OT: Ebay Shill Bidding

There's a good reason for that one, though it also reeks a bit - eb*y charges fees on the price, not the shipping. When you see a $100 item listed for 99 cents, check to see if there's $95 shipping and handling before you sign up for the "bargain". Sort your search results by price plus shipping and you'll get a better result, and figure the maximum amount you are willing to pay for the item, delivered, then subtract the shipping before you bid. I've bought commodity items where there was a choice of a silly price and high shipping or a less silly price and "free shipping", but I'll go with whichever one is cheaper (in toto) if the item is the same.

I don't buy much on eb*y (never have, really) but I've given up bothering with sniping - wastes too much of my time/effort (and I don't want to hear about your favorite program for it). Best bet is to find an item with no bids, place the bid you're willing to blow (less the shipping/handling charge) and leave it be. If it goes over, there will be another one. Ignore all the crap about "not losing it" and raising your bid - you never "had it" in the first place, and if you can't set a value when you first bid and stick with it, you'll soon pay more than the same (or a better) item is available for elsewhere, brand new.

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Of course! There are other consequences to moving the "cost" into shipping as well (e.g., shipping is not taxable). My gripe is that it's just sleazy. Like "mail in rebates" (i.e., the assumption there is that the buyer will be too lazy to process the rebate). Buy from folks who are up-front with their pricing, etc.

I never used a piece of software to do this (I don't think these tools existed "back then"). I would simply note the day/time that an auction would be over, sign in 2 minutes before and place my *one* bid. Two minutes later I would either send an email to the seller (if I had one) or know that I never needed to look at the auction again -- it's over!

I've found that you can usually find many of these things "locally" if you are reasonably well-connected. Often your

*employer* has stuff you could purchase for comparable prices without having to deal with auction uncertainty, shipping, etc. Most businesses will "off-load" items for some ridiculously low "fee" once they have been depreciated (i.e., they have no "book value" anymore).

When I go to real auctions I make 'one' bid. Either I get it, or I don't. I bid $1 a pallet for some used electronic bank equipment once. There were 16 pallets. Someone else bid $2, then got upset when I dropped out. After I bid, I realized it would fill a tractor trailer, and would require about 32 trips to pick it all up.

When I went to get the last load of what I won, there were several items I lost that were unclaimed. Everything had to be out of the building by noon the next day, so I bought some nice steel shelving and four sets of metal workbench legs for about $20. Then they told me to take anything that got no bids that I wanted. :)

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The practice is called sniping. One who does this is a sniper. To do this, fire your shot as late as possible to get in, late enough for nobody to have time to outbid you.

A friend of mine did this several times a few years ago. As far as I remember, he likes to fire his shot around 13 seconds before the auction closes - and back then, his internet connection was dialup. With higher speed internet connections, the optimum time is likely a few seconds less.

Consider the possibility of fellow snipers, and figure what it takes to outbid them (short of bidding more than you are willing to pay for the item). If you want the item "fairly badly", then what I might do is something my father mentioned - beat the latest known bid by 10.3%.

If the seller is selling several inverters one at a time and a fellow sniper has been winning by bidding $1 over your limit, then you may get an inverter by firing a sniper shot at $2 over latest known bid when there are 12 or 9 or 7 seconds or whatever left to go in the auction. That also means setting your "limit" lower. Maybe set your limit at $54. If you are afraid that the next auction would be the last, take your shot at $61.69 or $62.81. If you think you have only 2 chances left, I would say fire your shot at $60.56. If you think you have 3-plus chances, I would say set your nominal limit at $54 and take a sniper shot at $57.34. If that is insufficient, I would try the next auction with $54 nominal limit and a sniper shot at $60.56 or maybe $59.81.

Should you suspect the seller to have 10 or more of these things, then you may at least consider pushing for shorter time before end of auction (4-5 seconds?) and if your shot lands too late rather than being insufficient, you likely have a chance to try again - take your shot 2-5 seconds earlier next time.

(For you, I hope that fellow readers of this newsgroup who would want to buy these inverters along with you do not outnumber the number of inverters that the seller wants to sell one eBay auction at a time.)

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 - Don Klipstein (don@misty.com)

So eBay implemented a fix against snipers? I agree that this is a mistake, since most of the snipers would go away and the bidding pool would shrink.

That means the OP may have played his card at willing to bid $60 on

4 repeat auctions.

As a result, that means snipers have to guess the maximum automatic bids and beat them and each other, preferably by as little as possible. Or to figure out how to land a shot with milliseconds to go.

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 - Don Klipstein (don@misty.com)

Live auctions that's hard to do. E.g., if the bidding is at $2, I sure as hell am not going to bid $27 (the most I am willing to pay for the lot, for example)!

So, you can either hope others will bid it up into "your" price range (gee, doesn't that sound wonky? :> ) or do the tit-for-tat *until* you get to your magic number.

Yup. When I am at a live auction, I bid "nonstop" until my cutoff is reached. Then walk away. I.e., "clearly someone else thinks this is worth more than *I* do. I'm not going to let

*them* determine it's worth :> "

The auctioneers at some of the places I frequent know that this is how I behave so they don't even look to me for further bids once I "stop".

I bought 25' x 7' x 18" of industrial shelving units (just over

200 linear feet of shelving) for $35. Folks were amused to see how I was going to get it all *home* (I don't own a truck). Thank heaven for the T-roof! :>

The local university (here) has a policy that the minimum bid is $2.50 for a lot. So, after the auction is done, I walk through and see if anything is worth $2.50 :>

No, why should they? Snipeing is legimate in auctions.

That's basically true.

The problem today is that snipeing is done with servers that automate the entire process. There's little or no successful manual snipes usually, with the more successful bidders all using one of the many services to place their bid in the last half second of the auction.

The only point of sniping is to avoid getting some idiot all excited by showing a bargain price.. the idiot will then proceed to manually overbid for the item so that they can "win". You set your automated snipe to the maximum you are prepared to pay. If you get it, it's at an acceptable price, if not then it was worth more to someone else. And nobody knows you are preparing to bid but you-- in fact if the price exceeds your maximum before the last few seconds no one will ever know.

No, but if the increment is going like $50 it might be to your advantage to bid an item that's worth $200 to you to $200 from $100 rather than $150 and letting the other guy put in a $200 bid and then you have to go $250. It scares some people off.

Yup.

What exactly did eBay change about sniping?

A few years back I got outbid by two tenths of a second once.

One bidding history I saw showed that one particular bidder was using special software on their end specifically designed to snipe.

In one case any new bid was responded to automatically by the bidder with software assist on their end. (not the automatic bidding stuff built into eBay)

I asked eBay and they said there was no rule against such automation on the user end.

WHAT did eBay recently change about sniping?

I see NOW that Googling such software comes up with lots of leads. For example:

"Powersnipe pays for itself after the first use." - J. Thomas, PhD, eBay Guru

What is PowerSnipe Auction Sniper?

PowerSnipe is an eBay Auction Sniper software and service that bids for you automatically on eBay in the closing seconds of the auction. eBay auctions are often lost in the last few seconds of the auction because the majority of people wait until the last seconds to place their bids. PowerSnipe securely bids for you in the final moments. This gives you a better chance of winning and helps you to avoid getting into "bidding wars" with other users competing over an item. Set it and forget it. Your computer does not have to be turned on at the end of the auction.

How do I get Powersnipe?

To get Powersnipe Sign Up. Users can access Powersnipe services through the software, or through the website.

Why is PowerSnipe Necessary?

When an eBay auction is placed it usually does not end for days. One person places his maximum bid. Later another person comes along and bids until he is the highest bidder. During the course of an auction this process often repeats itself many times, it is known as a =93bidding war=94 and it drives the price of an auction up.

To avoid the =93bidding war=94 people have started bidding another way known as "snipe" or "sniping". They wait until the final moments of the auction to submit their bid. Doing this often ensures that they get the item at the lowest price possible, but there are problems with this method. The first problem is that you have to be online at the end of the auction, this can be a tremendous time waster. The second problem is that you also have to compete with others that may have a faster connection than you do. The process of placing the bid takes time so unless you time your bid just right, there is a good chance someone else will outbid you or time on the auction will run out.

What are the Benefits?

Places your bid just before auction ends. Pay once and get unlimited usage. Your computer doesn't have to be on. Works with all eBay sites. Inexpensive and Guaranteed. Daily auto search delivers eBay search results to your email every day. Bid Groups allow you to bid on the same item from different sellers until you win at the price you set. Fast, award-winning customer support.

How does it work?

PowerSnipe eliminates all of the problems associated with bidding and gives you the best possible chance of winning the auction. PowerSnipe can be used on any computer connected to the Internet. When you are ready to place a bid you can either copy and paste the auction number into your PowerSnipe account, or use the software eBay Auction Sniper and Auto Search and press the snipe button.

PowerSnipe will extract all the information from the auction page and save it in an easy to review format. When the auction is about to end PowerSnipe will submit your bid at the last possible moment. Your computer does not even have to be turned on because PowerSnipe places your bid from a bidding server with a high speed connection to the Internet. If for some reason you want to retract your bid, you can do so up to four minutes before the auction closes. For a full tutorial click here.

It does apear to me that the OP may have been outbidden by a sniper, or a similar sort of game-player.

As a result, I suggest the OP to make "nominal" maximum bid something lower, as in $54. However, I suspect the OP may have "played his card" at $60, and may do best to be a sniper at $61.13 or $61.34 or something like that in the "apparently-to-me" somewhat-likely event more of these inverters get auctioned on one-at-a-time "one time" basis. The OP may get an inverter for $57 if the seller has to unload at least 13 or 19 of them, unless whoever he is losing to can profitably go into business buying and reselling all of them while buying them 1 auction at a time at about $61.

One thing coming to my mind... Though I have some doubts, since eBay gets its money from sellers...

Some who needs only 1 inverter forces someone else to pay $61 or $61.59 for them, and if satisfied allows his opponent-buyer to get maybe a dozen at $56-$57 rather than $61.

(The OP did report outbidding price per auction decreasing at least mostly less per auction than it appears to me what eBay charges per auction at least in that price range. As a result, I suspect the OP is losing auctions to a sniper who is some outright buyer as opposed to some alias or sockpuppet of the seller.)

For that matter, if buyers have lower ability to know who each other of them are, I would hope that a sniper trying to win 12 or 20 or 24 auctions at around $61 would consider that only one competing against him/her bids $60. As in your competing sniper gets a chance to buy 6 maybe 17 more inverters for about $56 as opposed to about $61 if allowing you to get one for $57.86 as opposed to $61-plus. (And what if the seller wants to sell

24 of a "bargain pack" of 25, or is trying to resell 1-at-a-time some load of 50 or 100 of them?)

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 - Don Klipstein (don@misty.com)

The "fix" for this is to randomly end the auction in the last 60 seconds remaining. It means snipers can't be sure of when the "last second" will be.

Correct. I often use a variant of this strategy in local auctions. *Knowing* that the opening (asking) bid will be $2.50, I will often want to be *second* bidder -- at $5 --- if it is likely that the lot isn't worth $7.50 in many people's eyes (though it is often worth $2.50... and, it is easy for some folks to bump that (in their mind) to $5. But, the step to $7.50 sees more resistance in many cases.

It really is amusing when you watch people in such a "bidding war". Especially when you *aren't* talking "a few bucks". My "sudden stopping" often is unnerving to anyone bidding against me. It seems to *say* "this isn;t worth anything more".

When sales go to snipers, it appears to me that snipers benefit the sellers by paying more than bidders who are not snipers.

It does appear to me that both eBay and their customers (sellers) need to consider how much any "reforms" get snipers and their competitors to pay more and how much "such reforms" merely repel snipers with their higher bids.

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Besides the widely-said "Buyer Beware", I would also say "Seller Beware". Don't count on anyone in the world to pay a dollar or even a penny more than highest bid made known to you while your item is up for sale, especially if there are countermeasures against bidding higher at a moment so late that you get the news of a higher selling price at soonest in the seconds or milliseconds after bidding opportunity ends.

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 - Don Klipstein (don@misty.com)

Hi Greegor,

Why should anyone do thau. I use bietomatic, the ultimative ebay-tool.

Opensource, comfortable and without hassle.

Marte

Yup, and no giving your password to anyone else.

Best regards, Spehro Pefhany

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Embedded software/hardware/analog  Info for designers:  http://www.speff.com

And as I sense this, how does this change the sniper game? Does the time scale shorten? Does the sniper game shift to machine over human? Or is eBay giving some consideration to buyers P-O-'ed (I believe unjustifiably) by snipers, and eBay as a result is implementing anti-sniper measures?

I still seem to think that a sniper can win an auction by guesstimating how much higher to shoot for (preferably by as little as possible), especially if not disclosing to anyone what the sniper is willing to pay until late enough to have responses to the sniper failing to get-counted.

At this point, it appears to me that eBay and eBay's selling customers have disservice done against them should they repel bidders who would fire a shot at $1 or $1.13 or $1.34 above last-chance-to-beat disclosed maximum bid, or $2.69 higher by a sniper anticipating a fellow sniper, or $3.69 to $11.91 higher by a sniper seeing a bargain so good (to the winning sniper and that sniper's competitors) as to foresee multiple fellow snipers.

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 - Don Klipstein (don@misty.com)

[attributions elided]

There is nothing "wrong" with sniping. There's nothing wrong with "programmed trading" in the stock markets, etc.

eBay's problem is one of perceived fairness. If John Doe's feel like they are losing auctions "unfairly" (using an odd idea of "fair") and stop using the site/service, then eBay

*and* sellers lose -- as the market *shrinks*.

You can argue that snipers *don't* lead to higher bids. E.g., if the sniper were to bid earlier, the normal tit-for-tat (even if the sniper *never* bids again!) could lead the price higher than the sniper's highest bid.

The "fairest" way to run an auction is sealed bids. People bid what *they* think an item is worth. And, they have to PAY what they bid -- not "just a bit more than the second highest bidder".

Of course, that doesn't stir up passions -- and, thus, "sales".