Why doesn't ebay offer sniping?

quote:

Originally posted by Fact-giver:
Ok, it's not a sniping system. It's as effective as, if not more effective than, a sniping program for eBay's purposes: Allowing people to say how much they are willing to pay, then walk away from their computer.

I think you fail to grasp the essential point. In a sense, the two options (placing a bid early and relying on proxy bidding, versus "sniping" either automatically or manually at the last minute) can tend to arrive at a similar result--but ONLY in a world where there are no nibblers (as well as no people checking up on other ebayers' bids, and other assumptions, but set them aside). Yet there ARE nibblers, an endless supply of them. Given this, it is simply foolish to place a bid earlier as opposed to later, regardless of the proxy bidding feature. Your conclusions only make sense in an idealized world where all or most ebayers can be assumed to have pre-conceived, fixed valuations and preferences and act based purely on them. They don't.

Basically I don't think you have a clear idea of what you are talking about. You are commenting on "sniping" without even understanding WHY PEOPLE WOULD USE a service like Auctionsniper. You might have assumed there is some rational reason for using thIs AS service, which is cheap but not costless.

Eh... I think he's got it. He's not saying sniping isn't as effective for us, but that bidding wars are better for ebay, fiscally. We like ebay's fixed auction end time because we can catch other bidders with their pants down, but ebay (and sellers, I'd think) like bidders who bid high, bid often, and essentially don't understand the system. They make more money off them than us.

Hi all,

I find this topic fascinating. Ebay will never implement a snipe feature for the exact same reason that I ALWAYS snipe auctions--the final purchase price is consistently much lower. Ebay charges sellers a listing fee as well as a percentage of the final purchase price, so their profits drop right along with the final price.

To illustrate why the final purchase price is lower, you have to consider the ways people bid, which I learned after much experience. The first situation is obvious: The final purchase price is often driven up by bidding wars, by which I mean I bid $5, Joe bids $6, I come back and bid $7, Joe bids $8, and we trade bids back and forth like that. Sniping would help you win in this situation because it does not give the other person a chance to come back and outbid you.

BUT--another very common situation is the serial bidder. Say I bid $20 for an item that starts at $5. Joe comes along and bids $6. I still have the high bid, so he bids $7. He keeps bidding this way, increasing his bid a little at a time, until he discovers my maximum bid of $20 (I guess he does this because he doesn't want to pay a penny more for the item than he has to--he wants to know exactly what my highest bid was, and bid just enough to be in the high position). I could come back and outbid him, because I know he is probably only one increment over me, but I have now paid over $20 for the item, much more than I probably had to. If you are ever in an auction where you see 8 or 9 bids, but only two bidders, chances are this is exactly what happened. Now to look at this situation with a snipe on my part: I place my snipe of $20, Joe comes in and bids $5, the opening bid, and is happy because he is the high bidder, so he doesn't bid again. I come in at the last second with my bid, and I win the auction for $5.25 or $5.50 or whatever (I can't remember the bid increments right now). THIS, to me is the real benefit of sniping--I have seen this happen again and again, and it was driving me crazy.

After years of bidding, I know that this is the case--that sniping helps me win auctions for a much lower price--and I thought that was pretty much the benefit of sniping. But the whole discussion makes me wonder, why else would anyone snipe an auction? Just for the thrill of bidding at the last second?

Angus