@hippolyta,
"I lost an auction today that I have held the high bid for THREE STINKING DAYS. Also I wasn't near my max bid. With ONE MINUTE left this pendejo with a 4 feedback rating comes in bids enough to hit my max".
What you do not seem to understand is that ebay's auctions are basically sealed bid auctions, like you see at charity events. There is a fixed time that all bids must be entered by and it doesn't matter when during the auction time frame a bid was placed in the box, all that matters is, how much the highest bid was. If you had a max bid in mind when you first bid, that is how much your bid should have been for.
"Hey fine I 'll go buy my own cheatware and Snip too! Everything was done with ONE MINUTE LEFT IN THE AUCTION! I had NO TIME TO REBID!".
Would you like some whine with that rant?
If you have been a member since `98 you should have figured out that snipers often win by bidding in the last seconds. If you were not smart enough to bid your max when you placed your bid, you are the only one you should be mad at. Even then you max may not be enough if someone else values the item more than you.
I do not use a sniping service. I love the rush of waiting until the very end, to see if I have been successful. I have bidding down to the point where I can bid with 3 seconds left on the clock and it is received/recorded in the last second. Sometimes, I am out bid by another sniper or an earlier max bid. That doesn't bother me because I was not willing to pay more than I bid for the item. I only bid earlier if I know I cannot be online when the auction ends.
"I have an Amex with no preset spending limit what I was suppose to bid $10,000 to insure I won?"
That is one strategy you can try, and some people do do that. We call it nuclear bidding:
Placing a bid so high you do not think anyone else in their right mind will come close to it.
Often it works out, but if another person does the same thing you may still win, but at much more than the item is worth. I think many who have or will respond to this topic, have done the same thing and some of us have had to pay the piper for doing that. I'm one who has and that taught me a lesson.
You posted an anecdotal story about someone who waited until the gavel was about to fall at a live auction. But it turned out they were working with the owner of the item. That was shill bidding pure and simple. It is also illegal in many states. It has nothing to do with your rant, because the idea behind a shill is not to win, but to get the best price possible for the seller without winning the auction. Sniping would be a foolish thing to do at a live auction for a shill.
That being said I did exactly that at an auto auction to win my favorite classic car. I waited until the two final in house bidders wore each other out, only bidding $50 at a time and placed my one and only bid just before the gavel fell for $500 more. A lot of people called me stupid for doing that, saying I had bid too much, and the loser was **bleep**, but I walked away with the prize. If I wanted to sell it today, I can get much more than I paid.
Time added, online auctions are a waste of time, sometimes hours. Because of that eBay decided to go with a modified sealed bid auction system rather than an English out cry one. It more or less ensures that the highest bid will come in by a fixed time and every one has an equal chance of winning even those who place an early maximum automatic/proxy bids.
"THERE IS NO SUCH THING AS FOOLPROOF, BECAUSE FOOLS ARE SO DARNED INGENIOUS!" (unknown)
albertabrightalberta
