I don't have much experience with ebay, nor with online auctions, althought I experienced it shortly as a potential seller and a buyer.

The service I used is qxl.no as a seller. I put a minimum price because I didn't want my new 900 $ unused item to go for 50$. So I've put an offer for 450$. Norway is a small market. But when you use a minimum price, qxl makes you pay (in my case 15$). Not sure if ebay does the same.

I've got an offer for 300$ which I declined.

In the end, I found out that online auctions are not that interesting for the seller when the buying market is not big enough. I paid 15 $ for the item to be registered and got nothing out of it...

As a seller, snipping is not interesting. Neither it is interesting for the auction site as they are supposed to get some percentage of the sale (better a small sale than no sale?). But the higher I sell, the better for them.

So I don't understand their strategy. None of these sites seem to be seller friendly, probably because there are many more buyers than sellers. But without sellers there are no sales. We are the ones that make these sites live but they don't give a damn about making us live. I've read several people that used to sell on auction sites that left to focus on real sale shops, because they couldn't make it on ebay.

If I had to make an online auction site, I would make it free to post items for sale. And keep untouched items (those with no bids) registered until bought or cancelled by seller. Or maybe just allow an offer to be automatically renewed if no bid was done during the period? I would also take every incentive to have buyers potentially fight for an item so that the price goes up as much as possible. Maybe extend bid when an offer is given at the last minute. I doesn't matter to the buyer as one can already put limits.

Until such a site exists, online auction is not interesting to me as a seller.

"What sniping is is placing your bids..."

That sounds horrible! How about instead

"Sniping is placing your bids..."

I don't get what you're on about. eBay doesn't provide a service to help you snipe, and it doesn't prevent sniping. So I guess what they're saying is "snipe if you want to - if you don't want to, you don't have to". They're letting you bid however you want.

How would they prevent sniping anyhow? There's always going to be a last minute. If you stop people bidding in the last minute you're just making the last minute a minute earlier.

I don't know what you mean by "the lack of critical thought in this country is astounding" either. Why do you have to turn it into an anti-American rant? Why "this country"? There are companies just like eBay all over the world. Everything isn't incredibly logical outside of the US.

I'll tell you what I think is "astounding" - your shitty prose: "What sniping is is placing your bids..."

Mike

Online bidding is not quite the same as a traditional auction where everybody has to be present to submit their bids. Bids can be placed at any time, so inevitably the rules are different. People still have a top price in mind, and will bid up to their limit (at least they do if they are sensible). Sniping is inevitable under this model... get over it! You can always use the "Best Offer" feature in ebay to sell your stuff.

Stuart

I don't have much experience in online auction, let alone sniping. All I know is from spending a couple of weeks at a friend's who's an avid buyer and seller on some stuff that barely reaches 10% of the official estimated price (and according to my friend, when it reaches that price, it's a good sell). Well, for what I know, it seems to be a great system to the buyer's point of view.

While I agree on the three points you made, there's something I think you forgot. Sniping helps you to secure your "true max". In a regular auction, you'd play open-handed. When it reaches your true max, you're done. Sniping allows you to place an affordable amount of money on something you want without allowing (most of) other bidders to place a higher bid. Sounds good to me. no?

Sure, it's not an all win-win. Someone may have a higher "true max" and snipe one second later, but at least you have all the non-snipers out of your way.

G.

> If there's any real reason 3rd party sniping sites should exist, I'd love to know.

Because it can?

If you provide a trading API via some sort of messaging system alongside a human-usable app, then traders will use it and traders who write auto-execute rles angines and use them from low-latency systems will have an advantage.

Which it seems is what sniping is.

Providing an XML-RPC interface allows this - but then HTTP and HTL forms is also an RPC mechanism with a little less formalism.

It may simply be that sniping exists because it would be very hard to prevent it using 'open' internet protocols.

Bob and Mike: Thanks for correction on that vile wording at the beginning. I'll learn not to write while under the influence of a newborn :S

Mike: Not being anti-US-American. Go read some of my thoughts on some other countries -- lack of thought abounds everywhere. Especially if you're dealing with telcos on a daily basis, you might feel this way too :) Hope the hyperbole didn't offend you too much.

If you constantly delay an auction if there's a snipe, then sniping ends... it's not that a single snipe needs to extend it for 5 minutes and that's that. Each snipe would extend it a bit more time, increasing the minimum bid.

eBay's refusal to change their system is why I say that they are essentially saying to snipe -- it's much more effective than using their system as-designed. All I'm saying is that if ebay's system is only effective fore buyers to snipe, then why not make it just use a sealed-envelope system to begin with?

As a disclosure, I snipe all my auctions now. Yea, it sucks, but hey, if enough people complain, eBay might reconsider. If not... oh well -- no sense in me losing auctions meanwhile :).

Sellers are getting screwed by snip bidding. It SHORTENS the amount of time that bids can be placed because it builds up the incentive to wait till the very last moment to bid so you can save a couple of bucks. So people do it on their own or pay some service to do it and boom in the space of 10 15 seconds the bids pour in, but everyone waits hoping the will get the last one in. So it is the seller that get's hurt. Your reasoning is as heartless as it is toothless.