@glasser,
You wrote:
"I disagree. Soft endings are they every other site now operates".
Other sites use soft endings because Pierre Omidyar, ebay's founder, copyrighted his auction program, and ebay has refused to lease it to other companies. Many online auction companies have come and Gone over the years, Yahoo auctions being the most famous of them. Many of them require purchasing "bids" as their way of making money. I tried a couple that have advertised on TV "I won this DSLR Camera for $20 - I won a 60" TV for $30...". One had to sit at a computer for hours waiting out the 3-5 minute added time each time a bid came in, and some people even tried to snipe those as well. The bidding ended when people got tired of waiting, and moved on to later started, concurrently running auctions for the same product.
Auctions have always ended when the bidding ends not when the clock says over. eBay is an outlier in this way ... At minimum, they should, as other sites do, require every bid no matter when made to be at an increment".
You're wrong about that. Not every auction is an English Outcry auction where bidding stops when the gavel falls. Many auctions are Vickrey type sealed bid auctions, that have fixed ending times, which is closest to the type of auctions ebay runs.
Vickrey type auctions are often used for charity events. Some are true sealed bid auctions, where none of the bidders knows what another has bid. Others are open bid where you can see what the person before you bid, and both have a fixed time after which no more bids will be accepted. Neither English Outcry nor Vickrey auctions has fixed increment rules in most cases, and it is not unusual at Outcry auctions for bids to jump by hundreds of dollars over what the auctioneer is calling for.
Have you given any thought to the sellers who use ebay's auction format? Many schedule their auctions to end at a given time to fit in with their work/family schedules. Do you think they want to sit at or near a computer for hours while bidders keep adding bids one increment at a time every 3-10 minutes?
Have you ever participated in one of ebay's hosted live online auctions, or an online one from a large auction house? The auction runs from Friday evening, until Sunday afternoon. Maybe you found an item on ebay or the house's catalog that has an estimated time for your lot to be called, at say Saturday 1:00pm. You go online at 12:00 thinking your lot may be called up earlier or close to the estimated start time, only to find the current lot is 50 numbers from yours. Even without a specific added time between bids, your lot may not get called until after 3:00pm.
"... This to would conform with how the rest of the bidding world works and would eliminate the I lost the bid by .01, which really feels like a slap in the face".
Sometimes a slap in the face is a wake up call.
eBay's auctions are fair for all, and has been since before you joined. Sniping was happening even back then, though there weren't any snipe bidding companies. Each bidder can see the end time on the listing page, and the actual down to the seconds end time on the bid history page in the last 24 hours. Each bidder has a chance to use Automatic bidding, and can know exactly when an auction is going to end. Any bidder who does not place a bid for the MOST they are willing to pay before the end time, deserves to lose. eBay even states that in their Bidding information tips, along with adding a few odd cents to break ties to win.
I have lost auctions where I added odd cents to bids by a few cents. but I do not cry about it. I have also won some by a penny or in one case by $1.00 with a multi hundred dollar snipe bid for an original rare movie poster, that sold for over $6K That was before hidden IDs, and for several days the loser messaged me calling me every name in the book. They even posted on these boards how unfair it was, even though they too had added a few odd dollars, to their snipe.
Yes losing an auction by a few odd cents can be hard to swallow, but winning one by a few cents, is a rush. Snipers are willing to risk taking just one chance to win/lose. It doesn't really matter if they lose by $20 or $0.01 cents, the let down is still the same. Often the bid price can climb by a considerable amount in the last seconds, and the snipers lose to an earlier high bid.
This topic like all of the rest about sniping is about one thing. Someone who lost would have bid more, if they had more time. That is often not the case, because they will hedge on the price when increasing their next bid.
"They haven't changed it because eBay does not promote the use of auctions any longer--a loss from my point of view".
eBay has not changed it because they know the snipers will increase the end price, often exceeding the sellers price expectation. They make more money when that happens, so it is a win for the seller and ebay.
You are right though, ever since J.D. became CEO, the vision of this site has changed. eBay management would probably like to see an end to auctions and low volume sellers. However, I think they know if they did that they would then be competing directly with Amazon, Alibaba, Mercari etc. And they cannot do that with fixed price listings alone.
"THERE IS NO SUCH THING AS FOOLPROOF, BECAUSE FOOLS ARE SO DARNED INGENIOUS!" (unknown)
