How common are eBay snipers on pen auctions?

[kushbaby]

Way too common to be amusing. I do not use the sniping tactic myself and consider it to be underhand. Banning sniping would be a pretty good move. I set my maximum at the beginning and bid that amount. Some I win, some I lose, but by and large anyone setting their maximum and bidding that from the outset should not feel too bad about being upstaged by a sniper wishing to spend more.

 

I don't believe in putting in my max. bid early (unless using sniper software). You get "pecked to death by ducks" as people test your bid, and you pay more than you need to. I usually snipe by hand in the last few seconds with the max. I'm willing to pay. If someone has a higher max, he wins, but nobody (including me) has time to think about it.

 

Ebay is more like a sealed bid auction, the computer sorts it out at the end time. The nice thing is your price is NOT your high bid, it is one increment over the NEXT highest bid. In most Ebay auctions, most of the actions is in the last few seconds as manual snipers submit their max. bids and compete against the sniperbots. Bidding early (without a sniperbot) is equivalent to submitting an unsealed bid in a sealed bid auction.

 

Thank you, yes, this is exactly how I see it, as a sealed bid auction. I see it as the purest form of buying - I decide what something is worth to me, and bid that, and no more. Everyone else decides what they are willing to pay as well. At the end, we see who has the highest bid. I don't bid on items for which there is a lot of early high bidding because it seems that these pens seem to often go a lot higher than what I'd consider reasonable due to bidding wars. It's human nature for people to want to "win", and the bidding is a goad.

 

I don't do too much eBaying, but I manually snipe (that is, sit there and bid in the last minute manually, no software involved) if it's something I really want (even at 2AM). I follow the auction in the days leading up to the end, doing my homework (verifying the pen, checking out what the pen sells for elsewhere, estimating how much I'd have to pay for restoration, how uncommon it is, etc.), and deciding exactly how much I am willing to pay completely independent of any need or desire to "win" over anyone else. If while watching it on the days leading up it begins to go over my set price, I just let it go and watch from the sidelines - my methods mean that I'm not remotely tempted to bid over my chosen price. In the five minutes before the end, I write the amount that I am willing to pay on a post-it note, and stick it to the side of my computer screen. I then bid in the last minute (partially to keep my own cost down, but, honestly, mostly to keep myself honest in sticking to my guns on my top price - I don't have time for a counter bid even if I was tempted to). Then what happens, happens. Whoever is willing to pay the most wins. (I'm not sure why anyone would think that an item going to the highest bidder is somehow wrong or underhanded.) If the seller has someone bidding, well I think that's a little cheesy (and I think that's happened to me a couple times). But that's why I stick to the "highest price I'm willing to pay, period" rule. Because I may very well be asked to pay that highest price.

 

I hope I haven't offended anyone by saying I do this, but I really don't get how it's underhanded. Sure, maybe it's inconvenient if you are hoping to get something cheap and hope someone else hasn't noticed the pen you want. And maybe it's frustrating if it's something you really want and someone else is willing to pay more than you are willing or able to pay. But that's like being mad at the person who snaps up a really overpriced pen on FPN right away when you were planning to buy it when the price came down to what you figured was a more "reasonable" price. Frustrating, yes. Wrong? I don't see it. I'm a really uptight person about things like that - if I thought it was wrong in any way, I wouldn't do it.

 

I didn't come up with this strategy on my own - I had to be taught how to buy things on eBay. (I didn't even know the term "snipe" until I came to FPN). Do you know who taught it to me?

 

My 62-year-old mother. Who is a good, kind, religious person. If it's ok by my Mommy, it's ok by me.

 

(No, I'm not kidding.)

[elysee]

Your use of the word "sniper" is rather negative. Not everyone wants to bid at the beginning of an auction and not everyone has time to monitor eBay in order to increase the bid during the auction time line. In addition, not everyone wants to make her/his largest bid at the beginning. The fun of bidding on eBay is actually bidding at the end or monitoring the last moments of an auction to see if you have won. It is your choice when you place your bid, beginning, middle, or end of an auction, and characterizing one who bids at the end as a sniper is unfair and unkind. The one who wins the auction is the one who bids the most not the one who bids first and feels that (s)he owns the item.

[Shinchan]

I am really amused why some people consider sniping tactics to be "underhand". I don't see how submitting higher bids than what others are willing to pay, in the final seconds of the auction, qualifies as "underhand", and how this behaviour constitutes bad manners. :roflmho: :ltcapd: :roflmho: Every bids submitted in the last few seconds of an Ebay auction are legit.....PERIOD. Ebay auctions are not about first come first serve.....The real fact is, Nobody likes to LOSE. Yes, it's frustrating to lose an item to someone else, but if you do lose due to a lower bid, be a good loser and move on. Quit whining.

[elysee]

By the way, if you want to "win" the item instantly rather than having to compete with others throughout the auction period, including those who are willing to bid on the item at the end of the auction, then you should avoid regular auctions and "bid" only on items that are listed with Buy It Now's. That way, you can instantly "win" the item and immediately end the auction, thereby eliminating any further competition for the item with others.

[PatientType]

I freely admit that I'm a sniper and I'm not in the least bit embarrassed or guilty about it. Nor do I understand why anyone should get upset about being sniped. There's nothing unfair or inappropriate about the practice at all. It's there and available for anyone to use - there are legions of threads here about it......

 

I disagree. Sniping is bad manners. Yes, its legal and to be expected but it's rude. It's like cutting someone off in traffic or snapping up the last item on the sale table just as an elderly lady put out her hand to pick it up. I try to deliberately put my bid in at least a few minutes in advance so that the other bidders have an opportunity to respond. Maybe that's old fashioned or I don't "get" how on line auctions are supposed to work.

[elysee]

I don't do too much eBaying, but I manually snipe (that is, sit there and bid in the last minute manually, no software involved) if it's something I really want (even at 2AM). I follow the auction in the days leading up to the end, doing my homework (verifying the pen, checking out what the pen sells for elsewhere, estimating how much I'd have to pay for restoration, how uncommon it is, etc.), and deciding exactly how much I am willing to pay completely independent of any need or desire to "win" over anyone else. If while watching it on the days leading up it begins to go over my set price, I just let it go and watch from the sidelines - my methods mean that I'm not remotely tempted to bid over my chosen price. In the five minutes before the end, I write the amount that I am willing to pay on a post-it note, and stick it to the side of my computer screen. I then bid in the last minute (partially to keep my own cost down, but, honestly, mostly to keep myself honest in sticking to my guns on my top price - I don't have time for a counter bid even if I was tempted to). Then what happens, happens. Whoever is willing to pay the most wins. (I'm not sure why anyone would think that an item going to the highest bidder is somehow wrong or underhanded.) If the seller has someone bidding, well I think that's a little cheesy (and I think that's happened to me a couple times). But that's why I stick to the "highest price I'm willing to pay, period" rule. Because I may very well be asked to pay that highest price.

 

I hope I haven't offended anyone by saying I do this, but I really don't get how it's underhanded. Sure, maybe it's inconvenient if you are hoping to get something cheap and hope someone else hasn't noticed the pen you want. And maybe it's frustrating if it's something you really want and someone else is willing to pay more than you are willing or able to pay. But that's like being mad at the person who snaps up a really overpriced pen on FPN right away when you were planning to buy it when the price came down to what you figured was a more "reasonable" price. Frustrating, yes. Wrong? I don't see it. I'm a really uptight person about things like that - if I thought it was wrong in any way, I wouldn't do it.

 

I didn't come up with this strategy on my own - I had to be taught how to buy things on eBay. (I didn't even know the term "snipe" until I came to FPN). Do you know who taught it to me?

 

:clap1: :clap1: I APPLAUD you! :clap1: :clap1: Nicely said! :clap1: :clap1: Thank you!

 

I had never hear of "sniping" or "snipers" until I read this forum. I must admit to being disappointed to read that some folks feel that they are entitled to win an item just by bidding early since there is no rule of bidding on eBay or in any other auction anywhere that it is the first person who bids who must win the item. In fact, in all auctions, the rule of thumb is that the highest bidder wins no matter when this winning bid is placed.

[Deirdre]

I disagree. Sniping is bad manners. Yes, its legal and to be expected but it's rude. It's like cutting someone off in traffic or snapping up the last item on the sale table just as an elderly lady put out her hand to pick it up. I try to deliberately put my bid in at least a few minutes in advance so that the other bidders have an opportunity to respond. Maybe that's old fashioned or I don't "get" how on line auctions are supposed to work.

It is nothing like the scenarios you pose.

 

You're not entitled to win the item unless you bid more. If you do, I'd lose, snipe or no.

 

It's not about manners, it's about money.

[elysee]

Pens and other items, I snipe and have been sniped; in the latter case I expect it. It's an effective strategy; see here for instance. It's the nature of the eBay beast.

 

Nice USA Today article! I enjoyed it!

 

I especially enjoyed the inclusion of the equation and the use of a study on eBay auctions regarding bidding strategies!

http://www.usatoday.com/tech/science/colum...s-of-ebay_x.htm

To test whether sniping is a smart way to do things or just truncates normal bidding, the South Korean team at Seoul National University produced a "master equation" for how bidding proceeds (it's nk(t+1) — nk(t) = w(k-1)(t)*n(k-1)(t) — wk(t)*nk(t) + sigma(k,1)*u(t), if you really want to know), and then tested it against a massive number of auction records, some 264,073 items sold in one day on eBay and another 287,018 items sold in one year by eBay's Korean partner.

 

Plugging all those data into the model and testing the outcome in terms of how the auctions turned out, the team found that the probability of submitting a winning bid on an item indeed drops with each bid. "Our analysis explicitly shows that the winning strategy is to bid at the last moment as the first attempt rather than incremental bidding from the start." The study appears in the current Physical Review E journal.

[elysee]

I try to deliberately put my bid in at least a few minutes in advance so that the other bidders have an opportunity to respond.

 

Then, those who bid after you are responding to your bid, even those who you refer to as snipers. What makes it wrong for them to respond to your bid at the end of the auction? After all, you did provide them with the opportunity to bid after you, that is, to respond to your bid, since the auction has not ended. What makes it wrong or bad manners for someone to take the opportunity to outbid you that you admit to having provided for them?

[jon82]

As common as fleas on a feral dog....

I snipe virtually every auction I am interested in..... and I mean 99.9% of them...

Those I don't snipe I usually find within a minute of closing and can't snipe...

 

I get a great deal of amusement from people who consider sniping wrong or underhanded and in some cases purely immoral....

It is no more underhanded than someone placing a large bid at the beginning of an auction since eBay will only increase their bid by the minimum needed to be in the lead...

I lose auctions sniping and I will sniping...

You know what my secret for winning auctions by sniping is....

I BID HIGHER THAN THE OTHER GUY..... if he had bid higher than I did at the beginning of the auction HE WOULD HAVE WON...

Don't blame snipers for beating you..... BLAME YOURSELF... YOU DID NOT BID ENOUGH...

 

100% agree, I snipe 90% of the time and limit myself to what I am willing to pay for the item. And I don't win em all !!!!!!!!!!

 

Lifes too short to sit in front of a screen and watch the last hour of an auction and end up paying more that the darned things worth cos you get suckered into upping the ante.

[OldGriz]

I disagree. Sniping is bad manners. Yes, its legal and to be expected but it's rude. It's like cutting someone off in traffic or snapping up the last item on the sale table just as an elderly lady put out her hand to pick it up. I try to deliberately put my bid in at least a few minutes in advance so that the other bidders have an opportunity to respond. Maybe that's old fashioned or I don't "get" how on line auctions are supposed to work.

 

According to this scenario if I bid at the last 2 seconds, live online, and don't give anyone else a chance to bid against me it is bad manners... but if someone does it a minute before and someone has the chance to beat them it is not bad manner.... the argument of what is bad manners seems to revolve around giving others the chance to respond to the bid....

SORRY, but that is not what an auction is all about.... an auction is about winning the item you want to buy at a price you are willing to pay...

If you are entering auctions wanting to play with the other buyers to see who has better manners I would suggest finding a new game... those other buyers are in it to win it not to see who has the best manners...

As for the statement of old fashioned or not knowing how online auctions work, my guess would be the second option

I also find it rather insulting for those of us who snipe to be called rude or compared to some low life who would steal an item from an old lady....

[MarcShiman]

I'm a happy sniper, particularly for auctions that close when I'm sleeping (many). But there is one good point to it that hasn't been mentioned. As a sniper, I can change my mind.

 

Lets say I am willing to pay $125 for a particular pen that closes in 5 days. I'm like the other poster in that I typically will forget about the auction. At that point, I have two choices. I can either bid $125 and hope the price stands, or I can snipe it for $125.

 

Two days later, I suddenly win something I thought I had no shot at for $150 - a steal. Now I just go to my sniping software, and cancel the snipe. I can't do that with a bid.

 

I also sometimes put in a maximum bid early - you know what irritates me? Watching one person inch their price up by $3 increments over the course of the final 5 minutes hoping to find your maximum bid.

[I am not a number]

It's like cutting someone off in traffic or snapping up the last item on the sale table just as an elderly lady put out her hand to pick it up.

When the annals of flawed arguments are compiled, this will surely be one of the front runners.

 

I put in a snipe today on a camera lens, it was the maximum that I was prepared to pay and I was outsniped by someone who was willing to pay more. They won it fair and square.

[Siv]

It's like cutting someone off in traffic or snapping up the last item on the sale table just as an elderly lady put out her hand to pick it up.

 

As we have seen in the previous posts, the old ladies are sniping too! This is a face of a sniper:

 

http://www.sequenza21.com/s21%20Little%20Old%20lady.jpg

 

She's taking off her glove because she's about to smack you across the face for not sniping.

[Pfhorrest]

Thanks for all the replies. I do not think that it's an underhanded or unethical practice - although it can be annoying at times. I simply wanted to know how common they are, since I am very new to using eBay.

 

Again, thank you.

[Ron2]

I had read on ebay all about the terrible "snipers", and I thought sniping was something illegal or against the rules. Now, I finally learned that it's nothing more than bidding at the last few seconds, and well, hey, that's the part of the whole online auction world.

 

Not having read much about bidding tactics or about how to win on ebay, I assumed bidding at the last minute is just the natural thing to do. So, all the many times I was bidding on ebay, I didn't know that I was considered by others to be rude and sly by outbidding them during the last seconds, when they bid days or hours earlier.

 

Staying up until 2 or 3 in the morning to bid live makes me a "midnight sniper", I guess. And is that even slyer, since it's not fair to those who can't stay up to bid? I hardly think so. They're also welcome to stay up, it's their choice. Often times I have to stay up until the wee hours because of the 17-hour time difference between where I live and the States.

 

I don't like bidding days and days before, as that creates price creap, which I want to avoid. Therefore, "sniping" is simply one way of bidding on ebay if I want sometning bad enough and am willing to pay for it. But I also set my price and have been "out sniped" many times, and accept the fact that the higher bidder wins. Being out bid hurts, but to me what hurts more is not being able to get something at a price that would have been an incredible deal. (I often hope that I'm the only one in world counting down the seconds, which sometimes happens when I am the only bidder.)

 

So, I'm another one who views "sniping" as a way to bid and win (or loose) at the very end---simple as that--and not anything rude or unethical.

 

Now, what bothers me the most are shell bidders bumping up the price for the seller, and that to me is outright fraud.

 

p.s. where I live, there is a local, huge, online auction site. And sellers can set the auction end so that if duirng the last 5 minutes bids are made, the end time is automatically extended for another 5 minutes, and then another if more bids come in, and so forth, until there are no new bids for a span of 5 minutes. Now, that's exciting!!

[foxtail1]

This comes up so regularly! And, I always have to put in my 2 cents.

 

One cannot be "sniped" under any circumstances. One can only be outbid. I'm with OldGriz and the others who have stated this so eloquently before me. I bid late, and I bid the most I am willing to pay for an item.

 

Had the early bidders placed a bid for more than I am willing to pay, then they would have won the item- by outbidding me!

 

Kristi

[hehiheho]

you know what irritates me? Watching one person inch their price up by $3 increments over the course of the final 5 minutes hoping to find your maximum bid.

 

I do not use a sniper software. But I do manually snipe (bid in the last minute). And I strongly recommend to do so, so as to avoid these buyers bidding more than once on an item. Actually, I think many of the people who bid with one dollar increments are likely to be fake buyers (the seller using an other account).

 

I would like ebay to forbid people from bidding more than once on an item. Or, say, once in a day per item. Why do people do not bid only once? They know what they can pay for this item, they could do it in one bid. Sniping would then be useless.

Edited August 26, 2009 by hehiheho

[Aysedasi]

I freely admit that I'm a sniper and I'm not in the least bit embarrassed or guilty about it. Nor do I understand why anyone should get upset about being sniped. There's nothing unfair or inappropriate about the practice at all. It's there and available for anyone to use - there are legions of threads here about it......

 

I disagree. Sniping is bad manners. Yes, its legal and to be expected but it's rude. It's like cutting someone off in traffic or snapping up the last item on the sale table just as an elderly lady put out her hand to pick it up. I try to deliberately put my bid in at least a few minutes in advance so that the other bidders have an opportunity to respond. Maybe that's old fashioned or I don't "get" how on line auctions are supposed to work.

 

 

I have to say that really is exceptionally old fashioned, IMO. If I bid on something, it's because I want it. As a participant in an auction for something I want I don't have any desire at all to encourage anyone else to outbid me or even to give them that opportunity. Why on earth should I? If you would have paid more than my snipe, you should have bid more in the first place. I'm sorry but this isn't a case of 'after you Claude', this is endeavouring to beat the opposition to an item - that's what auctions are, and, with respect, maybe online auctions are not for you.......

Edited August 26, 2009 by Aysedasi

[FaustianSlip]

I've definitely manually sniped before, and I've also been sniped. While I sometimes get annoyed when someone snipes my bid successfully, I definitely don't think it's immoral or dishonest or anything of the sort. They bid higher, they get the item- that's the way the game is played. And really, I sort of look at it as a game; to me, it's not any different from waiting in line to get the best deal on a big ticket item the day after Thanksgiving or comparison shopping and getting the best deal on a particular item. At the end of the day, it's just a pen or a DVD or whatever- no point in raising my blood pressure over something like that. And if I really, really wanted/needed the item, I'd go ahead and use "buy it now," if that's an option, or else buy it in a venue other than an auction site.

 

Saying that sniping is rude or otherwise an indication of bad breeding seems a bit over the top to me. Is it rude to try and win in a rugby match or a race? I think eBay is much more analogous to something like that than, say, being part of a crazed mob that crushes a Wal-Mart employee to death while invading the store on Black Friday.