Auction sniper placing early bids

Would some of those auctions happen to be on a Sunday night, or auctions ending on the exact quarter hour?

You might want to supply a couple of auction #'s.

No, it was this evening & the auction was not to end on a quarter hour. Why - does the quarter hour have some magic significance?

This most recent auction was ebay #2677006855. I am not sure how this forum works. Does someone respond & let me know why this happened, again.

I'd say (and I am no expert) that the person that outbid you was using sniper software of some sort, or they are a manual sniper. Their bid was 7 seconds after yours which seems rather quick for a retaliatory bid. Also the fact that it landed 2 seconds before the auction ended would suggest it was a sniper of some sort.

In the end it doesnt matter at what stage your snipe was placed - if you bid the MOST you wanted to pay you were outbid fair and square.

We have no way of knowing how much aleph_bet was willing to pay, but if you were willing to pay more you should of bid the MAX you wanted to pay.

In relation to your bids being placed early - Auction Sniper will often test Ebay's response time and if it is lagging a little they will adjust your snipe time so that it actually makes it to the servers in time. I guess personally, I would prefer them to put it in early and if I lose the auction its because I know someone else was willing to pay more, rather than them submit it with my lead time and the snipe not make it at all because ebay was running slow.

Sara will most likely pop in here and have a look at your auctions

Good Luck

Lexie

#1 You bid manually on that auction early on signifantly driving the price up and alerting your competetion that you may be bidding again

#2 It was placed at 9 seconds before the end of the auction on a quarter hour increment at eBays peak time

#3 The other sniper that outsniped you bid more.
Perhaps a lot more, you'll never know. They could have bid $350 for all you know. The key here though is that they bid more than you.

If you think they bid in reaction to your snipe why not email them and ask? I can tell you the most likely didnt. I mean they bid at least $15 more than the high bid shown after your snipe was placed, and most likely they bid when the high bid was still $190.30. So they bid at least $56 more than the high bid at the time they sniped. They had never bid before as well. All of those combined lead me to believe they just plain outsniped you with a higher bid never even have seeing your bid.

quote:

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Why - does the quarter hour have some magic significance?

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Because eBay lets sellers schedule when their auction starts.

And they all start them at:
6:30, 6:45, 7:00, 7:15, 7:30, 7:45.

eBay thus gets bombarded with buyers at sellers at exactly those times and slows dramatically during the 0-30 seconds before and after those time periods.

quote:

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Originally posted by ms.babz:
For about the 18th time, Auction Sniper has placed my bid early, allowing a competitor lots of time to outbid me. Has anyone else had this trouble?

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A quick look at the bidding history for #2677006855 shows that your snipe for $243.67 came in with just 9 seconds to go. Perfect snipe by AS!

Then, with just 2 seconds to go, aleph-bet beat you with a higher bid.

7 seconds is not lots of time! Try this. Set a stopwatch clicking down from 30 seconds. At 9 seconds to go, try to manually enter an amount and bid on an item. Not easy, and very risky if you really want the item!

aleph-bet was also sniping and beat you with a higher bid. No way did s/he have time to react to your bid, they probably beat you with a pre-set snipe that would have won whether it came in 2 seconds before close or 22! A quick look at aleph-bet's history shows that they usually bid/snipe at the last second. I wonder if they are using A/S?

So, the lessons here are:-

1. Always bid your max amount!!!!
2. Don't bid manually then snipe (unless you have too much money and want to give it away! To me!!).
3. Auctions that end on 0,15,30 and 45 mins past the hour need more lead time.
4. No-one can react to a bid in less than 7 seconds.
5. Always bid your max amount!!!!
6. And the same item will be along again someday so set up an eBay search and chill!

R2

[This message was edited by region2 on December 16, 2003 at 01:17 AM.]

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I wonder if they are using A/S?

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Nope, I checked. They may have been manually sniping because 2 seconds is cutting it way too close. They probably bid at 7-10 seconds and because eBay was slow it cruised in with just 2 seconds left.

Also all their snipes are done at 2-3 seconds. So I'm certain this was not in response to your snipe, but simply that they just bid higher than you.

I do wish you would have won though, the item is sorta neat. I can see how it could be unique and sought after. This other buy you were up against seems to be a pro. They buy a lot of jewelry, probably a deal or some sort and can pay more because they have buyers who will pay more for it in their shop or such.

[This message was edited by Sniper Sara B. on December 16, 2003 at 02:24 AM.]

Sorry you lost, but glad you came to our forum to get some answers. There are usually members here to try and help.

Good morning. Hi Mrs. M. I didn't like my text, but didn't want to delete the post. I hate when that happens because it leaves a empty place in the home forum.

[This message was edited by Rick on December 16, 2003 at 04:40 AM.]

OF? Rick, who are you posting to?

ms.babz,

Not counting the auction listed in this topic, here is the breakdown of the auctions that you've bid on in the last 30 days:

25 Sniped-win.
3 Sniped-lost.
2 Proxy-win.
7 Proxy-lost.
1 BIN (n/a).
1 Dutch auction? (no bid history #3569319504)
1 Live auction (n/a).

On your 28 sniped auctions, NONE of them had someone snipe after you.

RICK, OUR ARCHIVE MAN!!

I found it interesting that on the sniped auctions the bidder lost 11% of the auctions, but on the proxy auctions they lost 78% (I'm a cup-half-empty kind of guy).

CORRECTION
Not counting the auction listed in this topic, here is the breakdown of the auctions that you've bid on in the last 30 days:

22 Sniped-win (CORRECTION).
6 Sniped-lost (CORRECTION).
2 Proxy-win.
7 Proxy-lost.
1 BIN (n/a).
1 Dutch auction? (no bid history #3569319504)
1 Live auction (n/a).

On your 28 sniped auctions, NONE of them had someone snipe after you.

I looked at some of the winners auctions. Only looking at the auctions s/he lost. (that's the only way to be sure what their max bid was) Their bid is usually at least $25 over the current bid and at least once $200 over! He/She tends to bid round numbers like 250,275 ect. I'm guessing the max bid would have been AT LEAST $260, and that's without seeing the snipe bid you placed.

He/She also wins more than not, which suggests deep pockets. What would be interesting, is to e-mail the winner with...

'You out sniped me, I was just curious, what was your maximum bid'

Additional breakdown for ms.babz's auctions - when snipes were placed:

1 at 1 second.
2 at 3 seconds.
7 at 4 seconds.
13 at 5 seconds.
2 at 6 seconds.
1 at 8 seconds (Sunday ending at 11:30:00)
1 at 32 seconds (Sunday ending at 19:45:00)
1 at 59 seconds (Sunday ending at 20:00:00)

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Originally posted by puppy_raiser:
'You out sniped me, I was just curious, what was your maximum bid'

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For me it's a little like playing poker. If someone wants to see my hand, they'll have to call by bet.

You're right, probably no response, but it would be interesting if they did reply.

Also winner has nothing for sale on eBay.

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Originally posted by puppy_raiser:
but it would be interesting if they did reply.

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That's a good point. I don't think that's breaking any of the rules. "Nothing ventured; nothing gained".

Many (most) people may disagree with me on this forum, but I think your early bid was too low.

When you made your first bid you had the opportunity to drive the price over $150, but missed your chance. An early bid of about $200 would have been even better. That might have prevented the winning bidder (a pro) from setting a snipe, and would have seemed like a genuine maximum bid. If the bidding had stopped below $200, which it might have done, you would have been delighted.

quote:

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Originally posted by Rosetsu:
When you made your first bid you had the opportunity to drive the price over $150, but missed your chance. An early bid of about $200 would have been even better. That might have prevented the winning bidder (a pro) from setting a snipe, and would have seemed like a genuine maximum bid. If the bidding had stopped below $200, which it might have done, you would have been delighted.

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I don't and I can't disagree. The reason is that it's uncertain what the results would have been of ms.babz placing a higher proxy bid. Had she placed a $200 proxy bid, she might have started a bidding war. Both raggedy409 and aleph-bet bid over $200. Would they have bid less if the price had been around $190 instead of $152.50? Based on my experience, in the face of competition people seem to respond with higher bids. aleph-bet snipe was $247.17+. The "+" could have been $500 for all we know.

aleph-bet (the high bidder/sniper) has won 31 auctions out of 40 (78% wins). ms.babz (2nd high bidder/sniper) has won 24 auctions out of 38 (63% wins). raggedy409 (3rd high bidder) has won 5 auctions out of 22 (23% wins). I don't think those percentages are a co-incidence. Those percentages might just be an indication of each bidder's buying power.

Hindsight isn't always 20-20.

You are right Rick. We cannot know how an early bid near $200 would have influenced the bidding. However, I find bidding behaviour quite interesting in itself. It certainly is not rational.

If the actual winner's maximum was $300 or more, it would have been more likely to raise the final price than lower it.

However Babz is only interested in the impact when Aleph-bet's potential maximum is close to $250. My suggestion is that Aleph-bet, who may be looking for easy profits, might not be interested in leaving a snipe at $250 when the price is already close to $200.

On the other hand, $200 would probably be too low to provoke a competitive bid at $250.

Babz' actual bid at $100 was too low to discourage any serious competition. It was not even high enough to identify the current maximum bid. However, as Sara suggests, it was high enough to remind other bidders to decide their true maximum bids.

I've also notice AS posting my bids exceptionally early the last few days. Today I had a 5 sec lead snipe set (Item # 3260624988). Bid was placed at 24 sec which gave the previous high bidder time to get another bid in and win the auction. Generally if I lose an auction, it is because the previous proxy was set higher than my snipe so I'm not too terribly upset to lose. When I lose because the snipe was placed too early, its just down right frustrating.