@coast-commerce wrote:
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.... All snipers want is to bid once at the lowest possible price, with no time for competitors to out-bid them, so how does this benefit sellers?
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That is incorrect. Snipers don't bid the lowest possible price, but the highest they can afford.
Nonsense, what you are describing is "proxy bidding," also known as a bid-bot or robo-bidder.
A true sniper always bids the maximum amount they are willing to pay for the item, plus (usually) a few cents or a few dollars and cents as a tie-breaker. Because of this, the only way a seller will ever get the true, maximum value for an item, is if there are at least two snipers on an auction.
Lets correct this for the record, proxy bidders are good (for buyers & sellers) because anybody who wants something, will enter a maximum they can afford or care to pay, so a seller knows what the maximum price an individual values an item (or can afford to pay for a particular item).
As for buyers, they may enter the maximum price they can afford, even though they would rather get the item for much less, but do so to increase the odds of being the highest bidder at the end of the auction.
If the final price is set by a nibble bidder, or a reactive bidder, then you will never know if you got the full, maximum value in an online auction.
The on-line auction lingo word "sniper" refers to somebody who usually via bidding program, instructs the program to wait until the last second (hoping that there are no other bids or as few as possible) & place a single bid; thereby keeping the bid as low as possible (at or near the seller's asking price), therefore creating an anti-competitive atmosphere.
If ebay were smart, they would use algorithms & artificial intelligence to determine when a sniping program is detected & increase the offer increment substantially within the final day, then hour, minute & second of an auction...that would pick off the snipers!
