Is Sniping Fair?

This is technically correct - my reference was intended to imply the submission of a bid prior to the auctioneer announcing "sold."

The fundamental questions to me remain (1) do you understand the bidding "rules" for the online auction and (2) have you submitted your bid at a price you are willing to pay?

If so, remain above the emotion and accept the possibility of being outbid.

I agree with Stampgal and Tom. While admit I occasionally snipe, I have a set price that I am willing to pay and usually submit it on or around the last day of the auction. If I win it, great. If I lose it even on a snipe, well the price was then too high. If sniping was banned, I bet the same person would have still beat me without sniping, because he/she was willing to pay more.

Let me pose another question: Is sniping ever warranted?

I would argue yes and offer the following as an example. Yesterday on ebay a seller was auctioning three reasonably sound copies of US Scott #1, each closing within 2 minutes of the previous (11:36:35, 11:38:18, and 11:40:23 PDT respectively).

Had I been a bidder, it would have been ill-advised to place separate bids on each lot. The more rational approach would have been to place a bid on the first lot and, if unsuccessful, place a bid on the next. Lose the second as well, then bid the third.

In placing bids on the second and third lots, literally within the last seconds prior to their respective closings, I would have been sniping -- but from my perspective justifiably so.

(In case you're wondering, the lots went for $365.00, $295.00 and $234.01)

As I stated in an earlier post, I have enjoyed some great bidding wars at Delcampe in the past. With the time extension, it felt pretty much being in a live auction.

I remember going to a great auction in London in the early nineties.
I would be bidding on the lots seen beforehand and with a maximum in mind. But often, when I'd reached that maximum, I would continue...maybe until I had won.

So it would be the same if the opportunity arose on an Internet Auction [Like Delcampe and Yahoo [I never used Yahoo]]. I just might up my maximum bid because of the atmosphere and/or excitement of the moment. I am sure others would feel the same on occasion.
With ebay, there is no excitement like that, knowing one might get sniped at the death.

I am bidding now on an item on ebay and have bid twice the catalogue value. There have been 14 bids, all from two bidders [in reality it's more than 14 but ebay insist on a ridiculous bidding statement].
I say I have bid my maximum...but have I. Well, as it's ebay I have. But had it been a room auction or Delcampe [or Yahoo] or another like auction, I would be there to see the end and maybe bid higher with the adrenalin pumping and the excitement at fever pitch !

OK, maybe I am exaggerating in words, but you get my drift.
This item will end soon, and whether I win or lose, it will end, for me, in a damp squib. I have never seen this item before and I will probably never see it again and it should be a great moment...except it isn't.

It's ebay. Great items but little excitement.

Londonbus1.....I hope I win

You won't get banned from ebay. The higher the sold price is the more money they make also.

There is a way to get hurt bu dishonest sellers, and that is shill bidding. Shill bidding is bidding an amount to force your bid up automatically above theirs or to just put it up to it's highest point. Then the bad seller or his crony withdraws their bid with an explanation reasonable to ebay so your bid is left at it's highest amount.

Ban news this.

Sniping is an attempt to get around this dishonesty by placing your bid at the last possible moment so no one else has the time to place a bid and then remove it.

ebay makes it very hard to do this nastiness now. Years ago I have been caught by a seller and his alter ego user name, and other people I know have been too. Different items, different countries.It happens everywhere that someone is trying to make a dishonest buck.

Example:
I bid $10.00 on a stamp that is listed for 99 cents to start.

The stamp is worth $15 catalogue price.

No one else bids on it so I am likely to get it for 99c. A slow day or season or some reason no one else is interested in it at this time.

The seller, already having a scam ready and set up with his friend or a separate account, sees that his stamp is going to sell and lose him money.

He or his friend bids $20.

They see my bid increased to my maximum $10 and their bid is now shown at $10.50, the winning bid.

They have left enough time before the ending (hours usually in order to allow me to rebid again) so they have time to remove their bid by saying they meant to bid only $2 but misplaced the decimal point.

Their bid is reduced to $2 but mine stays at $10 and I win and have to pay or get a bad feedback.

This is usually done at a lower level of price so it doesn't stand out as the next highest bid.

See how that is so nasty? It is hard to catch this activity too. You have to do lots and lots of research on other sales and feedback and users bidding to figure it out after the fact.

I haven't seen it myself in years so it must be really difficult to withdraw bids now and not worth it to the bad guys. Goody.

This is were sniping came from, as a protection against this sort of activity. It can be also used as a sneaky way to bid and not allow anyone else time enough to bid too.

Even though I went on at length in my post above I do not snipe except when I have sat there for the ending minutes of an auction I want to win and get emotional about protecting what is mine (as most people do because that is why auctions are so popular) and do some last second fast finger work on the keyboard trying to out guess the other potential bidders.

I have watched other's 20 cent stamp go for $50 this way as two bidders get emotional and duke it out. Amazing and not every day does this happen but sometimes.

I read this thread with some bemusement. Sniping makes no difference to the end price among people who bid the maximum they're willing to pay. It only affects those who don't bid what they are in fact willing to pay.

One of the items I have been searching for on ebay is one of the Louise Boyd Dale / Alfred Lichtenstein auction sale catalogues. I have saved a search notification, and whenever one pops up in ebay's auction listings, I get an e-mail to let me know. If the opening price is lower than my maximum, I'll set up the sniper to place my bid. I lost an auction last week for a copy, and sniping was irrelevant to the final outcome. If I bid $9 and somebody else bids $10, I will lose every time, regardless of whether we bid 6 seconds before the end of the auction or 6 days before the end. The same thing happens if I bid $10 and somebody else bids $9 - I win, he loses, irrespective of the time when we place our bids.

Sniping is only effective against those bidders who don't bid what they're willing to pay. If I make my $10 bid 6 days before the end of the auction, somebody else could come along later and try bidding $1. OK, the bid is too low, so the current price bumps up and he puts in another bid and tries $2. That's too low, so he puts in another bid for $3. Too low, bid again at $4. Too low, maybe he can get it for $5. Too low. If I make my $10 bid with 6 seconds to go, there's no time on ebay for the dribbler willing to actually pay $20 to bump up the price to that level with his tiny bid increments. There is time for him on an auction platform that auto-extends the end of the auction, which makes sniping ineffective against anybody actively following the listing as the auction ends on such a site.

If there is one sniper bidder and one dribbler bidder, the sniper gets the item for less than he would otherwise be willing to pay and the seller earns less. If there are two sniper bidders, the selling price is the maximum the seller could have hoped for, just the same as if those two bidders offered their maximum as soon as they saw the listing days before the auction ended. If there are two dribbler bidders, the selling price could be lower than it might have otherwise been, but only if it takes the bidders too long to finally get around to stating their maximum amounts.

The final analysis is that dribble bidding is an ineffective strategy for winning auctions that use ebay's platform with one increment over the underbidder and a fixed ending date. I've never understood why people do it that way, other than the entertainment of watching the bid amounts rise, I guess. But there are enough bidders like that to make sniping worthwhile.

Ryan

Great terminology Ryan!

A friend once interrupted a dinner party to bid on an item that was closing. I watched in astonishment as he opened up the same item in four or five windows, and set himself up for bidding so that he could just confirm, confirm, confirm, as needed. He had bid the next increment up, and then had a few more ready to go, at what he considered to be likely intervals. At about fifteen seconds, he started off on a flurry of bidding.

You can probably guess that he didn't win. He said that he rarely won, but that it was fun to try for things.

I found it entertaining, too.

Another one to add to this thread.....

https://goscf.com/t/10342




I lost...at 2½ times above catalogue.



Londonbus1

So I guess I won't try that tactic. It would be awful to be obligated for a huge amount! Thanks stampgal for pointing out the possibility.

Rohumpy, I think your example of putting a ridiculously high upper bid illustrates the fact that "sniping" is not the equivalent of swooping in a grabbing the prize. Its a tactic that doesn't always win. You can attempt to snipe in the last few seconds, put in a much higher upper bid, and still lose out to someone who bid days ago, but with a higher upper limit than you.
To say that sniping is unfair as it doesn't give others the chance to come back with a higher bid is to miss the essential difference between ebay and a live auction. That is, that ebay bids on you behalf up to your preset limit. A sniper might get you at the last minute, but in essence you've already had the chance to outbid them, you just didn't take it.
I can't speak for other auction sites and formats, as I haven't any experience of them.

I also use sniper when dealing with ebay and I'm doing this since 4 or 5 months and now I know it's the best way for me. It's not that I'm not at all "manual" bidding, there are moments when I'm doing this. But when I'm willing to pay a bit more for items I'm using only sniper. There are several reasons and I think all were already said:
1. temptation - in this way I'm not tempted to pay more that I'd like to pay. If I win it's perfect, if not, well... it's always an another chance.
2. I'm avoiding dishonest sellers to use shill biding against me
3. I don't have to be "there" at the end of the action and I have the possibility then to bid also to American, Australian actions that are ending (for me) in the middle of the night
4. I avoid "stupid" bids. There are "new" collectors that are really acting as shill bidders and suddenly want the same item like you. They won't bid as much in a normal way and even not really need it but.... I think the miss-experience and my point no. 1 came in action.

I know this is an older thread, but let me continue with a peeve I have with ebay. Just this morning, I get an email telling me that I have been outbid on an item. I go to the page to increase my bid and see under the box where you enter your bid a notice saying you must bid over a certain amount.

I do this and immediately the screen comes back with "You have been outbid. Do you want to bid again?"

Why not just tell me the actual amount I have to bid so as to be high bidder? I have, in the past, bid up in increments several times until I am the high bidder. Just tell me the real amount I have to bid.

I just don't see the point in keeping a secret the actual amount I have to bid to be high bidder.

It is done to prevent dishonest sellers from bidding an amount against the current bidder just enough to force his bid up to almost his maximum (or less if they do in slyly) and then withdrawing the bid by using a plausible excuse (believable to ebay).

Example:
I see an item I want. It is at $5.00 tith days to go.

I know I will not be able to watch at the ending time as I will be away from a computer at that time.

I put in a bid of $71.77 and ebay increases the current $5.00 bid to $5.50 .

Any dishonest sellers (or groups) (or angry-type buyers) (or visiting aliens) (or anyone) can see my maximum bid.

They decide by reasons unfathomable, to play with my bidding.

They bid $100.00 and my bid is taken up to the limit of 71.77 and the new winning bid is 72.77.

They then withdraw their bid, saying they meant to bid 10.00 and misplaced the decimal point (which is, or used to be, a valid reason for withdrawing a bid) (although ebay's security watches all this withdrawing more closely now).

According to the rules, they now have to immediately bid 10.00 to validate their claim of the decimal point. So they do this and my max bid, now the winning bid is at 10.50.

But these actions (or the showing of the maximum bid) tell them how high they can now bid and still not go over, thus having to buy their own product, and still force my bid up close to my maximum.

Quite dishonest, quite shifty, doesn't happen everywhere or everywhen, hardly ever as a matter of fact.

But once is enough.

You might not even notice this taking place. You might just be happy you have won at below you max bid and walk away non the wiser.

Sneaky, underhanded, shifty way of getting a good price for something that is not really selling that well on that particular day.

I discovered this by being taken advantage of myself in a small auction for $5 or so. But out of curiousity I followed the trail of names and bids, once I saw someone had withdrawn a bid, and after many twists and turns noticed a couple of users were taking turns bidding on each other's auctions and then withdrawing bids.

hard to see this now as ebay hides the full user names for privacy reasons, but still possible. Takes a lot of time and backtracking. As sales only show for two weeks prior to today's date you have to be wuick and crafty hunting these nasties down.

Did not mean to scare anyone as most people are quite nice. You can actually tell if someone is not so nice and to be avoided by looking at what else they are selling, reading their descriptions or wording, their policies (no returns), looking at other items they have sold and also at the people who bought those items.

Things that sell for above what you would expect them to sell at. Strange circumstances. etc etc. Just be wise and common sense. Too good to be true is too good to be true.