Extend the auction by three minutes when a bid is placed with in the last 3 minutes. Seller Plus

[eagle7918]

 Everyone after dealing with a European counterpart of Ebay for awhile, it seems such a great idea for the seller. It really does promote the auction enviroment and will get rid of all the snipers. I have placed my highest bid before at the end and then missed it by 5 cents, that is crazy. If I had 3 minutes to think about it I could have bid again and again until I decided to give up or  they do. That seller may have made another $100 or so.  All the sniping sites now are competeing with each other and on a hot item, the buyer waiting till the last 10 seconds to place a bid will sometimes get shut out, because of to much traffic. I can't believe Ebay hasn't thought of doing this to aid the seller in getting the most they can, evetrybody wins on this the seller, Ebay, and the person that really wants this item has a chance to get it.  I had a buyer tell me if he really wants something he just places a ridiculous bid and if it goes to high he claims he just made a mistake and does not honor his bid.  This would elimitatre all these problems. What does everyone else think. 

[southern*sweet*tea]

How to win an auction easily and not overpay:

Bid ONCE. Bid the MAXIMUM amount you are willing to pay. That's it.  If you win, great! If you lose, it's because someone wanted it more than you did.

I think a lot of auctions wind up going unpaid because bidders get caught up in the bidding, then realize when they win they really didn't want to pay as much as they bid. Auction fever...

[nowthatsjustducky]

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@castlemagicmemories wrote:

In losing by 5 cents, that is the luck of the draw.  Your max wasn't high enough.  It happens.  Someone entered a higher bid and won.  You don't know that extensions on time would have made you the winner.

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And to top it off, you do not know for sure that you (the OP) lost by only a nickel.  For all you know, the winning bidder's max proxy bid could have been twice what yours was, and you would have had to bid up past whatever that secret max was (likely not just a mere nickel) to be top bidder again.

[the*dog*ate*my*tablecloth]

Ebay is certainly a REAL auction. It's just not the going, going, gone or English Outcry auction most people are familiar with. Sealed bid auctions are auctions, Dutch auctions are auctions. Those charity silent auctions they have at fundraisers are real auctions (even though they also have a defined end time).

[jbbowers12012]

Agreed with most others. just a silly idea. bid the most that you are willing to pay & let the chips fall where they may. in the heat of "just wanting to win" some may bid an amount over what they know the item is worth resulting in bid cancellations & unpaid item cases when they look at it with less competitive eyes. with bidding on ebay you win some lose some. just my opinion.

[couldabeenworse]

And to top it off, you do not know for sure that you (the OP) lost by only a nickel.  For all you know, the winning bidder's max proxy bid could have been twice what yours was, and you would have had to bid up past whatever that secret max was (likely not just a mere nickel) to be top bidder again.

Isn't the minimum Bid Increment 25 cents?  Meaning the OP did indeed lose by a nickel?

[mistwomandancing]

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nowthatsjustducky wrote:

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castlemagicmemories wrote:

In losing by 5 cents, that is the luck of the draw.  Your max wasn't high enough.  It happens.  Someone entered a higher bid and won.  You don't know that extensions on time would have made you the winner.

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And to top it off, you do not know for sure that you (the OP) lost by only a nickel.  For all you know, the winning bidder's max proxy bid could have been twice what yours was, and you would have had to bid up past whatever that secret max was (likely not just a mere nickel) to be top bidder again.

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Yup.  Losing bidders often think they lost by just that one winning increment.. that if they had bid just one increment above that, the item would be theirs!  .....not knowing that the winning bidder may have had ten times that bid amount sitting there, waiting to be pulled if necessary, but he only needed that single incremental amount to WIN. 

[*madison]

They won't care what the price reaches, because the auction will never actually end. Colleges will form bidding teams, awarding points to whomever can string out an auction the longest without a seller getting fed up and ending it manually. Some graduating senior will brag about the Precious Moments™ figurine auction that he's kept going since his freshman year, with a current bid price of $452,000, even though the seller died of old age 18 months ago.

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C'mon guys and gals, get clicking, the poster deserves a million helpfuls for that gem.

[gracieallen01]

Out of curiousity, does the reason you advocate the extension have anything to do with wanting the auction to end for less (as a buyer, that is)? 

Nibble bidders seem to only want something if it is really cheap.  More of the 'race to the bottom' of the buyers, while snipers will bid what something is worth OR what they really think something is worth OR what they can/will afford the first time around (usually).

(personal opinion of a former sniper - your mileage may vary)

[myangelandmyprincess]

It can also tie up bidders in a bidding war on one item and maybe they don't get to bid on your item that's ending soon because they are bidding elsewhere.  

If you would have bid more you are using eBay wrong.  Bid the max amount you'll pay. EBAy will bid up for you 

[baantiques]

I agree.  The timed auction with an absolute end is antiquated and limiting.  Think about it - live auctions don't have arbitrary time limits, they take all bids until no one wants to go any higher.  Most live auction sites like Proxibid are using the model where the bid is extended.  To NOT do it that way is to short change both buyers and sellers.

The way to fix the non paying bidder problem is just the way Proxibid does it - you have a CC on file and they charge you after the auction is over.

[johnrj1226]

You always have the opportunity to enter a maximum  bid amount that you are willing to pay when you enter your first bid  or any other time up to the auction end time.

[missjen831]

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@couldabeenworse wrote:

I'd bet half the posters on this thread (including me) had the same idea the first time they got sniped.  I recall getting pretty much the same reaction when I suggested this on the boards back in 1999.  But I quickly realized that eBay is not a "real" auction, and that the procedure made sense for what eBay was.

If eBay implemented these extensions, it shrinks the bidding pool from the millions of people who could place a proxy bid down to the relative handful that could be online in the final moments of the listing.   That could still work for truly unique items, but not for mass merchandising hundreds or thousands of similar items. 

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I didn't get this idea the first time I got sniped. I just regretted not bidding higher. And after that, i had the same regret or I was upset with myself that i couldn't afford to bid higher 😞

I am very much against the idea of extending auctions. And I will freely admit that its because I have a high success rate as a sniper. I don't use a sniping program, i just bid my max amount during the last 8 seconds and 9 out of 10 times I win. No technical issues or delays that caused my bid to not register (knock on wood). Extending the auction would not benefit me in any way. I know better than to get into a bidding war but I also know the rush of exhilaration once gets when bidding during the last seconds and it can be easy to get caught up in it so I agree with those who said extending auctions will lead to increase in non-paying bidders and cancellation requests. 

[the*dog*ate*my*tablecloth]

Live auctions last for minutes and usually take place in a physical location. Do you think whe should all have to fly to San Jose and bid with paddles? 

How can anything shortchange both buyers and sellers? Most bidders know how to bid already and don't need the system to be changed. Most sellers know that snipers bid high and usually know what they want and pay quickly. Why would you want them to stop buying here? They're not going to put up with that change to the system

Ditto auto-payment. I'm not giving Ebay permission to charge my credit card. Many auction buyers would walk and Ebay sellers would lose millions of dollars.

[missjen831]

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@the*dog*ate*my*tablecloth wrote:

Live auctions last for minutes and usually take place in a physical location. Do you think whe should all have to fly to San Jose and bid with paddles? 

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I can see it now......a fight would break out and we would all end up hitting each other with the paddles! Paddles would be flying and the auctioneer would think they were legit bids.....

[a_c_green]

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@couldabeenworse wrote:

And to top it off, you do not know for sure that you (the OP) lost by only a nickel.  For all you know, the winning bidder's max proxy bid could have been twice what yours was, and you would have had to bid up past whatever that secret max was (likely not just a mere nickel) to be top bidder again.

Isn't the minimum Bid Increment 25 cents?  Meaning the OP did indeed lose by a nickel?

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Mostly, and yes. The minimum increment depends on the current price range. Below 99¢, the increment is 5¢. From there up to $4.99, the increment is 25¢. From $5 to $24.99, the increment is 50¢. From there up to $100 it's $1 increments, then $2.50 above that, and so on; the increments get larger as the price goes up.

So with the exception of chump-change auctions below a buck, if the winning bid was only 5¢ above yours, you have uncovered the winner's maximum bid, as it's less than one increment ahead of yours; you did indeed lose that auction by a nickel. You could have won it with a bid just 6¢ higher than what you offered. If you think that doesn't hurt, think again.