Brad Ideas - EBay: Sniping good or bad or just a change of balance? - Comments

I agree, ebay should have Brad's system for multiple items

Homunq — Thu, 08 Oct 2009 12:47:07 -0700

"They would have to provide a UI to set up such bids (something they are not yet so good at) and effectively place your max bid on each successive item the moment it fails to take the prior item. This would look just like sniping if the auctions were spaced minutes apart, just like late bidding if they are further apart."

This would help level the playing field. Currently, if you want to bid on multiple items but only get 1, and you are not online all day, you are forced to use sniping services or software.

There are two other things eBay could do that would make the early-bidding strategy better for buyers, to even up the sniping advantage. One is to not report another bid when the current winner raises their max bid. The other is that if my secret reserve bid is $20.01 and somebody else bids $20, that person should not be able to know (by seeing the bid at $20.01 instead of $20.50) what my high bid is. eBay could implement this either by not incrementing the earlier bid beyond the later one (that is, leave it at $20), but that would lead to lower prices - they won't do that. Instead, they should report the "price to beat" as $20.50, even though my secret winning price is still $20.01. While this might discourage them from beating my price, it would be just as likely to make them bid $21 - so it is in eBay's interest to make this change.

Both of the above changes, by keeping your secret bid truly secret, would make it easier to maintain a dominant stance of "I will always beat you, so don't even try", even if you are bidding on multiple items and cannot afford to win them all. If you have $200 to spend on one of 4 items, you could put in a bid for $50 on each, then increase that bid to $67, $100, and then $200 as each auction closed without you winning. This would probably be enough to maintain leadership in many auctions, because few items get bid up too high early.

If ebay bands snipping, you

gogetitfools — Sun, 28 Jun 2009 12:08:43 -0700

If ebay bands snipping, you will no longer be using ebay. They say sniping only accounts for 5% of online bidding. Well maybe it does. But that doesn't change the fact that snipers contribute to ebay by raising the final price. People who are frustrated at being sniped, think again on trying to get rid of the "problem". So many things in this world have been ruined by trying to address a so called problem. Ebay may be one of them. People who are frustrated need to realize they where beat fair and square, the loser failed to assess the market value of the item and the experienced sniper probably will win the auction having assess and determined how much they are will to pay. By "extending" the auction of sniping, you will believe me ruin the ebay experience. Sellers may get less for their items vs if there was a expended time limit, but if bidders keep jacking up the price, every one ends up paying more. Here is how this hurts every one. When bidders don't get a deal and end up paying more, they are not going to bid on those extra few auctions they thought they could afford. Now the bad part with more spent on each purchase; each bidder will not bid on and win more items. Thus the balance of sniping, the auction closes at higher that what it would have, and the buyer gets a deal, thus an incentive to buy more stuff. How it affects the seller, bidders might not get into huge bidding wars but however, more product is sold; so more sellers are satisfied, and things are sold for slightly lower or over "whole sale" prices. This means that their not going to get that "one time" huge bid money bonanza(some psycho ebayers want to extend the bidding time, they don't realize that would hurt sellers dramatically and would only benefit people willing to spend large amounts at one time for one auction) but they do get to unload a lot of product within a short time. Because people are buying more sellers can list more. The sellers aren't going to get one huge some of money from one bid, but they will get that same money from more sales from multiple buyers, made possible by people not going psycho on the bidding and let the people who pay for stuff buy more. Hint: people who got beat by snipers, face it you got beat because you didn't set a high enough bid in the first place, proxy bid always beats sniper if it is higher. STOP COMPLAINING and try to see how this benefits everyone. Keep pushing for that petition, because if it ever goes through I will not participate in any auctions ever again on ebay. And ebay will collapse if they ever go to an extended auction set up. People stop trying to change something just because you wanna see it work the way you want it to, you want ebay to be like the mirror, a reflection of your self, wake up it is not and it will never be if it wants to stay alive. Stop crying and set the highest maximum bid higher. I am a freaken sniper here telling you how to beat me. Stop saying "computer world; these haxors are cheating, how do I make things simpler and more "on demand for me." Wake up things work fine the way they do, and it can't get any simpler. Stop trying to change the rules just because you have a PERSONAL issue with sniping. Ebay is not a "english auction" stop trying to make it that way, you will destroy it. Btw: Snipers are smart because they avoid the lemming masses which bid ridiculously so much so it ruins the experience by insane over bids. Any one realizing that mass herds of people in "group think" doesn't work EVER; is a genius. That is why "US oh so evil snipers" avoid the general populace, because sorry but if you can't figure out how to put in your highest possible proxy bid, then you are and rightfully so an idiot.

Perfectly sums up the "right or wrong" of eBay sniping

oldebayer — Fri, 07 Mar 2008 11:02:16 -0800

The above reply from Brad sums up the issue; I'll explain:

The gamble of eBay still exists greatly for the buyer, and still benefits the seller. The fact is that when the proxy bids come in a day early or last second there will be a winner. Users abusing the proxy will either pay much higher than expected or gain negative feedback for non-pay. Knowledge of the most effective bid process is the key for every auction genre you attend online or in person. If you don't know eBay; learn more effective bid processes to increase your odds of winning.

Simply put, if you remove the dreams of granger from the buyers searching for that next bargain, then you will lose the popularity of the site altogether. If a tactical advantage is exploited, level the field by using the same tactical advantage and it boils down to who placed the highest bid when the buzzer sounds. That is the magic of eBay folks.

Competitive

brad — Mon, 11 Feb 2008 00:51:00 -0800

Again, you are one of those confused by the fact that you can reveal your bid before the auction closes. This fact makes many people (not just you) think of eBay like a competitive bidding auction, but it is not. The way they do that fools you into thinking it, but just repeat it again and again. It isn't that. It's a sealed-bid (or rather a strange slightly unsealed bid), second price auction. If a sniper beats you it's because the sniper knows what eBay is, and you got tricked into thinking it was something else. You just have to get the concept of the back and forth bidding auction out of your mind. This is hard because of how eBay sets it up, but you have to do it.

Sealed-bid second price auctions are competitive too. Almost all the major auction forms are competitive and form efficient markets when there are lots of buyers and sellers. They all have different balances between buyer, seller and auction house and there is no one right balance.

I personally think that

Anonymous — Sun, 10 Feb 2008 18:45:38 -0800

I personally think that using secondary "sniping" programs is taking advantage, or rather, exploiting the concept of open bidding on items. I think that ebay should be taking proactive steps in preventing it. In my opinion it does take a lot of the "fun" out of bidding on items, and it is frustrating when you lose an auction in the last few seconds. In a way, it takes the competitivness out of the whole process, which could potentially be harmful to ebay. I like the concept of their "submit best offer" feature, which I have noticed that a lot of sellers are using this, along side of a "buy it now" price and not even offering their auctions up for open bidding. Having a fixed price does cause some disadvantage to buyers who are looking to get something at the lowest price possible, but I feel that it is the only way to maintain true competitivness on ebay, if not, people will begin to take their business elsewhere. However, since ebay basically monopolizes the online auction market (the same way WalMart does in the consumer products market) I doubt they will ever be threatened by the idea of another online auction house taking thier business away. Losing my business would only be a drop in the bucket for them, and they will continue to make their money with, or without my participation. Hooray for capitalism!

sniping

Different Brad — Thu, 10 Jan 2008 11:17:35 -0800

I read this blog with great interest. I love to snipe on ebay. It is absolutely effective and there is nothing wrong with it whatsoever. The only reason it is so effective, is because it takes advantage of other bidders who are not using the proxy bidding properly. I can't believe scientist have spent so much time studying this when it comes down to a combination of simple logic mixed with some basic psychology.

To proxy bid properly on ebay, you MUST decide to the penny how much you want something. This is psychologically a difficult (but not impossible) task which is why I disagree strongly with Charles. It is because this is difficult and many people don't do it, that makes sniping so effective.

If you're not willing to decide exactly how much something is worth to you, then how can you possibly complain if somebody snipes something at the last moment? Even when I am sniping, I still decide the exact amount I am willing to pay, afterwards I feel no regrets if I didn't get it.

If it's not broken, don't fix it.

I know this is off topic but I must bring it up. If you want to complain about something, complain about hidden reserves. Talk about stupid, I will not bid on anything with an unlisted reserve price. Ebay's own description for the purpose of a reserve is because a high initial price may tend to discourage people from bidding. Well, if you're stupid enough to pay more for something once you've started bidding than you would have otherwise, I guess sellers might as well take advantage of it.

Very risky

brad — Wed, 20 Jun 2007 23:48:59 -0700

Most sniping programs have you enter your true bid. If you enter an artificially high bid, and somebody else has sniped an artificially high bid, one of the two is going to get burned very badly. So badly that they will end up taking a bad feedback, I suspect -- and they will stop doing this strategy.

eBay auctions are longer than a day because many buyers don't go to ebay every day to search, so thus you want to catch, over the course of a week, all the people who go looking for your item, so they will set up a bid or snipe on it. If you are selling a high-demand item where every item gets several bidders, yes, you might was well just do a 1-day auction.

eBay is a sealed bid second price auction. The ability to bid early and disclose your bid confuses people, and they really should not have it if they wanted everybody to be clear, but ignorant bidders like it so they keep it in spite of the confusion it causes. Once you realize eBay is a sealed bid second price auction where some bidders can foolishly reveal their intentions early, you quickly get over any issues about sniping.

Sniping Isnt Fair but Nessasary

Anonymous — Wed, 20 Jun 2007 22:51:49 -0700

Coming from an ebay buyer perspective I really think Ebay should consider eliminating the Proxy bidding during the last few min. of an auction. These days you cant win anything anymore without (manually or software wise) sniping an auction. Too many people wait for that window when they can put in a rediculous amount to try and win an item and then end up paying what you wanted to pay. Obviously, if they had the true intention of paying the price that gets entered in the last 6 seconds of an auction they wouldnt wait till the last min to do so. They know for a fact they wont pay it unless its a close auction. I think if you bid 100 dollars in the last min. of an auction and the second price is 50 you should pay 100 because thats what your saying the item is worth to you. Its almost like ebay should start having 1 day auctions because the majority of the bids take place on the last day anyway because people dont want to drive up the price of the item. I always wondered why they dont consider fixing this problem. I admit I snipe because if I really want somthing I have to. With all the snipe software and websites out its almost impossible not to, unless you plan on loosing your item. However, the whole thing would be alot more fair if it wasnt allowed to continue. Until then Ill keep plugging all my items into EZSnipe, and if I REALLY want somthing Ill just have to snipe manually during the last 30 sec like everbody else.

The misunderstanding

brad — Wed, 16 May 2007 14:34:17 -0700

When you bid early, you don’t reveal your price. Rather, a successful bid reveals the price of the 2nd highest bidder because eBay is effectively a Second price auction though many people seem unaware of it. It is, in effect a 2nd price auction where some bidders, if they wish to, can take the risk their bids will be revealed ahead of time by another, higher early bidder.

Seen this way, it is hard to imagine what the sense of early bidding is. Largely it seems to come about because eBay’s system encourages people to confuse their actions with the familiar English auction that is done by live auctioneers, with the going, going, gone.

However, as much as you might like an English Auction, eBay simply is not that. It has differences from a standard Vrickey second price auction, and those differences confuse people, but in the end that’s what it is, and if you don’t treat it as one, you are going to get frustrated.

eBay could of course decide to offer English Auctions and see if sellers choose to use them. They are more “fun” though they consume more time. If buyers demand English auctions then sellers might well decide to use them to get more buyers, because no matter what bias your auction system introduces, having more bidders is almost always better for the seller.

Petition is gone...

Charles — Wed, 16 May 2007 13:07:13 -0700

The petition has been pulled. They claim pressure from eBay and others. Sounds strange to me; why would anyone care about a petition like this enough to try to get it pulled?

I've noticed that all of these sites go out of their way to justify sniping and make it sound like a good thing. Then they use really stupid arguments like "if you just bid your maximum, you won't get sniped", when they, themselves, don't practice this strategy.

Here's why I think sniping is bad. If you need a widget and you go into a store and see it on the shelf, is there a price you will buy it at? Do you have in your mind that that item is worth $19.95 and if you see it on the shelf at $19.96 you won't buy it? This idea that everyone has a "price" is ludicrous. Anyone who's ever done online surveys knows that to be true. You can't decide your perfect price in five minutes or three days or whatever. You can decide some price you will buy something at with a given comfort level and bid that, but if you see the bid go up, you have to decide if the next level is within your comfort level. This is not "stupid bidders", as they are often called by the sniping supporters, this is normal human behavior. We are not binary animals, we are continuous creatures and what you will pay for a product is a sliding scale, where you trade off your desire and your expenditure of resources.

This can be bad, leading to bidding wars where people go deeper into, or beyond, their comfort zone. But, it also can allow someone who had no problem bidding $50 for an item the chance to decide that they are willing to pay $60. Now, you'll say "he should have bid $60 in the first place". Why? You don't do that at a live auction. $50 was easy, he knew he could pay that no problem. $60 took some thought. Why invest that emotion if the item does not exceed the $50 bid?

I'm a big supporter of auto-extend of auctions, where the auction is always extended some time past the last bid indefinately. The arguments against this approach mostly are in the "must close during business hours" or "sellers can't wait forever" type. Who really cares about business hours on eBay and sellers will wait as long as the price keeps going up. The other argument is that this disadvantages those who cannot be there at the end of the auction. So what? They still have the option of bidding higher as a proxy bid. They will only stay to the end if they are willing to invade that comfort zone and that will only help the seller. You'll say "but if they are willing to invade the comfort zone, why don't they just bid higher?" Again, stupid argument. How much higher? Maybe someone will bid $51 and they think, "okay, I'll do $52" and that's reasonable, but someone bids $60 and they have to decide then if it's worth $61 to them. Either way, they get the chance to make these decisions as people, not as the binary machine that the sniper supporters always claim they should be, but obviously are not, themselves. Now, they will respond that they only get one chance, so it must be their highest bid. I have to ask: does the current price influence your bidding at all? Would you bid the same if eBay just put the sniping into the system and didn't show any bids at all, effectively a sealed bid system? They clearly could do that.

I could come up with other arguments against sniping such as the loss of entertainment value in watching prices. What surprises me about the sniping FAQ pages is how one-sided they are. They only refute arguments against sniping, and never acknowledge any arguments against it. And, yes, I use eSnipe. I have to if I want to win an auction because those snipers don't know what their maximum price is any more than I do, so if I show my bid of $50, they then get a chance to decide if they will big $51, whereas if I snipe $50, they may have been very comfortable with $45 and I win the auction. Sad that it's not in the spirit of an auction: "what are you willing to pay", anymore.

Charles

Sniping can be both good and bad for you

Anonymous — Thu, 25 Jan 2007 05:51:38 -0800

My own experience is that sniping on ebay is most beneficial when used for items whose value is less known in advance (e.g. rare coins or items with unstable price). Submitting your bid early is a valuable information for other bidders and you should not do it (definitely use sniping). On the other hand, if the value of item is well known and stable (e.g. electric toothbrush), you may be better off submitting your bid early due to ebay bid increments (that favor early bidder).

As for the sniping software / services used, this used to cost some money a while ago, but now I can see several free services. I used to pay for esnipe, but now I use Gixen (http://www.gixen.com), which is free.

You miss the point of this thread

brad — Thu, 06 Jul 2006 10:49:36 -0700

You assert that sniping works, which is fine, but you miss the point that few auction rules are good or bad, they just alter the balance from one party to another. You need a balance.

If it truly affects eBay badly, you won't need any petition!

Eliminate the effectiveness of automatic auction sniping

Anonymous — Tue, 04 Jul 2006 23:29:38 -0700

A petition to end the effectiveness of automatic auction sniping has been started. Visit http://www.netsend.us/petition to sign it.

Although automatic auction sniping does serve a purpose, its current ability to place bids within the final seconds of an auction negatively impacts buyers, sellers & eBay.

Scientists have done the research

Alex Scheel Meyer — Tue, 27 Jun 2006 09:35:40 -0700

Apparently it is proven that sniping is beneficial for the buyer : http://www.usatoday.com/tech/science/columnist/2006-06-25-physics-of-eba...

Again, it's not about good or bad

brad — Mon, 12 Jun 2006 19:43:57 -0700

I am familiar with the debates, and posted this article because — I hope I was being very clear — the element many people seem to missin the debate is that it doesn’t matter whether it’s good or bad from any party’s perspective, just does it provide the right balance?

All the details in the debate come down to one question, does it work? If people feel it works, then it is benefiting them, and probably acting to the detriment of somebody else. If it doesn’t work it’s a waste of time to talk about it. But that’s fine. There are supposed to be strategies that benfit sides. Again, all that matters is if a good balance is obtained.

There are various advantages cited to sniping, all of them confer some benefit to the sniper over somebody else (either seller or other bidders.) My point is, there is not just one party to be pleased in auctions, but serveral.

Thinking off the top of my head, I know an easy way eBay could be rid of sniping if it wanted to, which makes me think it doesn’t want to: No proxy bidding in the last several minutes of an auction. (Proxies could be placed before this limit and would work after the limit. However, any bids after the limit would be taken as full amount bids, if you bid $100 you would pay $100 even if the 2nd place bidder bid $50.)

This might inspire software to try to do rounds of bidding over those minutes, creating quite a bit of traffic, but it could never work very well because each round would take a certain amount of time to have the results tested, and eBay could even control this time.

To get really dramatic, they could also allow just one final bid, with no proxy, in the last couple of minutes. Ie. if you want to bid then, bid your real price once and pay it.

“Snipers” would enter their true high bid just before the proxy window closes. Only live, incremental bidders would participate in the final minutes.

But I don’t think this is needed. It might make a bit more money for sellers, with higher bids from incremental bidders who otherwise were shut out from their true max. At a cost to buyers, of course.

EBay: Sniping good or bad or just a change of balance?

brad — Sat, 10 Jun 2006 16:37:19 -0700

Ebayers are familiar with what is called bid “sniping.” That’s placing your one, real bid, just a few seconds before auction close. People sometimes do it manually, more often they use auto-bidding software which performs the function. If you know your true max value, it makes sense.

However, it generates a lot of controversy and anger. This is for two reasons. First, there are many people on eBay who like to play the auction as a game over time, bidding, being out bid and rebidding. They either don’t want to enter a true-max bid, or can’t figure out what that value really is. They are often outbid by a sniper, and feel very frustrated, because given the time they feel they would have bid higher and taken the auction.

This feeling is vastly strengthened by the way eBay treats bids. The actual buyer pays not the price they entered, but the price entered by the 2nd place bidder, plus an increment. This makes the 2nd place buyer think she lost the auction by just the increment, but in fact that’s rarely likely to be true. But it still generates great frustration.

The only important question about bid sniping is, does it benefit the buyers who use it? If it lets them take an auction at a lower price, because a non-sniper doesn’t get in the high bid they were actually willing to make, then indeed it benefits the buyer, and makes the seller (and interestingly, eBay, slightly less.)

There are many ways to write the rules of an auction. They all tend to benefit either the buyer or the seller by some factor. A few have benefits for both, and a few benefit only the auction house. Most are a mix. In most auction houses, like eBay, the auction house takes a cut of the sale, and so anything that makes sellers get higher prices makes more money on such auctions for the auction house.

Read on…