Comment by jsheard
19 hours ago
What's the point of sniping bots when eBay has automatic bidding? Counter-sniping is essentially built-in, if your price ceiling is higher then a snipers then you're guaranteed to win even if they bid at the last millisecond.
This was my belief for many years, but then I tried sniping (with the same prices I was putting as my maximum bid before!) and my success rate skyrocketed and the prices I was paying dropped.
It seems that despite repeated reminders and explanations, there are three groups of people using eBay "incorrectly" that make the sniping strategy viable: 1) People who do not understand proxy bidding and think that they "need" to repeatedly bid in increments. 2) People who are irrational about their price ceiling and are willing to bid above their price ceiling because they want to "win". 3) People who want to drive up the price either to deprive others of a good deal, or to drive up the price on behalf of the seller by starting a bidding war with the two above groups.
From a sellers perspective it is common to deal with buyers who won't pay because they paid "more than they wanted", although this is against the eBay ToS and a bid is a contract to purchase the item, because there are few consequences for not doing so.
For some reason, auctions with more bidders seem to attract more bidders, whereas auctions with zero bids seem to go unnoticed. I wonder if this has to do with eBay's search ranking algorithm or some other irrational behavior that I don't understand. At any rate, bidding with 5 or less seconds left to go seems to defeat the above behaviors. I find it distasteful and irrational but it works so I put up with it.
eBay's reputation and trust network is really what makes it a viable product at this point. Given how unreliable Facebook Marketplace buyers are and how many scams are present, I would hesitate to conduct any major transactions beyond a local area.
> For some reason, auctions with more bidders seem to attract more bidders, whereas auctions with zero bids seem to go unnoticed.
Huh. I'm a "buy it now" guy and filter out the auctions, but maybe I should start looking for zero bid auctions too.
Auctions are 90% bad deals because you often end up with someone getting over excited and bidding more than the next buy me now price for the same product. But 10% of the time you get lucky, particularly if auctions end at odd time of the day. So I find it's worth throwing some bids, knowing that you should almost always lose. Ebay is best when you are not in a hurry and happy to wait for the right bargain.
4 replies →
another group..
i am looking for a bargain not a bidding war. i dont know what is my price ceiling but i know i will only increment twice. if someone outbids me instantly twice in a row i dont want the thing anymore.
The instant outbidding is likely automatic due to you not having reached the previous bidder's entered bid.
Snipers essentially convert the ascending-bid proxy auction used in eBay into a Vickrey second-price sealed bid auction, allowing a buyer to not reveal their preferences to other participants. In theory, with rational participants, this shouldn't have any effect on revenue. In practice, buyers do not always understand auction mechanics and delay setting the highest price they're willing to pay until they are outbid. If they're outbid 3 seconds before the deadline, they lost.
If you set the highest price you’re willing to pay it inevitably drives the price higher up then it would otherwise go. There’s something about putting in a bid and immediately seeing that the price has increased that causes the person to bid again.
Establishing the price ceiling is difficult, though. You might arbitrarily set it as $23, but be sniped at $23.30. The sniper bot only needs to bid that small increment over your arbitrary ceiling.
Can you really say that $23 was your hard limit, or would you have paid $23.40? Unless you're buying something also available at retail, nobody can be that accurate in foresight.
Sniping removes the 'contemplation window' to reconsider your bid.
Then just put your actual hard limit in as your bid, and sleep soundly, knowing that if someone pays $0.01 more, it's OK because you wouldn't have wanted to pay that anyway.
I've never really been bothered by "sniping" in eBay. I always bid my absolute 100% maximum, and if someone bids more than me, then they can have it.
I don't understand this line of reasoning. I don't do auctions, but if I did, it would be because I want that item. When I want something, I never have an absolute hard price ceiling; if I'm willing to pay $10000, I'm willing to pay $10000.01. I can't imagine anyone who would be happy to pay $X for an item but not $X + $0.01.
Like, if I'm at a store and an item costs $500, and I bring it to the checkout and the cashier says "oh sorry that was mislabeled, it's $500.01 not $500", there is no world in which I go "okay never mind then, $500 was my max". There does not exist a situation where I've decided I want something at price $X, but would not buy it at price $X + $0.01, because $0.01 is absolutely negligible.
So where does this fantasy of an absolute max price come from?
31 replies →
But I want to get the item as cheaply as possible, not pay as close to my maximum without going over.
2 replies →
Not everyone is in auctions for the game, some people want to actually get the item. Though I imagine there's less and less of them, as most figured out long ago that auctions are a stupid waste of time.
In fact, I'm somewhat angry at sellers setting up auctions if there's no other way to acquire a specific item. Why they won't put a minimum price they're happy to part with some items for, instead of wasting time of a lot of people by withholding target price and pretending they're earning premium through work?
But if that someone isn't rational it is better to not give him the time to react to your highest bid.
Also some sellers seem to use some fake accounts to bid high on their own item, revealing your max bid, then cancel their bid, then bid right under your max bid to maximise their sell price. Happened to me twice, and now no longer setting my max bid in advance since.
4 replies →
It gets into the nature of "Which grain of sand makes it a pile?"
Knowing people bid snipe by bidding one cent over whole dollars, would you consistently bid two cents over if it meant you would win more of your auctions?
One cent is negligible. If you asked me if I would have paid $10.01 instead of $10.00, I'd probably say "Sure". $10.02? $10.03? Like, where does the line get drawn?
And then you come at it from the other way. Let's say I'd pay $10, but not $11. But what about $10.50? $10.25? Or we can go down by pennies again.
I agree, put in your limit and walk away. If you get overbid, even by a cent, don't sweat it. That's the game. But I can see why people get frustrated when they lose an auction by one cent.
2 replies →
If you enter your maximum bid in ebay you're revealing it. With sniping no one can discover your maximum bid.
The 'nibblers' will invariably show up and bid small amounts until they exceed your maximum bid, while not revealing theirs.
5 replies →
The act of bidding itself shows interest and raises the price.
The act of viewing the item page in itself demonstrates activity and is relayed to other users; leaking information about, not necessarily intent, but awareness. If you want something, figure out the details without actually clicking on it.
Auto bid raises the price to the second highest price among auto bidders, basically running an instant second-price auction. Sniping avoids running these pre-close auctions.
It does not. Even if you submit a snipe bid the normal eBay bidding rules apply.
From what I understand, the reasoning behind the snipe method of bidding is to avoid showing to other bidders that there is interest, leading to the, supposed, outcome of more likely being the only bidder and thereby receiving the item at the sellers starting bid price (or slightly above) rather than at the "max one was willing to pay" price.
Not just other bidders, but the engagement/SEO part of eBay's ranking algorithm.
Sniping is the only way to bid for two reasons:
- bidding more than once and allowing time for others to counter bid drives up the price through competition for the item. Sniping also removes the temptation to counter bid, rather than to stick to your maximum bid.
- not sniping allows the seller to do ghost bidding, letting them discover your maximum price (including counter bidding). Here someone always out bid you (the ghost bidder) but the seller says the winner didn't complete the sale so offers it to you at your highest bid.
Or rather than not winning and not completing the sale, the ghost bidder retracts the bid and re-bids just under your max.
I have lost most of my bids to bots. Bots will literally bit at hh:59:59. The ceiling value doesn't work unless you bid way above the asking price.
Are you sure the winner didn't just have a higher max bid than yours?
Auto bid isn't the same as sniping. Sniping hides information about demand. Auto bid can't hide information as soon as there is another bidder.
Auto bid does not hide any information even with one bidder, as ebay indicates that "1 bid" has occurred.
The only way auto-bid could hide information is if eBay treated auto bid as "silent auction" style. Show "zero bids" all the way to the end, then once closed, see which 'auto-bid' came in highest and declare that bidder the winner.
Sniping is attempting to recreate 'silent auction' style bidding, with a bid system that is not 'silent'.