A solution to prevent sniping

[mbratch]

Maybe some buyers like sniping. It's great sport, but I am still not fond of it generally. It doesn't give a buyer a chance to take a breath and offer what they are really willing to pay for an item in competition with others, and doesn't reflect how a real auction works.

What I would recommend for eBay is that they come closer to modeling an actual auction. Sort of the "going once, going twice..." method. Basically, all they have to do is automatically extend the ending time of an auction following the rule that it cannot end sooner than, say, 1 minute since the last bid. That's a long "going once, going twice..." interval, but gives a person a chance to evaluate and respond.

Just a thought. Maybe eBay likes sniping. I reckon that an item that is in demand will, on average, go for more money using this method.

[rock.star]

This has been suggested many time but ebay is world wide and no everybody can sitting at their computer  all the time.

Bid once bid you max amount and sniping will have no effect on you.

It is the highest bid that win not the last.

[mbratch]

Well, a lot of people are using the mobile phones now instead of a PC. Regardless, you don't have to be sitting at the computer anyway. Bid the max you want to bid and walk away if you can't sit there and wait until the end.

Anyway, no big deal. It was just an idea.

[eburtonlab · Accepted solution]

Bid the max you want to bid and walk away if you can't sit there and wait until the end.

You can already do that now. And you should, if you want to win. Bidding less than your maximum just means you can lose to someone else bidding less than what you were willing to pay, for no benefit.

Once you have bid your maximum amount, extra time extensions can only cost you more money. Which is one reason why snipers wait until the end of the auction to bid the maximum amount.

eBay auctions are real auctions. They are just not live outcry auctions, which do not work very well when conducted online where bids can come from anywhere in the world.

eBay likes sniping, and explicitly permits it:

https://www.ebay.com/help/buying/bidding/bid-sniping?id=4224

Snipers like sniping because it is an effective strategy. Sellers like sniping because it encourages bidders to actually bid their maximum amount, unlike most reactive bidding strategies which rely on being the last bidder.

[mbratch]

The bidding psychology and effect of sniping is different than a normal auction bid, which I was trying to come closer to matching. In reality, most buyers are not that firm on a maximum. There's a competitive factor that comes into play. In addition, with normal shopping, one goes into a store with a budget in mind and walks out having spent more.

But that's fine. Like I said, it was just an idea, and maybe not such a good one. It's ok if online bidding is different.

[woodland_gnome]

Sniping is the single best defense against shilling sellers.  eBay auctions are not outcry auctions, they are second-price auctions where the bids should be sealed to make sure that each bidder bids his/her own independent valuation of the item.  eBay, for whatever reasons (my hypotheses include making it look like an outcry auction and putting a flexible limit on the number of bids on any one auction back in the days when bandwidth and data storage were much more expensive) chose to keep only the highest bid only partially sealed, allowing it to be probed to determine what the amount is (a shiller bidding the minimum repeatedly has about a 50/50 chance of exposing the leader's hidden maximum without outbidding it, and of course can retract--or cancel since s/he is also the seller--if s/he goes over it).   Sniping simply does an effective sealing of the sniper's bid.  Nobody has the need or the right to know anyone else's bid in order to determine the amount of his/her bid.

[gosimus]

@mbratch 

< auction following the rule that it cannot end sooner than, say, 1 minute since the last bid >   

There's a site, gunbroker.com, that has a 15 minute rule.  Any bid within the last 15 minutes of the auction automatically bumps the end up to 15 minutes.  This is good for the seller, if the bidders are bidding reactively ... not so much for bidders who get caught up in the thrill of the chase.  Bidding war, what a ridiculous concept. 

< but gives a person a chance to evaluate and respond >   

Another word for respond is react.  Reactive bidding is exactly what you do not want to do.  As you've learned, you cannot react to a snipe ... that's the whole purpose of sniping, not giving the other guy a chance to react, or to peck at your bid until it's nibbled up to your max.  

[mbratch]

@gosimus

<Another word for respond is react.  Reactive bidding is exactly what you do not want to do.  As you've learned, you cannot react to a snipe >

Perhaps "react" was the wrong word. I meant "react more thoughtfully". Sniping is reacting, but it's pure reaction and done very quickly. I used to be an avid chess player and we also had 5-minute chess. 5-minute chess was all about reacting quickly on instinct without thinking, versus traditional chess in which you had a more time to think about it. Again, probably not better, but just different.

[rock.star]

A snipe is planned ahead of time it is not a reaction. 

Also it is the highest bid that wins not the last I have beat many a snipe with a early bid.