EBAY - why do people leave it so late!

Bloody hell - I'm winning the bidding then with 20 secs to go someone comes in with their first bid and secures the speakers! I try a counter bid but it's too late.

At least my auto bidding pushed him up a little further but I'm still confused as to why someone should only bid with 20 secs to go!

It's maybe not a bad thing as they were going to have to be sent all the way from Switzerland.

Oh no - to make matters worse the winning bidder's from France. Oh well, maybe they'll be damaged in transit

Matt.

 

Unfortunately Matt, thats the best way to win. Show absolutely no interest whatsoever - existing bidder(s) becomes happy and secure, then predate upon poor hapless bidder in last 30 secs with your best (but still disciplined) bid. Tends to work for me anyway.

 

It's a well known ebay tactic, called Sniping.

The best I ever saw was a Total Station (surveying instrument, not a garage), which was £340 with me in the lead with less than 2 minutes to go. It sold for £846.

 

In fairness Greg, I had set myself a maximum and I would have had to go over this by more than a smidgin to have won them.

It just seems a bit unfair though as in a real auction the auctioneer would return to you for a counter bid and so on. Ebay's more like a sealed envelope auction in some respects.

Still a bit cross though as I did fancy them - having said that it does seem a little crazy to have to get a pair of speakers (Harbeths) made in Essex shipped over from the land of cuckoo clocks!

Matt.

 

Most snipers bid for a win and hope for a bargain. The problem with ebay auctions is there really is no point bidding until the last 10/20 seconds. Most sniping occurs in the dying few seconds. Outside of 10 secs i would say its not sniping just late bidding, programs are available that will bid on your behalf in the last second or less and manual 'sniping' is possible within the last 5.

Theres no point because ebay fever sets in quite often and the price goes up. If i want an item I determine the max i wish to pay and mostly dont bid until the last minute or so. Perhaps a fairer way would be to bid blind maybe.

 

At the end of the day,the highest bid wins....makes no difference when it was placed in the auction.

I can see no reason for bidding your max early on though......it just gives other people more time to nibble away at you proxy bid.

Saying this,I have bid on auctions that stood at around £200 odd quid,sniped with £1000 and still got outbid....... only works if you are prepared to pay more.

Paul.

 

i used bidnapper a sniper site for my only e-pay purchase. it allows you to bid even if you aren't online it also takes into account network load and latency so that your bid is more likely to hit at the latest possible moment.
i can't really see the problem with this sort of thing.
cheers


julian

 

That happened to me this weekend,being very sad,I got up at 3am for an auction in the USA,on a 2-tone album,Rico-That man is forward,been wanting it for a while,getting very hard to get,so there I was,put my bid in,watching to clock count down,4 seconds to go,feeling well happy,I get outbid,did I feel bad.

A few days later I checked the guys feedback on the item,he recieved a negative....Item had already been sold!

 

Adam, have you tried www.gemm.com? Just did a search:

Search results

-- Ian

 

I usually dont bid till there is 4-5 seconds to go. Thats the benefit of a 1mb ADSL link too. If you are on modem you are at a disadvantage.

The few rules I apply are -

Once you add on postage, is it cheaper than buying in the shops or elsewhere? Especially important with newish second hand stuff.

Only bid what you are prepared to pay. Obvious but so many forget.

Dont let the little inadequate shit that just out-bid you, get you into a bidding frenzy. If he's outbid you, he's paying too much.

Does get the old heart beating though, and a win is everything!

 

Thankyou for that Ian,I had a look about 2 weeks ago,they had some but were re-released versions,where I was looking at the original pressing(2-tone),seems they have one there for $30,seems like thats what I'm going to have to pay.Collecting records can be exspensive.

 

I always like to arrive at auctions fashionably late, in fact exactly 5 seconds before they end… bidding early is just so 'common'.

Tony.

 

I think the problem with it is that in a real auction the buyer who's willing to pay the most wins. With ebay the hammer comes down at a fixed time even if there are buyers willing to pay more - who does this benefit? Not the seller, not the buyer who is willing to pay more but the sneaky little devil who gets a bit of software to do his bidding for him at as late a point as possible.

Maybe it would be fairer if whoever held the winning bid with a minute to go is given a couple of minutes (after the auction ends) to decide whether to outbid the person who had the highest bid at the close, especially if that person only put in their first bid in the final minute.

Anyway, I'm not bitter - I hope the winning bidder enjoys his Harbeths - the sneaky little cheese eating surrender monkey

Matt.

 

But that's exactly how eBay works. You should put in the max you're willing to pay with 5-10 seconds to go. If someone is prepared to pay more they will have put in a higher bid and will win. There's never any need to bid more than once on an item.

You're right in one way though, it is more like sealed bids than an auction house auction. I personally think it's great but it isn't half nerve-racking for the seller (I've been there!) thinking that your item is about to go for peanuts one minute before the close...

Michael.

 

I been at both ends of ebay.

I was recently bidding for something which was a steal at the starting price. So I put in a bid early on, then two days before the end I was outbid. I then countered and was leading up until the last 30 seconds when someone right out of nowhere came in and stole it from me. The cdp was already sitting on my rack and it was wisked away from me. Poo.

A week later I put something up for sale and it got more than I was offered anywhere else. It is always nice to see the price jump up in the dying seconds.

I am now more savvy if there is something I REALLY want on ebay.

 

Or earlier if you like. If someone's prepared to pay more than you, they'll probably do it anyway regardless of when you bid - accept it and move on, there'll always be another one.

 

The other mistake people make is coming onto a discussion forum for hifi and saying -

"Wow, take a look at this beauty on Ebay, I'm going to bid on that!"

Oh dear, now you have 2000 more potential rivals!

 

Unless the person who posts that message is in fact the seller/friend which happens frequently.

I would guess that recently up to 90% of auctions are schilled up and maybe in 20% to 25% the Item # never changes hands . . .the winning bidder is in fact friend/neighbour.

 

Having slept on it I still think it's a flawed concept:

The point of an auction is, I would suggest, to get the best price for an item from the people who want to buy it. Traditionally there are two ways:

1. Auction house - assures the best price as everyone get's a fair chance to bid and the hammer only comes down when the price has reached it's maximum.

2. Closed bids - quite clever as the bidders have to enter their maximum in secret and then the highest bidder wins but crucially pays whatever that highest bid was, even if it was way over what the next best bid was.

Ebay seems to have none of the fairness of 1. because of the fixed end time and yet doesn't give the seller the advantages of 2. because the 'proxy bidding' ensures that the winning bidder only pays a fraction over the next best bid.

There must be a better way of doing it than at current but until then I'm happy to adopt an 'if you can't beat em, join em' attitude and will only be bidding in the last few seconds from now on

Kind of makes a mockery of the so called '7 day auction' though doesn't it.

Matt.

 

If eBay chose to they could easily stop the 'problem' of sniping by instigating a rule along the lines of say if someone bids in the last minute then the auction time is extended for another five minutes, or some variation on that. I'm sure this must have occurred to someone at eBay, and they'll have decided not to do it. Since they're obviously after as much cash as they can get, and thus want the highest final prices they can, I'm sure they must have decided that stopping sniping wouldn't make prices go higher.

Sniping wouldn't be necessary if everyone just decided what they were willing to pay for something and then bid it. The trouble is many (most?) people bid reactively, not wanting to be outbid by someone else, and possibly ending up paying more than they really should. The only way to avoid being outbid by someone with that sort of approach is to bid as late as possible. So that's what I do.

The only possible reason for bidding earlier is that if it raises the current bid price for an item it won't be spotted by as many people hunting for a bargain. If say there was a Wadia CD player going for £1, no reserve, more people are probably going to at least have a look at that then if the price is £3k. I don't really think that's particularly significant though, and it's not enough to make me bid earlier.