OT: Ebay Shill Bidding

Maybe the problem is that people like Bart don't understand that their maximum bid is not the price they necessarily pay on winning, but merely the maximum price they can be asked to pay.

Such a misunderstanding would explain Bart's desire to be able to make multiple bids in quick succession.

Though nothing can explain his willingness to resort to insults.

Sylvia.

Yes but it appears to me you are just whining because other people are willing to pay more and therefore exceed your bids every time.

I buy stuff from Ebay every now and then. With some patience, proper research and clever searches I always get what I want for the price I like to pay.

--
Failure does not prove something is impossible, failure simply
indicates you are not using the right tools...
nico@nctdevpuntnl (punt=.)
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Show me a proof of that. I evaluate auctions every now and then to determine bid patterns on particular items. I've never ever seen an auction for which the highest bid didn't win.

--
Failure does not prove something is impossible, failure simply
indicates you are not using the right tools...
nico@nctdevpuntnl (punt=.)
--------------------------------------------------------------

Exactly. That's how I would "snipe". If the bid went from $0.01 to $125.37 in 3 seconds, then it was obvious that *someone* was willing to pay $125.37 and someone else was willing to pay one bid increment *less* -- in the span of those 3 seconds (i.e., only one bid need be added in that interval).

Sniping would never be necessary if folks would just place *one* bid and not get caught up in the "oh, my! someone is willing to pay more than me! I had better INCREASE my bid!!" (um, didn't you already bid your MAXIMUM???)

Making up your mind about a maximum price is a good strategy

*any* time you go to buy something (auction or otherwise). Else you risk getting caught up in emotional/irrational decisions that invariably *cost* you.

I have no interest in eBay so I don't really care *what* they do with their policies. :> I'm getting to the age where I want less and less "stuff" around -- and have *way* too much as it is! :-/

But nobody has time to make a rational decision about what something is worth to them in a few seconds. If they're agonizing over a few bucks, they probably don't have time to decide rationally in 1 minute either. Therefore there's no need to react to other snipers anyway.

It just works like a sealed-bid auction. So what?

Cheers

Phil Hobbs

--
Dr Philip C D Hobbs
Principal
ElectroOptical Innovations
55 Orchard Rd
Briarcliff Manor NY 10510
845-480-2058
hobbs at electrooptical dot net
http://electrooptical.net

That's the problem. They react emotionally instead of logically. Auctions are *designed* to exploit this (I know a couple of auctioneers and have discussed the various "tricks" they use; all are designed to favor the seller)

Ending the auction "randomly prematurely" is just to add a bit of uncertainty to the sniping. I.e., if your "winning strategy" is to wait until the last second to place your bid, that counts on you knowing *when* that will be. "Reliably". If, instead, the auction picks some time between "scheduled end" and "scheduled end - 1 minute", then the only way to be guaranteed that your bid is even accepted is to place it

1 minute ahead of time. Leaving yourself potentially vulnerable to other snipers that are more "daring". It forces snipers to decide how *much* they want something (not just how much they want to pay for it)

No. Sealed bid auction is entirely different. You have no idea how many bids were cast. Nor any idea of what those bids *were*. All you know is what the winning bid was (i.e., after the fact).

Just for the record, there normally can only be one viable proxy bidder at any given time. The current bid amount is set to the next increment over the second highest proxy bidder's amount, making his, and all lower proxy bids meaningless.

The real problem is that it is difficult to time a manual bid in the last second or so of an auction, there are latency issues with the Internet that create problems too.

Yea, but you know the old saying: "He who dies with the most crap wins..."

I figure I may place third place at the end.

My condolences! :>

During the snipe phase, the two are pretty similar, but you're right, they aren't exactly the same.

The rules are pretty reasonable and apply equally to everyone, so why worry?

Cheers

Phil Hobbs

--
Dr Philip C D Hobbs
Principal
ElectroOptical Innovations
55 Orchard Rd
Briarcliff Manor NY 10510
845-480-2058
hobbs at electrooptical dot net
http://electrooptical.net

Correct. If you don't perceive "value" from the service, don't use it. (if you don't like hamburgers, don't eat at McDonald's...)

In that event, eBay buying with sniping software (or by sniping manually - I think that is still do-able) becomes like a "sealed bid" event. Bidders don't know what their competitors will bid in the end, but merely learn afterwards what the highest bid was and maybe who it was by. As a result, in such an environment bidders bid the most they want to pay for what they are trying to buy.

If 20 snipers are going to take their shots in one action, and at least some of them are aware of a multitude of fellow snipers, then there will be snipers shooting with the highest bid that they are willing to pay - their "honest maximum bid". It appears to me that the seller enjoys bids by bidders' "honest maximum bids".

--
 - Don Klipstein (don@misty.com)

Should that work, I expect it to be known well enough by now to those "playing the game" to do what they have to do to deal with this.

In a more severe case, an eBay auction winner is either a sniper best at sniping by bidding highest as late as possible, or a sniper getting a shot in ahead of the higher later shot(s) by .7 or .2 second or whatever and high enough to get past bid increment requirement above previous-high-bid and be outbid later only by less than the required bid increment.

In a more severe case, that means to buy means either to do the sniper game manually or to do that game with software.

The only unfairness I see here is to a sniper losing to someone who placed a lower bid that exceeded previous-high by the bidding increment requirement, but was high enough for the ultimate high bid to fall short of required degree of outbidding.

To fix that, I would propose that eBay modifies the minimum bid incriment requirement to be a lower one once the auction is close enough to closing to be prone to bids that cannot be responded to. As in 3 or 2 or whatever seconds before auction close, or whatever the time range is for manual human snipers and sniping "bots" (even if I somewhat exaggerate) to be the main bidders. Along such line, I propose that minimum bid increment be rounded-to-higher-cent of something like .1-.99% of current-so-far highest bid. I sense that something in this range maximizes average-selling-price by a favorable combination of motivating snipers to outbid by much more than a penny, combined with reducing shortfall-of-highest-bid need of the seller to sell to someone at lower than highest bid because highest bid was one later than a lower one that was lower by less than the minimum bid increment.

--
 - Don Klipstein (don@misty.com)

You do understand that "Bart" is just another of Nymbecile's nyms. He also goes by "AlwaysWrong", around here, because he is *always* wrong.

Nah, it easily explained; lonesome neuron.

It appears to me that "The Sniper Game" makes the game closer to "sealed bids", as I said very recently.

One thing I propose is that bid increment requirement gets reduced in the final whatever number of seconds or 1/10's of a second where the sniper game can get down to winning-buyer not being the highest bidder - but bidding late enough to be outbidded afterwards only short of minimum bid increment higher.

I would like the minimum bid increment to be lower in the final 3 or .4 or whatever second of the auction, and to be something that balances need to outbid by more than a penny (forcing outbidding snipers to bid 6 or 11 or 13 or 26 or 29 or 51/53/57 or whatever cents more), while the minimum bid increment in last-whatever-number-of-seconds (or milliseconds) decreases enough to maximize success of auction winning by highest bidder, but remains high enough for someone sensing value even if needing to shoot higher needs to outbid by 11-53 cents as opposed to 1 cent, and the bidder-in-question in such scenario is more likely to cough up some more pocket change to fire a "sniper shot", or else buy only at another auction or non-auction-selling alternate seller or not-at-all.

--
 - Don Klipstein (don@misty.com)








  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".
>
>> 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.

Nope. The winner is the last bid that the computer system was able to enter before the OVERRIDING program that ends the auction ends it.

The highest bid offered does not always win, and if you were not so goddamned clueless, you might one day grasp that fact.

Look, ditz. YOU are the one here that has ZERO aptitude for the discussion.

I was going to REAL auctions since '66. Likely before your retarded ass was even born.

No one EVER said that was what takes place. There is a big difference between "opening" up an ebay bid window and SUBMITTING one, you stupid, illiterate twit!

ONLY YOU, in your 100% BENT interpretation of the thread (likely from NOT reading the thread)... yes... ONLY YOU have made retarded presumptions.

You are the only one in the dark about the process.