My main problem with ebay

Ebay is a favorite topic here because it is a huge marketplace and company. It has a lot of good aspects which is why people are so concerned with it. I have always maintained that I have had very little problems with ebay, far more a problem with people who think they are doing nothing wrong but are...people with a natural ability to **** people off every time they try to communicate...people with bad interpersonal skill, bad business ethics and practice. People who seem to think they are doing ME a favor...this is why I think people are upset about losing the ability to retaliate to bad feedback...something that in the real world of business does not exist....I have never given wal-mart or sears a card to evaluate me as a customer. The cheats and scams have been far less of a problem for me.

But my main #1 problem with ebay is sniping and the fact it is not a real auction because of this...in a real auction nobody can snipe in the last few seconds (or these days 5 people using a third party)...thus you always have a chance to change your mind and put in another bid. I think someone needs an online auction system that is time based....but if a person puts a bid in in the last 5 - 10 minutes...the auction extends another 30 mins to an hour to allow the other bidders a chance to bid again. when no more bids are entered within the extra time given then the auction is allowed to end. If other bids come in then it extends until all bids end.

This is my idea...copyright 2008 who wants to develop the next best auction site...then we can **** everyone off and people will be running to this forum linking to people auctions and blaming us for them

 

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thats a very good idea!

 

This would be good for sellers as I dont know how many times I have been the only bidder for something I want to buy for 6 days (the coin stays at the start price the whole time) and in the last 2 seconds it is taken by another...and how many times I look at that items for 6 days, lose it in the last second by a snipe and think if I had been given a chance I would have paid a little more thus bumping the price...allowing the realized prices to be higher I would think.

 

Sorry Drusus,

I've never had a problem with sniping. I RARELY bid and usually I'm at work when an auction ends.

I use a snipe site. They bid for me and 90% of the time I lose. Oh, well I set my limit and it got exceeded.

I have congratulated people on nice snipe jobs in the past. Hey, they won.


Ebay is NOT a live auction and there are sites that extend auctions. Know what it does? Drives the price up even further in most cases. Nothing like a bidding war (if you're the seller).

clembo

 

thats my point, sellers whine that sniping cuts what they think they can get for a fair price...this would remove this...I am against sniping all together, by a third party even more and I know plenty who hate this aspect of ebay as it isnt how a real auction works, I would rather be given a chance to pay more for items that dont have some kind of strict pricing...like ancient coins...there is seldom a set price for them, they just have ballpark figures for worth...I never get great deals on ebay anyway because of snipers so I would rather be given a chance to put another bid in. One can still put in one sum and let it ride...sniping (mainly third party) isnt the same as that....

What other auction site extends the time limit after last minute bids?

 

Personally I have no problem with sniping, and have personally done it several times. Often it's the only way I can possibly win.

If you don't want to be sniped, bid more. Then if someone puts in a bid at the last second that is less than your maximum bid, you still win.

 

The auctions at Forvm do.

Personally, I'm ambivalent about sniping. Yes, I do it all the time. (Manually, most often) But I've also been known to get annoyed when I lose out because of it. Really, you have to give and take. Decide what you are willing to pay for the item and put that bid in - don't worry about saving money by bidding low.

Ironically, I noticed I've only won two coins on eBay since the middle of December! Lol, sniping hasn't worked out for me lately.

 

drusus, VAuctions -- the auction arm of VCoins -- extends bidding if a bid is submitted within a few minutes of the announced end of the auction.

v.

 

I dont want to have to decide my maximum and gamble, I want the chance to outbid the last minute bidder if decide that I am willing to pay more after. Sellers should like this as I think it will allow them to get more for an item as sniping is a tactic used to keep a price low...I have been to live auctions, sometime a frenzy starts other times only one or two people want the item anyway but the whole aspect of an auction is to allow people to decide how much they want to pay and tweek that amount if they wish as they go...to allow everyone who wants to top a bid to do so...

Do forum auctions do this? I didnt know...and I use it all the time...then again I have never been sniped there either.

 

I use that all the time as well and never noticed, I guess I just dont get sniped at those sites...I see that it starts that at vauctions now in the lower left hand corner. I am more often outbid well before the end or win with no snipe Well, there goes that bright idear Its all been done!!

well...all the same...ebay should do this as well...

 

When buying...I snipe

When selling, I hate snipers because most auctions these days stay at or near opening bid right untill the end on alot of the items.

With good material, it does not matter, the price will be decent. I took a beating on a few coins Sunday night...made out real well on the better material.

 

You can up your bid at any time from the beginning of the auction to the end of an auction if you decide you're willing to pay more. What I like about the eBay system is it will proxy bid up to your stated maximum automatically, somethhing you can't do in a live auction. If someone is willing to pay more than I am, let them have it. I'm pretty firm about how much I want to pay and just bid that.

You don't like the uncertaintly of sniping or being sniped, only buy items that have a "buy it now" option. I go that way often if the buy it now price is reasonable and am not in the mood to compete. To me the whole point of an auction is to try to get it for a little bit less than otherwise possible, thus someone outbidding me because they were willing to pay more than I doesn't bother me in the least.

You don't like the auction system, then just stick to live auctions or go to coin stores where they have a posted price and you just take it or leave it. Nobody's pointing a gun at your head and forcing you to use eBay... don't like it, just go elsewhere... when I have a problem with the way a business conducts itself, I don't try to make them change, I just vote with my wallet and go elsewhere.

 

Oh those are all good points and you are right, I am not a huge fan of the strict time based auction. I am always firm that I want to buy it as cheap as possible because I am a cheap. My idea of cheap and how much I am willing to pay is often, in the end, dependant on how cheap it still is as the auction closes and am I willing to bid a little more. On a cheaper item that is harder to find and might be book price 4 bucks, but it is rare to find, or to to see in such good shape, that you might be willing to pay a little more if pushed by necessity.

I know I can always go elsewhere but I like ebay on the whole and for every 5-10 I get sniped on, I manage to get one here and there at a decent price. More for world coins and medals where an auction can easily sit dormant until the last few seconds...its like hyper auction...

I do as you say on the whole and put a max in and reevaluate along the way...but I figured I would chime in on what I think could be improved.

 

sniping is a part of ebay, i do it myself, not thru a 3rd party. but listen to what you are saying. "if a bid comes in in the last minute, i might be willing to pay a little more." there is your problem. you arent even bidding your maximum. if you know a coin books $15 bucks, and its a little harder to get like you had suggested, and you put in a bid of $15 bucks and you get out bid with out a chance to bid again, its your own fault. i am not trying to put you down, but it seems you are trying to win every auction on the cheap. sometimes it happens and you win it cheap, but the majority of the time, you will lose because people are willing to pay more than you. set your maximum bid, if it goes for more than you were willing to pay, then you move on to the next auction. you now know what people are willing to pay for that item and you can adjust your bid accordingly. just set your maximum, and more often than not, you will come out ahead.

 

If you are losing to snipers then you aren't bidding enough. As mentioned, always set your maximum at the top amount you are willing to pay.

No problem here also. Sniping makes it quick and exciting. Time auctions could drag on and on and you've already had to wait 7 days. Besides the longer the auction goes the MORE you are going to have to pay and you are on ebay to try to get a bargain, otherwise why bother. Bidding wars benefit the seller only as the buyer's get caught up in the action and end up spending way more that what the item is actually worth.

 

I rarely bid on anything. I usually use buy it now. Auctions take to long. I'm not going to wait 5 or 6 days for an auction to end. Yeah I pay more for buy it now , but at least I get it when I buy it.

If on the rare occasion I do bid, I will set my maximum bid to what the highest I will pay for the item. Then if I get outbid, oh well. Always more coins being listed every day.

 

It doesnt have to be a part of ebay...which is my point...and again, the max I am willing to pay may change if I am out bid. The max I put in might have been the max I was willing to pay at the time. Maybe I would be willing to throw away...if pushed...another 5 bucks above what I thought would be my max.

I dont see how I am trying to win every auction cheaply if, as everyone seems to agree (myself as well), that this feature would cause realized prices to be higher as people now have a chance to counter snipe bids. If I wanted to win every auction on the cheap I would SNIPE!!

What I would like to see is SNIPERS not winning everything on the cheap and stop auctions from being 5 seconds long (after 6 days of nothing) because everyone is sniping in the last seconds. A normal auction where people have a chance to counter bids....given the logic I am reading here...why do people snipe? Why dont THEY just put a max bid in up front when they find the item and not in the last second....because they are trying to win every auction on the cheap. Understandable and in all cases this idea wouldnt make all things more expensive...it hasnt on forum where I just recently bought a coin.

But as I said before, this would help sellers and buyers as well. It seems to work fine on other sites, ebay should adopt it as well and end this 5 second hyper auction.

 

I'm having trouble understanding your logic here... it seems to me that you're complaining about people sniping you because they're trying to win auctions as cheaply as possible, but that you do the same thing by putting in a maximum bid of less than what the actual maximum amount of money you'd be willing to pay is. So you're saying it's OK when you try to win an auction as cheaply as possible, but you don't like it when people do it to you?

I'll go ahead and admit, I snipe because if I put my bid in earlier, it just gives others time to up the bid and I either end up paying a little more or not win it at all. I've had times where I trued to snipe and still didn't win because someone put in a bigger maximum than I was willing to snipe with. On the other side of it, I've had people try to snipe me unsuccesfully because I had a bigger maximum than they tried to snipe with.

The defense against sniping is just put in a bigger maximum. Figure out what the most you'd be willing to pay for an item, and put in that bid. If the auction goes for more than that because someone was willing to pay more, why should you care? If you were willing to pay more than what it went for and you lost, you have only yourself to blame for not bidding more.

Again I'd say if it still bothers you, there are other auction sites that don't do it this way, you can go to them, or go to live auctions, or to brick and mortar coin stores. Buy It Now is also an option. If you're really so against the way eBay does it, just vote with your wallet and go elsewhere.

 

Then if you outbid the last minute bidder, wouldnt you become the snipe?

 

I snipe too. And you want to know why? Because some people are NUTS!!!

I've witnessed one to many bidding war in my day, and if I can avoid the "gota have"s by sniping, I'll do it! I bid a set amount when sniping, non-snipers should do the same... highest bidder wins.

Oh, and I sell quite a bit of stuff too... I just love watching stuff double in price in last few seconds of an auction.