requirement.
With sniping it's the same auction principle as without - just in a much smaller time frame....
how about locking the bid after a while? (Score:3, Insightful)
I think a reasonable compromise is to lock the bidding on an item a period of time before the end of the auction, say 12-24 hours before the end. No one except people who already bid on the auction can bid after this point. This isn't unreasonable since auctions last considerably longer than the proposed lockin period.
If you were the only one to bid on an item, the you would get it at that point. Otherwise, anyone who made a bid would be allowed to rebid (and snipe) on the item up to the deadline. Sniping still gives an advantage both in the pre-lock period and the post-lock period, but the sniper has to reveal their interest in the auction before the locking deadline. And if you see a well-known sniper is bidding for an item, then you at least know what to expect.