It's Not Just About Sniping...

Sniper Rudy,

Me TOO! Before Auction Sniper, I lost more items because I either forgot or lost track of the time, or I wasn't at my computer. (More the first reason than the second, haha.)

And, I also prefer not to bid on eBay at all; unless I judge the item to receive few bidders and I'm the opening bidder, and/or the item isn't of major importance to me.

Neva

To me this is a wonderful tool - but I have been wondering why some think that ebay may move to ban this type of bidding?

As a buyer I think it is fantastic. I haven't lost.

As a seller I hope that all my buyers become A.S. members and use the sniope tool. I am sure the end result will benefit me because then when two are bidding their maximums then surely I must end up with the same result or even better tan what I would have made given all the time constraints placed on people to be in front of their computers watching the bidding war progress.

Kiwi Keith

Well, ebay has done it in the past, block sniping that is
Proxy bids were enstated by ebay so that snipers couldnt get away with it so easily.
before that, you placed a bid and that was it, unless you signed up for BidButler i believe it was called. It would do pretty much what a proxy bid does now, I would think thaat ebay might stop A.S. soon enough. Afterall, all they must do is place an entry in the firewall to block access from the AS servers

I dont think they will. Any bidding is good. It's a good part of the fun of winning too waiting for those final minutes and seconds to tick down. If they take away sniping they take away a good deal of the fun.

Take a look at a hundred auctions and I think you'll find that a majority are won in the last hour, and a good deal in the final minutes.

Snipers aren't nibblers as I saw someone once say. They place their highest final bid and they are shooting to win. I'll take them bidding on my auctions any day.

I have no prob with snipers.

All my auctions that i sell are overpriced, yet payed for by snipers. something costs me $20, sells for $90.

i encourage snipin gon my auctions, so therefore, i only make them 3 days long. it doesnt make a difference anyway.

When I first signed up my wife and I discussed this. Then something happened that convinced me.

There was an item with a high bid of like 20 bucks. I placed a snipe at like 80 bucks. I lost to the first bidder who had an $81 (or more) proxy bid. So I cost the guy 60 bucks. If I would not have sniped he would have gotten it for 20 bucks.

So ebay made commission on an extra 60 bucks. They might claim to be neutral or whatever they say publicly but it is all about bidness. And AS makes them more money.

Airr

I don't think Ebay would move to ban AS at the minute due to the small percentage of ebayers who use automatic sniping.

At the minute the balance is probably right for Ebay. They get bidding wars on some items which push the price up and they also get sniping which gets them more sales. As we all say, it the highest not the latest bid that wins. All of this leads to higher income for Ebay.

From the posts I read on the boards we all seem to be hooked on AS which surely means that although we get things cheaper most of the time, we are still committed ebay customers. The winner? Ebay of course.

If AS did not exist I know I would bid on less items. I don't have the time to manually snipe so some bids would not be worth making.

I think programs like AS will only be seen as a threat by Ebay when they become so big that they disrupt Ebay's money-making. Some non-snipers may get disaffected with being sniped that they loose the bidding bug. However, the figures show that Ebay is continuing to grow. AS is therefore an enhancement to Ebay's revenues at the minute rather than an attack.

M

I agree with airventor. Sniping isn't just about being cheap. Sometimes we may get something for a lower price because we haven't engaged in a bidding war. But, as is pointed out, we do make high bids - unlike other bidders we do not get a second chance. Sometimes I have ended up paying more than I wanted to because the proxy was high or another sniper came in. Other times I lose - but I do drive the price up so the seller makes money. I bid against a regular "foe" on an item that was at 12.57. I bid 46.89. I lost but the seller made a neat profit. As I said in an earlier post the sellers I know like snipers. We make them money.
I think there would be a strong reaction to stopping AS - and there are other sniping companies as well as sniping software. I can't see that ebay has anything to gain. The non-snipers I bid against on a regular basis have raised their bids so even if I don't snipe the seller has the possibility for making more if others bid against them.

My memory may be failing me, but I seem to recall reading somewhere that Yahoo.com's auction site was modified to allow sellers to ignore last-second bids (read: snipes) if they chose to do so. If that's the case, does anyone know how buyers and sellers reacted to that option? I just visited Yahoo's auction site and found a miserable six items under a one-word search name that brings down more than 1,000 "hits" on eBay, every day. Sure seems as though not many people are visiting that site...at least, not many sellers.

Dear Fellow A.S. Users,

There is technology available that allows you to disguise your address so that the recipient of a message or transaction doesn't know where the heck it came from. Isn't that great! In other words - you can cuss your boss out over the email, and there's no way he can EVER find out who sent him the message, that is unless you accidentally use your auto sign feature, or something like that. I've known it was available to hackers and the like for quite some time now, but just a couple of days ago, I read on the internet a news article that a company is being founded offering just that service, where they mask the origin of your message or transaction, and make it impossible for the receiver to ever find out who sent it to them.

So rest cool - A.S. will be with us for awhile longer, at least in that regard.

Keep the faith!

David

For God so loved the world that He gave his only Son ...