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Shady Ebay Seller

P3R3

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Sniping is another one that makes me sad
frown.gif

I got outsniped by 1 sec just a minute ago and it sucks.
 

Zubberah

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Originally Posted by P3R3
Sniping is another one that makes me sad
frown.gif

I got outsniped by 1 sec just a minute ago and it sucks.


Don't understand the logic here. You bid your maximum amount (presumably) yet your not happy you were outbid at last minute? The fact that it was last minute or two hours before what does it matter? Bottom line is that your max. bid wasn't high enough.
 

P3R3

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Originally Posted by Zubberah
Don't understand the logic here. You bid your maximum amount (presumably) yet your not happy you were outbid at last minute? The fact that it was last minute or two hours before what does it matter? Bottom line is that your max. bid wasn't high enough.
Well I would have gone higher had I gotten the chance. The thing about snipers is they will bid exactly $1 more than you at the last second, basically anything reasonable would have been sniped. I am working a strategy to beat these guys though.
 

NoVaguy

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Originally Posted by P3R3
Well I would have gone higher had I gotten the chance. The thing about snipers is they will bid exactly $1 more than you at the last second, basically anything reasonable would have been sniped. I am working a strategy to beat these guys though.

how do you know that the sniper bidded exactly $1 more than you did if the sniper won? He could have bidded $30 or more, and it will still show up as one increment higher than the second highest bid. Ebay doesn't release the maximum bid, only the winning bid.
 

augustin

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Originally Posted by P3R3
Well I would have gone higher had I gotten the chance. The thing about snipers is they will bid exactly $1 more than you at the last second, basically anything reasonable would have been sniped. I am working a strategy to beat these guys though.

But they don't know your max bid, they only know that you are the max bidder and your bid is at least the second highest max bid plus the increment. Which are you more afraid of: Losing to a sniper or having your bid pushed up at the last minute by a sniper? If your max bid is no more than what the object is worth to you, then if you win you still come out ahead; and if you lose, you didn't want to win at the winning price anyways. I think you'll find, when you work out your optimal strategy that, if you're going to bid at all, it never pays to bid less than what you're willing to pay. And if you do that, you should feel no additional regret for losing in the last minute rather than a day before the end.
 

P3R3

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Originally Posted by augustin
But they don't know your max bid, they only know that you are the max bidder and your bid is at least the second highest max bid plus the increment. Which are you more afraid of: Losing to a sniper or having your bid pushed up at the last minute by a sniper? If your max bid is no more than what the object is worth to you, then if you win you still come out ahead; and if you lose, you didn't want to win at the winning price anyways. I think you'll find, when you work out your optimal strategy that, if you're going to bid at all, it never pays to bid less than what you're willing to pay. And if you do that, you should feel no additional regret for losing in the last minute rather than a day before the end.
No, I am a computer engineer and I know people that wrote programs to do this. These programs can bid multiple times per second to find what you max bid is!

Basically a normal person takes 7 or so seconds to place a bid. I will bid say $70, the auction is currently at $50. The bot will then bid $51, and find it is not enough and continue on bidding till it finds the max bid.
 

augustin

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Originally Posted by P3R3
No, I am a computer engineer and I know people that wrote programs to do this. These programs can bid multiple times per second to find what you max bid is!

Basically a normal person takes 7 or so seconds to place a bid. I will bid say $70, the auction is currently at $50. The bot will then bid $51, and find it is not enough and continue on bidding till it finds the max bid.


Yeah, but that's the point --- you pay for the privilege. I didn't suggest that you couldn't, just that you wouldn't unless you were willing to pay 71, in which case I shouldn;t have expected to win at 50 whether you are sniping or bidding three days before the end of the auction.
 

P3R3

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Originally Posted by augustin
Yeah, but that's the point --- you pay for the privilege. I didn't suggest that you couldn't, just that you wouldn't unless you were willing to pay 71, in which case I shouldn;t have expected to win at 50 whether you are sniping or bidding three days before the end of the auction.
Its cool, I found a way to beat the snipers at their own game, by placing a lower bid then have a succession of higher bids. Thats how I won my Golf Driver last night.
 

Philip1978

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Originally Posted by P3R3
Its cool, I found a way to beat the snipers at their own game, by placing a lower bid then have a succession of higher bids. Thats how I won my Golf Driver last night.

how did you do this?
 

Rolo

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Originally Posted by P3R3
Its cool, I found a way to beat the snipers at their own game, by placing a lower bid then have a succession of higher bids. Thats how I won my Golf Driver last night.
That is not a way to beat snipers. You seem to have a misunderstanding of how most sniping systems work. Sniping systems do not place a number of incremental bids. It's one shot (just like a sniper and hence the name). Here's a real example from an auction that ended yesterday. I had a snipe set up on a trenchcoat that I was willing to pay $153 dollars for. Two days ago I targeted this auction with my sniping service. Yesterday, with seven second to go before the end of the auction, I (though the sniping service) bid $153 for the item. I won the item for $62.99, exactly $1 more than the next highest bid. I didn't know how much the next highest bid was, nor did I need to as eBay automatically reduces a maximum bid to be just above whatever the next highest bid is. In my example, if someone else (sniper or otherwise) had bid more than $153, I would have lost the auction. Quite simply, you never lose to someone because they are using sniping software. You lose an auction because someone paid more than you were willing to pay. Sometimes you may have remorse after you lose an auction because you feel like you would have paid $5 or $10 more to get the item and you didn't get a chance to rebid. However, there are a couple of problems with this. First, you always had the chance to place a higher initial bid. Second, you don't know what the winner was actually willing to pay. In my example, the person who came is second place did not lose by $1, they lost by more than $90 because that's the amount by which they would have had to of increased their maximum bid to win the item. Also, if you are placing a number of bids near the end of an auction, the likelihood that you're competing against a snipe is effectively nil. Most good sniping systems get the bids in within the last 10 seconds of an auction which really doesn't allow you enough time to see the bid and place a counterbid.
 

Great Zamfir

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As far as I can tell, the only thing sniping does is preventing other people from raising their bid higher then they were originally willing to pay, because they are in a "I really must have this" mood.
In some auction systems everyone just makes a blind bid once, without seeing the other bids, and the winner pays his own price, or the second highest price

I effect, sniping simply reduces the ebay system to this system.There isn't so much wrong with that, or am I missing something?

I suppose it is bad for sellers, because they profit from the people who raise their prices too high just to get the item.

I have to say that bidding at last moment has the added benefit of preventing MYSELF from raising bids to too high values
 

augustin

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Originally Posted by Great Zamfir
In some auction systems everyone just makes a blind bid once, without seeing the other bids, and the winner pays his own price, or the second highest price

I effect, sniping simply reduces the ebay system to this system.There isn't so much wrong with that, or am I missing something?

I suppose it is bad for sellers, because they profit from the people who raise their prices too high just to get the item.


There is a big difference between first- and second-price auctions, and ebay is essentially second-price. Your bid determines whether you win or not, but not how much you pay if you win. At least in sealed bid auctions, the conventional wisdom is that sellers do better with a second price auction than with a first, because the incentive for bidders to lower their bid to shrink the amount you pay is not there.
 

whacked

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Originally Posted by augustin
At least in sealed bid auctions, the conventional wisdom is that sellers do better with a second price auction than with a first, because the incentive for bidders to lower their bid to shrink the amount you pay is not there.

Agreed. However, it occurs to me that a significant portion of ebay buyers tend to forget this fact and thus, resort to first price auction bidding strategies. Conventional wisdom? Not so much, unfortunately.
 

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