Cycling UK Forum

Jdsk wrote: ↑12 Mar 2024, 10:09am

mattheus wrote: ↑12 Mar 2024, 10:07am ...
Are folk here saying that the current Sniping Software is cleverer than eBay's inbuilt feature?
...

Auction sniping:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Auction_sniping

Jonathan

At the risk of sounding ungrateful*, do you have a yes/no answer?? :-)

*I promise, I am grateful!

Jezrant wrote: ↑12 Mar 2024, 10:18am

mattheus wrote: ↑12 Mar 2024, 10:07am

Paulatic wrote: ↑12 Mar 2024, 8:29am ...

That’s not how Ebay works. Ebay puts on automatic bids for the buyer. You as the seller will only see my highest bid and never my maximum.
...

That was my understanding, too. I only use eBay now for BUY IT NOW items, as I can't be bothered with all this ...

but back-in-the-day I remember telling eBay my MAX BID, then walking away, knowing I didn't WANT to pay more than that. (maybe I'll get the item, maybe I won't because someone was willing to pay more). And you couldn't outbid me by a penny to "win " the game, as eBay had a minimum "raise" (as would any sensible real world auction room).
So now I've made it clear that I am decades behind the times ...

Are folk here saying that the current Sniping Software is cleverer than eBay's inbuilt feature? IAMFI :-)

Sniping software is cleverer than the punters who think they can outgame the system by frantically upping their maximum bid in the final moments of the auction.

Yebbut! whilst in the death throws of an auction, presumably one wouldn't have shown one's interest up to this point, so if an item had bids up to £100, highest bid by bidder A, and with 5 secs to go you place a bid for £120, there is NO guarantee that A) Bidder A hasn't already bid up to £150, or a sniper will come in, or another bidder comes in a second after you. Luck of the draw really, ''you win some, you lo.....''

Jezrant wrote: ↑12 Mar 2024, 10:18am [
Sniping software is cleverer than the punters who think they can outgame the system by frantically upping their maximum bid in the final moments of the auction.

Yes but is it’s bid so late that EBay’s automated bid hasn’t time to work? I doubt it.

pjclinch wrote: ↑11 Mar 2024, 5:37pm We'll, quite. I've not had any trouble deciding how high I'm willing to go and putting that in. However late other bids are, if they're lower than my maximum I'll still get it and if they're higher then they get it because they're higher.

If you can't decide how high you'll go then I'd suggest it might be just as well if you don't have time to raise after a late bid!

Pete.

Exactly this. I've no sympathy for someone complaining they've been outbid by a sniper. If that happens, it means you didn't bid what you were willing to pay, and that's not the fault of anyone else.

Imagine the smart left by the crushing sweaty sensation that what you thought was going to be a stonking great bargain has been whipped from between your very fingers ! It is like I saw the other day, which was my local sparrow hawk , removing in a trice, the coal tit from the nut feeder…. BHOOOOFFFFFF it went, leaving nothing but a puff of tiny feathers… oh dear

simonineaston wrote: ↑12 Mar 2024, 5:17pm Imagine the smart left by the crushing sweaty sensation that what you thought was going to be a stonking great bargain has been whipped from between your very fingers ! It is like I saw the other day, which was my local sparrow hawk , removing in a trice, the coal tit from the nut feeder…. BHOOOOFFFFFF it went, leaving nothing but a puff of tiny feathers… oh dear

A rather unfortunate juxtaposition of images I fear.

More perplexing to me is when you see a couple of other bidders have a bit of a bidding war when there's still a week/ages left on the auction, driving up the price early on. Why don't you just wait till closer to the end and/or put your max bid in?

Must have admit I have let out an evil laugh on the couple of times when i have seen this happen and then snipe and win the auction at the last minute.

mattheus wrote: ↑12 Mar 2024, 10:07amAre folk here saying that the current Sniping Software is cleverer than eBay's inbuilt feature? IAMFI :-)

It's not that it's smarter than eBay's inbuilt feature - sniping software is smarter than eBay's human users.

If everyone using eBay just did so by entering their best and final bid at the start and then resolutely ignoring the auction until completion, there would be no value in sniping software. You'd put in your bid, everyone else who is interested would put in theirs, and the highest bidder would win at whatever price was necessary to beat the second highest bidder.

But people are irrational. Once they've bid on something, they often feel a sense of ownership or entitlement towards it. So if you try to use eBay like this, you'll often find that other participants in the auction are willing to up their "maximum" bids to beat you, if they realise that their bid has been topped.

To prevent this, you enter the bidding late (aka snipe) - so there's less time for other people to realise that you've bid and make changes to their own bids to top you. Sniping software lets you automate that process, and so it helps reduce the impact of human irrationality on the bidding.

Is sniping software easily accessible to a limited ability computer user?

Grandad wrote: ↑13 Mar 2024, 11:53am Is sniping software easily accessible to a limited ability computer user?

Yes

What operating system?

And are you only interested in eBay, or in other auction sites as well?

Jonathan

Jdsk wrote: ↑13 Mar 2024, 11:59am

Grandad wrote: ↑13 Mar 2024, 11:53am Is sniping software easily accessible to a limited ability computer user?

Yes

What operating system?

And are you only interested in eBay, or in other auction sites as well?

Jonathan

It's worth saying that sniping software wouldn't work with all auction sites.

Last year I won four lots of the Moore Large stock sold by John Pye Auctions (I bid on over 20 lots). My experience, discovered the hard way, was that if a new bid was submitted within the last hour of the auction it added another 3 minutes to the auction of that lot. This gave other bidders a chance to submit another bid, and I saw instances of auctions being extended over 20 minutes.

deeferdonk wrote: ↑13 Mar 2024, 11:29am More perplexing to me is when you see a couple of other bidders have a bit of a bidding war when there's still a week/ages left on the auction, driving up the price early on. Why don't you just wait till closer to the end and/or put your max bid in?

Are you sure they want to win it? What's to stop a seller using a second account to force the price ever upwards?

Yes

What operating system?

And are you only interested in eBay, or in other auction sites as well?

Windows 10, only e-Bay

st599_uk wrote: ↑13 Mar 2024, 1:01pm

deeferdonk wrote: ↑13 Mar 2024, 11:29am More perplexing to me is when you see a couple of other bidders have a bit of a bidding war when there's still a week/ages left on the auction, driving up the price early on. Why don't you just wait till closer to the end and/or put your max bid in?

Are you sure they want to win it? What's to stop a seller using a second account to force the price ever upwards?

Shill bidding, as it's called, is quite prevalent on eBay, which doesn't seem to do much to control it (by repute)

I use bidding software (Gixen) for Ebay.
I use it like a 'buy it now' process.
I will put the price I'm prepared to pay into the software - and if I win all well and good, if I don't then I shrug my shoulders.
For me it avoids any temptation to get into a bidding war. I know what an item (usually a vintage camera) is worth *to me* and that's the maximum I will pay.
I'm successful most of the time, often winning well below my maximum.