Bid Groups - speed up the process.

Hmm, I'm not sure how well it would work.

I was recently bidding on a music dvd by a band I like. I set up a search and received about 6 new eBay auctions a day in my search results.

The problem is that some of them were $1.95 shipping, some were $4.95 some $3.95, etc. So I always had to check the auctions out, and then adjust my snipe price so that the total amount of money I'd be sniping, along with shipping would total about $15.

I was happy though because I got it brand new still in the shrink rap for $15 when it sells for $25+ at Amazon and the local Best Buy. I was getting tired of sniping 6 auctions a day though and losing. I was determined to get it for the lowest price though. Had I just bid $15.50 or so I could have won it sooner at still one of the lowest prices it'd gone for in all that time. But then I wouldnt have any test snipes in my account

It took me about 2 weeks but I finally won one for $14.75. That was the lowest price in the whole 2 weeks, and the average was about $17.

Agreed, but then, in your example, P&P varies a lot for CDs and can be quite a high %age of the total.

Further suggestions:-
i. allow you to add comments showing P&P
ii. all items default to 'default' price then allow some adjustment up and down afterwards.

I.e set up the bid group in one 'hit' as mentioned previously and then allow the adding of comments and slight adjustments to bids. I reckon it might work!

sniper sarah, I agree with you about having to adjust the snipe bid for shipping charges. That's really what you want to do to get an 'effective' price.

What about having an intelligent parser that can either strip out the shipping and handling charges on the item from standard Ebay fields or within the item description, then bring that little snippet up within the item on the bidding group or in a search? The user could then confirm if the parser was accurate by maybe checking a box that allows a global max bid price based on the parsed S&H charge. Surely, there must be enough info here for a parser to extract this. Based on this info, the user could then adjust an intial assumed S&H charge, or if none was found, there could be an option to automatically email the seller as to S&H charges to the buyer's zip.

davemac

I'd love this feature but I'd be happy with a cut down version, that only returned (and bid on) identical items from the same seller. Quite often folks selling DVDs or computer parts will have lots of the same item that they sell one a day or every other day etc. I regularly set up bid groups to bid on the same item from the same seller day after day until eventually eBay has a quiet day and I pick the item up really cheaply. It'd be neat to set up one of these items and then just tick "bid on identical items from same seller until I get one" if you see what I mean.

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