Say you and a friend are interested in the same types of auctions on ebay, and it turns out you both out-bid eachother quite often. And perhaps you both put in large bids/snipes. In the end you might win the auction; but darn, if only your friend hadn't bid at all, your winning price would have been much lower. The only real winner here is the seller.
Of course you could contact your friend before the auction ends, and ask politely to not bid. But collectors are competitive- even if they're friends.
Why not provide a service that will submit a SINGLE snipe on behalf of both of you? The service would collect snipe entries from 2 or more "friends" and only submit one snipe - the highest sniper in the group. You and your friend(s) would arrange a "friend group" on the sniper service, and submit your snipes in the context of being in that group. You would not know if anyone else in the group is bidding on the same items, nor what their snipe values are (that would only allow you to cheat).
In the end, the sniper service sends one bid on behalf of the group's "most serious" snipe, and if it wins, then it's potentially a lower sale price than if everyone had bid/sniped separately. If it lost, then everyone in the group would have lost the auction anyway.
What do you think - could AuctionSniper provide this "friendly-fire" sniping?
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