Maybe there should be a way to tell people about sniping after you succesfully sniped them. If you feel you sniped them unfairly. To me, all is fair in bidding in a auction. I just won my very first snipe and I feel great!!!!
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You are joking right???
It is somehow immoral to pay more for an item. It is moral and just for the person who does not want to pay as much as you to win? That is what is so wacked out about this country. Winning is now considered somehow immoral.
NEWS FLASH--- It is called an ACUTION.
I am so sick of the whiners of this world complaining about compitition. Just the other day some wacky group wanted to ban dodge ball because some children win and others lose. AHHHH my heart bleeds.
I don't mean this to be harsh. But if any of you want to examin your own morality over paying more for a product I suggest one of two things is true.
You are mother Theresa or you are an idiot.
If the most immoral thing you do is buy a product in an open market you must be more moral than me. I told a dirty joke earlier today.
Airventor.
GREAT for my first post I climb up on my soap box and insult people. Sorry, just tired of people feeling guilty for winning. Compitition is what made this country great..
It is somehow immoral to pay more for an item. It is moral and just for the person who does not want to pay as much as you to win? That is what is so wacked out about this country. Winning is now considered somehow immoral.
NEWS FLASH--- It is called an ACUTION.
I am so sick of the whiners of this world complaining about compitition. Just the other day some wacky group wanted to ban dodge ball because some children win and others lose. AHHHH my heart bleeds.
I don't mean this to be harsh. But if any of you want to examin your own morality over paying more for a product I suggest one of two things is true.
You are mother Theresa or you are an idiot.
If the most immoral thing you do is buy a product in an open market you must be more moral than me. I told a dirty joke earlier today.
Airventor.
GREAT for my first post I climb up on my soap box and insult people. Sorry, just tired of people feeling guilty for winning. Compitition is what made this country great..
I've always thought of sniping as another form of a silent auction. You put up your proxy same as anyone else. Only difference is your hidden bid is not given away, helping to avoid bidding wars, driving the price of an item up - sometimes to ridiculous amounts. I always stay within reasonable bounds, never going over the limit I set for an item. If someone wants something on eBay they must be willing to either play the proxy or snipe. Sometimes my snipe fails but it's no big deal, 'nuther will come around again.
I love reading the chat rooms on Ebay to see folk whingeing about sniping! They think they have a right to win an item just because their (low) bid has been sat there for ages!
They are sad and dillusioned.
M
They are sad and dillusioned.
M
Dear Fellow A.S. Users,
Let me start by saying that A.S. users are no different from any other ebay bidders, they want to win, and at the lowest possible cost, without sitting at their PC's all day and night, and keeping voluminous manually written lists of items.
Now there are several possible scenarios with an ebay item that you maybe interested in bidding for;
1 - You see an item that's; a) n/r, b) low start bid, c) no-one's bid much if anything on it yet. Now this item may not be the type of item you would normally bid for, but it gets your bargain juices flowing. Maybe you could land this item for a song, then turn around, now or sometime later, and resell it at a handy little profit. Well you're never going to be able to do it if you start bidding on it now, thereby causing attention to be drawn to it. People are like sheep (my Lord once said that I think), and if you bid on it, they will start to think that it's worth something, simply because you did through bidding on it. No, what you need is a tactic that allows you to wait until the last possible moment to bid, thereby drawing the minimum attention and counter bids. That used to mean keeping lists of the times when the items would be about to close, and basically sitting at the PC 24 hours a day, making sure you could make your bids at the last possible moment. The tools ebay provides are hopeless for that, since item tracking only allows a max of 20(!) items to be followed (why?). Way too few for the above purposes.
Voila A.S.! Just the tool we've needed all along. We're not anymore immoral than we were before, we just have a tool now that allows us to bid efficiently at the last minute, without having to sit it at the PC night and day. We used to bid like this before, just not as effectively.
You see, the problem really is ebay's. How many of you out there have been to a real live auction? You'll have noticed that obviously there are several differences, the most impotyant of which in relation to the morality discussion is the "forced" close time that ebay imposes. It's ENTIRELY ebays fault. Why do they ru the auctions that way? Why not instead, close the auction after the close date and time, but on a flexible time. It should close instead, for instance, after there have been no more bids received for 60 seconds. Everything else would remain the same, but after the close date and time has passed, there is an additional 60 seconds for anyone to place a bid. If they do, then from the time they do, then there is another 60 seconds until the auction closes. If there are no more bids in that 60 seconds, the auction closes to the highest bidder. Otherwise there must have been another bid, and then it continues on and on and on until there are no more bids for a 60 second period.
Basically what that would do is kill A.S.'s business mostly. Oh, they'd still do business with people who couldn't be around to bid at the auction close, but it would restore the integrity of the auction close. Anyone who wanted could bid at theend of the auction, and the seller would get the maximum price he/she could command from the bidders on-line at that point.
Well, what do you think?
David
For God so loved the world that He gave his only Son ...
Let me start by saying that A.S. users are no different from any other ebay bidders, they want to win, and at the lowest possible cost, without sitting at their PC's all day and night, and keeping voluminous manually written lists of items.
Now there are several possible scenarios with an ebay item that you maybe interested in bidding for;
1 - You see an item that's; a) n/r, b) low start bid, c) no-one's bid much if anything on it yet. Now this item may not be the type of item you would normally bid for, but it gets your bargain juices flowing. Maybe you could land this item for a song, then turn around, now or sometime later, and resell it at a handy little profit. Well you're never going to be able to do it if you start bidding on it now, thereby causing attention to be drawn to it. People are like sheep (my Lord once said that I think), and if you bid on it, they will start to think that it's worth something, simply because you did through bidding on it. No, what you need is a tactic that allows you to wait until the last possible moment to bid, thereby drawing the minimum attention and counter bids. That used to mean keeping lists of the times when the items would be about to close, and basically sitting at the PC 24 hours a day, making sure you could make your bids at the last possible moment. The tools ebay provides are hopeless for that, since item tracking only allows a max of 20(!) items to be followed (why?). Way too few for the above purposes.
Voila A.S.! Just the tool we've needed all along. We're not anymore immoral than we were before, we just have a tool now that allows us to bid efficiently at the last minute, without having to sit it at the PC night and day. We used to bid like this before, just not as effectively.
You see, the problem really is ebay's. How many of you out there have been to a real live auction? You'll have noticed that obviously there are several differences, the most impotyant of which in relation to the morality discussion is the "forced" close time that ebay imposes. It's ENTIRELY ebays fault. Why do they ru the auctions that way? Why not instead, close the auction after the close date and time, but on a flexible time. It should close instead, for instance, after there have been no more bids received for 60 seconds. Everything else would remain the same, but after the close date and time has passed, there is an additional 60 seconds for anyone to place a bid. If they do, then from the time they do, then there is another 60 seconds until the auction closes. If there are no more bids in that 60 seconds, the auction closes to the highest bidder. Otherwise there must have been another bid, and then it continues on and on and on until there are no more bids for a 60 second period.
Basically what that would do is kill A.S.'s business mostly. Oh, they'd still do business with people who couldn't be around to bid at the auction close, but it would restore the integrity of the auction close. Anyone who wanted could bid at theend of the auction, and the seller would get the maximum price he/she could command from the bidders on-line at that point.
Well, what do you think?
David
For God so loved the world that He gave his only Son ...
Dave, I agree with most of what you say, but I doubt very much that eBay would ever adopt a practice of extending the bidding deadline based on no activity for 60 seconds (or whatever interval) after the listing has expired. True, that would largely put AS out of business except for some of those auctions ending at an ungodly hour. But imagine the additional burden that would be placed on eBay's servers. Incredible -- tracking many thousands of auctions as they close and determining which should be extended and for how long, registering new bids as they come in, then timing 60 seconds...no way they would be able to do that without bringing a lot more expensive servers online.
And there's another twist to such a rule: snipers are sometimes the only bidders on an item they've "discovered" and kept a secret from "followers." Those items would go without a bid if it weren't for the snipers. EBay would get its listing fees but nothing else. Thus, it would cost them money in that way as well.
And there's another twist to such a rule: snipers are sometimes the only bidders on an item they've "discovered" and kept a secret from "followers." Those items would go without a bid if it weren't for the snipers. EBay would get its listing fees but nothing else. Thus, it would cost them money in that way as well.
Does anyone disagree with any of the above?
Come on and give us your views on how 'bad' we are!!
Come on and give us your views on how 'bad' we are!!
Nope, not a moral issue. I bid and I either win or lose the item. That's what auctions are all about. Period, end of statement! I frequently snipe and win items that no one has bid on at all. I refuse to feel guilty. Anyone can snipe. Life will continue as we know it. 
I am interested in winning the widgets I want by whatever means is allowed (and some that aren't if the truth will be told). There is no-one "up there" handing out fairness so I am really not interested in sad people who whinge about sniping, manipulating the rules, etc. The rules are there to be manipulated and the people who succeed in this world (whether in business or almost any other milieu) are those who are creative and entrepreneurial about using the rules to their own advantage (and per se to others' disadvantage). People who criticise are usually just not smart enough to have thought up the successful tactics in the first place.