X31 on ebay (assetdisposition) / Is Sniping Moral?

[alfio]

folx,

a call for assistance...

i'm bidding on an X31 on sale by assetdisposition and i would appreciate your, ahem, colaboration with my purchase

i leave you with a few lines from a famous poem (Martin Fierro) that speaks to this situation:

"If fighting starts among insiders
They'll easily be beaten by outsiders
Who'll blow them away like a feather."


i'm currently 'winning' the auction for the next X31 and i'd hate to have to compete against a fellow thinkpad.commer making our purchase that much more expensive...

only half kidding,

alfio

[rkawakami]

Out of the total of five X31s currently being offered (2pm PST) by "assetdisposition", three of them have crossed the (invisible) threshold of eBay's new bidding history and are only showing "Bidder 1", "Bidder 2", etc. Therefore, if you are using "little a" on eBay as well as here, we can't see that.

The remaining auctions do not have any bidders yet. It may help to either list which item # you are bidding on or your bidding ID, or if you would rather not "advertise" which one you are interested in, then post an approximate total figure that you're hoping to win the auction at (which again you may not want to tip your hand).

In any case, it may be useful for you to consider "sniping" the auction. That way you won't get caught up in a bidding war with any other bidders. If you need help with automating the sniping process, send a PM and I'll give you all the details.

BTW: There's a sticky in the Off Topic conference where you can post your eBay ID for just this purpose:

http://forum.thinkpads.com/viewtopic.php?t=695

[tomh009]

Easy sniping method is to use AuctionSniper -- doesn't require you to install any software. And three free snipes to start.

http://www.auctionsniper.com/

[alfio]

thanks for the ideas.

i'm bidder #5 in the auction for item 200086082677

already quickly escalating...

alfio

[alfio]

Easy sniping method is to use AuctionSniper -- doesn't require you to install any software. And three free snipes to start.

http://www.auctionsniper.com/

is this reliable? an ebay password in the wrong hands can be very dangerous...

edit:
ok, i guess the reliability question is silly considering this is the only way the company's reputation can be upheld, etc.

what i don;t get is how this prevents bidding wars or, more accurately, what the benefits are of simply postponing them to the very end of the auction. afterall, i'm imagining these snipping folx ask for a maximum bid, what's the difference in saying 'i'm willing to pay $X and not a penny more' a few minutes before the end of the auction and doing the same in the last few seconds? i mean if $X is the limit, that's the limit, right?

alfio


alfio

[rkawakami]

Yes, it DOES take a huge leap of faith for systems like AuctionSniper and eSnipe to run. You are basically trusting them to keep your account details secure. I use eSnipe and have never had any problems. Nor have I heard of any reports that other people have had their accounts compromised.

I guess it comes down to this... assuming that you have ever purchased something online with a credit card, do you trust that company to keep those details out of the wrong hands? Do you insure that the web connection are secure (https) when you place the order?

Here's some info which discusses the ins and outs of sniping in general and the use of automated tools:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Auction_sniping

(As I was composing this I noticed that you edited your post...)

Sniping, by definition, is waiting until the last possible moment to enter your bid. The use of automated sniping tools (either run from your computer or a sniping service) is supposed to reduce the possibility of bidding wars for this reason:

- if you place your "maximum" bid a couple of days before the end of the auction, others might be tempted to run up the bidding to get a feeling for where your limit is at

I am guilty of doing just that sometimes . I'm not doing it to "punish" the early bidder, after all, if they thought it through and decided that $xx.xx was the maximum that they wanted to spend, they should be comfortable with the decision.

Waiting until the last several seconds before the end of the auction means that whoever else is watching will not have enough time to respond with a higher bid. In theory at least.

A benefit for automated sniping tools is that you don't have to be in front of your computer waiting to hit the "bid" button. Just set and forget...

[JHEM]

Just set and forget...

Auction Sentry Deluxe.

James

[pianowizard]

Ray is absolutely correct about the advantage of sniping, which is something I do whenever possible. little a, unless your maximum bid is very high, I doubt you will win this auction since it still has >3 days to go. You will very likely get outbidded in the last 20 seconds.

[tomh009]

Auction Sentry Deluxe

A nice package. But it requires you to have a computer running (and connected to the Internet) at the time the auction ends. My ThinkPad may or may not be -- that's why I prefer the ASP approach of AuctionSniper and eSnipe.

On the other hand, if you do a lot of eBay buying, cost of the PC-based packages like Auction Sentry will probably end up being lower than the fees of the ASP sniping services.

[Temetka]

I do not think that sniping is in the spirit of friendly bidding competition. I actually detest the practice.

[pianowizard]

I do not think that sniping is in the spirit of friendly bidding competition. I actually detest the practice.

And I wish people would stop bidding too early because these early bids drive the prices up. I wish everyone could wait until the final 20 seconds.

[rkawakami]

I do not think that sniping is in the spirit of friendly bidding competition. I actually detest the practice.

Is that from a buyers or sellers point of view?

I've been both, but mostly buying. From my prospective as a buyer, sniping makes me think logically and rationally about how much money I'm willing to spend in order to bid on an auction. Once I determine that figure, I enter my bid on eSnipe. I only need to check my eBay page and monitor when the auctions close. If I win, great. If I don't then I would not have spent any more money anyway. Sure I could have entered that same bid two days before the end of the auction, but knowing human nature, someone might come around and starting entering minimally incrementing bids just to play around. Obviously from a buyer's standpoint, that's costing me extra money.

For the times that I've been a seller on eBay, I know that sniping is a fact of life. I'm assuming that most of the people on eBay are not snipers. If I've constructed the auction properly (pictures, descriptions, friendly tone of my language, etc.) then I know that somewhere out there, there's somebody that's watching. Even if they haven't put it in their list of watched auctions (since I can see how many people are tracking my item). As a seller I'm not too worried that my $500 radio scanner is (and has been) sitting at $305 for the last three days and there's only one hour left. In that specific case, it ended up at $480 or so. I had bought it at $300 so I was happy.

edit: My understanding is that other auction sites (Yahoo, I think for one), have a sliding ending time for their auctions as an attempt to minimize sniping. I think it's outlined in the link I provide earlier.

And getting back to the original reason for this thread:

Bidder 6 has just done what I had said earlier:

http://offer.ebay.com/ws/eBayISAPI.dll? ... 0086082677

Twice in two days he has entered consecutive bids within a minute of each other (or less), increasing them $20 at a time in order to get a feel for little a's maximum bid. OR he is a shill bidder of the seller and is pumping up the sale price.

[pianowizard]

edit: My understanding is that other auction sites (Yahoo, I think for one), have a sliding ending time for their auctions as an attempt to minimize sniping.

Amazon.com's auction site is like that. I didn't know and placed a bid in the last 20 seconds, and was surprised that the ending time was postponed by 10 minutes. That gave another, previously winning bidder to raise his/her bid and I lost.

BTW, little a, are you sure you want to spend >$550 plus shipping on a COA-less X31?

[alfio]

little a, are you sure you want to spend >$550 plus shipping on a COA-less X31?

you got somehting better? seriously, cause if you do, we can talk...

alfio

[pianowizard]

you got somehting better? seriously, cause if you do, we can talk...

No, I don't, unfortunately. But there are other much cheaper (albeit used) X31's that include COA stickers.

[alfio]

you got somehting better? seriously, cause if you do, we can talk...

No, I don't, unfortunately. But there are other much cheaper (albeit used) X31's that include COA stickers.

yeah, i hear you. but new is new.

alfio

[shalliday]

I bought exactly the same x31 from the same vender a week ago and while it did not state in the description whether it had a COA sticker, it did. Loaded WinXP and used the COA code from the label on the back and everything worked perfectly.

Regarding bidder 6, that may have been me. I like my new X31 so much I was intending to buy a second one for my wife. I will not be bidding any further on this item. The last three ended in the range of $600 and I paid $611 for the one I have. I think this one will also go for about the same amount. and in my opinion, worth every penny. It is a very nice laptop and I am glad I was able to buy one new. So much so, I do intend to buy another one. As I said, I will not be making any further bids on this item, but I do intend on bidding on any other new X31's that get listed after this one.

Best of luck to you in winning the auction.

[tomh009]

BTW, little a, are you sure you want to spend >$550 plus shipping on a COA-less X31?

While auctiondisposition's X31s do not have an OS installed (the disks have been wiped clean), all the ones I am aware of have included the COA sticker (and thus a legitimate licence for Windows XP). And their systems really are like new.

They were initially selling around $500 each, and were a fabulous bargain at that price. The actual selling prices have inched up to the $600 range in the past month or two, though.

[Temetka]

I do not think that sniping is in the spirit of friendly bidding competition. I actually detest the practice.

Is that from a buyers or sellers point of view?

As a seller, I don't care who wins my auctions, as long as they meet my terms. Which are usually 1 - 10 feedback, then you must contact me. More than 3 negative feedbacks, then you must contact me. I reserve the right not to ship and instead refund all money if the winning bidder has not met those terms. To date, I have not had a problem with that policy.

As a buyer, I am trying to buy that item for as little as I can spend. Let's say I am willing to spend $100 on an item. If I can win it for cheaper great. If not then so be it. I dislike sniping because circumstances might require me not to be at the computer and watching the auction until the second it closes. I refuse to use a sniping service or software to enter my bid in the last 3 seconds. I think it is unfair to other bidders. Then again I am generally a nice guy and a little friendly competition gets the blood pumping. Sniping is not competitive nor friendly.

[JHEM]

Sniping is not competitive nor friendly.

I'm not on eBay to be either competitive or friendly, I'm there to purchase things for the price I want to pay.

If the price I'm willing to pay is more than someone else has bid, then the item is mine. If not, then I just keep looking. When I place that bid is irrelevant.

James

[rkawakami]

I think it is unfair to other bidders. Then again I am generally a nice guy and a little friendly competition gets the blood pumping. Sniping is not competitive nor friendly.

Thanks for responding. I'm always interested in hearing from opposing viewpoints. I can understand how you feel that sniping is not fair. I started out on eBay almost six years ago. During the first year or so I entered my (low) bids days before the end of the auction. I also got caught up in a couple of bidding wars. There were also many times that I would be the high bidder, only to lose within the last 5-10 seconds. I bought a book, "eBay Hacks", by David Karp and discovered the technique of sniping. It discusses both manual and automated sniping. I tried a couple of manual snipes and found that it didn't seem to make difference in the number of auctions that I won. In other words, there were still many times that I was outbid by a bid that was entered earlier. There also were times when I got beat by another sniper! I generally use 6 seconds. People were (and still are) getting last-second bids placed.

Is this fair? In my mind, yes. There's always going to be somebody willing to pay more for an item than you. I don't mind getting beat by these 1-5 second snipers. Like I said before, setting up a snipe using an automated service makes me think really hard on how much I am willing to spend. To me it's still a competitive process. Maybe a more logical process and not an emotional one.

As far as getting the blood pumping, when I manually snipe I have two windows opened; the auction page where I can refresh it and see the current high bid and my sniping page, where I have already placed my bid and am waiting to press the "Confirm Bid" button. My systems are sychronized to an NIST time standard, which eBay also does. As I watch the seconds count down to the end of the auction, it never fails to get my heart racing. Seeing that I still have a chance with my bid at one minute, then 30 seconds, then 15 and until 5 or 6 seconds left to go, makes it that much more exciting.

Do I always win when I snipe (manually or with eSnipe). No, nor do I expect to. Using eSnipe is an easy way for me to NOT miss bidding on something. There have been a couple of times when I was going to manually snipe an auction but got distracted and lost out. There are auctions that are by sellers on the East Coast and that end at 4am Pacific time (or some other sleep-reserved time). Could I enter my bid before going to bed and hope that I'm not beat? Sure. But either way, I'm still not going to spend any more money than I wanted to in the first place. And that's one major benefit of sniping: you take yourself out of a bidding war.

(Looks like James has submitted his post as I was typing up this lengthy response. He has said in four sentences, what took me several paragraphs .)

edit: Sorry "little a" to get off-topic... Looks like you're still winning at the moment!

[tomh009]

As a buyer, I am trying to buy that item for as little as I can spend. Let's say I am willing to spend $100 on an item. If I can win it for cheaper great. If not then so be it. I dislike sniping because circumstances might require me not to be at the computer and watching the auction until the second it closes. I refuse to use a sniping service or software to enter my bid in the last 3 seconds. I think it is unfair to other bidders. Then again I am generally a nice guy and a little friendly competition gets the blood pumping. Sniping is not competitive nor friendly.

If you're willing to pay $100, you have three options.

First, you can bid $100 as soon as you see the item, and eBay will raise your bid up to $100 as required.

Second, you can set your sniper to $100 and the bid is entered seconds before the auction closes. The difference? This one avoids the unnecessary escalations from a third kind of bidder.

And what kind of bidder is that? It's the one who keeps raising his bid in $5 or $10 increments until he finally has the high bid. He won't bid as much as he's willing to pay, only $5 more than the current bid. Get two of these bidders, and prices tend to escalate beyond reasonable. Even one will max out the automatic bid.

So I prefer to keep my maximum bid to myself and let the sniper do its job. If someone else is willing to pay more, I'll happily concede the auction, whether at snipe time or before. Or I'll use a Buy it now to avoid the whole bidding thing.

Now, things were a little bit different when I first bid on eBay, and it almost felt like family back then. But that was 1996 ...

[Ken Fox]

[quote="JHEM"][/quote]

amen.

On the whole I'd rather pay a little bit more and "buy it now." Or, if you are a seller, you can use my current technique when selling things worth enough to care about. List them as "buy it now" with "best offer." Don't even put them in as auction items. Price them a little bit too high.

Then you start getting offers coming in and you can pick who you wan to sell to. I'd much rather sell an item for $95 to a person with 126 feedbacks, all positive, who leaves positive feedbacks for others, than to someone else for $105, who has a feedback rating of 12 which is composed of 16 positive and 4 negative feedbacks, who trashes half the people he buys from with bad feedback.

It's only money, and seeking out those last few dollars can take much more out of your stomach lining.

[pianowizard]

Now, things were a little bit different when I first bid on eBay, and it almost felt like family back then. But that was 1996 ...

Wow, you are a veteran! I started using eBay in 1999, mainly for getting rare classical CDs, and learned that sniping was the best way to go pretty early on.

[tomh009]

I've mostly bought computer and camera gear over the years, but not vast amounts. And I didn't really start sniping until maybe 2005.

I'm generally very willing to do a reasonably-priced Buy It Now rather than risking a bidding war. Though looking at the completed auctions for similar items will give you a pretty good idea of what to expect in terms of bidding activity and a final selling price.

[dsvochak]

I'm hesitant to do this, but. (Perhaps some of this discussion should be split off into a thread titled something like "Is Auction Sniping Immoral?"). In any event.

Somewhere along the line (as is common when talking about what happens at an auction) logic has been skewed. eBay's motto should be "Where crazy people will buy anything for crazy prices".

Earlier, Ray mentioned "eBay's new bidding history". For those who don't know, "Bidder1, Bidder2" is a choice the seller makes in the listing. I'm not sure what purpose it serves, so I don't use it.

From a seller's perspective, the opening bid, reserve or buy it now price is the lowest amount at which the seller is willing to sell. You may expect your item to go higher, but it may not. Why care when the bids come in?

From a buyer's perspective, if you really have made a determination of the maximum amount you're willing to pay for an item, as JHEM said, when you place that bid is irrelevant. So how does bidding early drive up the price? If you enter your max bid with no intention of bidding again, no "war" takes place.

From a buyer's perspective, a "good deal" on eBay is when you win the item at less than your maximum bid. A "bad deal" is when do get caught in a "war" and bid more than you've decided the item is worth.

Either way, I don't understand how "sniping" effects the outcome. A maximum bid is a maximum bid. If someone bids more, you lose.

[tfflivemb2]

@dschovak: Very good suggestion, but just as I went to split the thread, I decided to move it to Off-Topic and retitle it for the OP, since it isn't really a FS/WTB post.

[rkawakami]

Earlier, Ray mentioned "eBay's new bidding history". For those who don't know, "Bidder1, Bidder2" is a choice the seller makes in the listing. I'm not sure what purpose it serves, so I don't use it.

I was not aware that this is something a seller has personal control over. I have not sold anything for about a year. The "new" bidding history format ("Bidder 1", "Bidder 2", etc.) was instituted very recently by eBay as a way to prevent fake "Second Chance Offers" (SCO) from being floated about. It was easy before they made this change to contact the second highest bidder (their ID was fully displayed) and say the sale fell through. I've personally received several such offers even when the auction description by the seller indicated that they do not ever use the SCO.

So how does bidding early drive up the price?

If you look at the auction bidding history link I provided earlier, you will see that "Bidder 6" came in and submitted several consecutive bids ($20 increments). Did this drive up the final winning price? Possibly. If nobody now bids on this auction, "little a" may end up paying more than if Bidder 6 never submitted any bids.

A "bad deal" is when do get caught in a "war" and bid more than you've decided the item is worth.

Exactly. That's why sniping takes yourself out of the equation. You do not have the chance to change your mind and let emotion take over. If you had placed the same bid amount at an earlier time and then see someone bid over you in the last 5 minutes, would you then consider submitting a higher bid?

[pianowizard]

I'm generally very willing to do a reasonably-priced Buy It Now rather than risking a bidding war.

I actually prefer auctions with good BIN prices than sniping, because I too don't like to get involved in bidding wars. Look at those nice BIN deals I have posted in the "Buy of the Week" thread: a T40 for $310 shipped, a T43 for $520 shipped, etc.

[JHEM]

If you had placed the same bid amount at an earlier time and then see someone bid over you in the last 5 minutes, would you then consider submitting a higher bid?

This is called "chasing the bid" and is what eBay sellers (and eBay itself!) dream of.

With Auction Sentry, I'm notified if the price for an item has increased above the snipe price I've set and I can change my bid, or not, accordingly.

But, if you can train yourself to establish a reasonable price you're willing to pay for an item and stick to it, you can safely ignore these interim notices and just let the item go, there'll almost always be another one available in the near future. The problems, and increased prices, arise when you've convinced yourself you simply must have an item, or you allow yourself to be overtaken by the aforementioned "competitive" nature of an auction.

The only true "competition" in an auction is between my wallet and my perceived value of the item for sale. This should be required reading for all bidders on eBay, particularly the section on the Dutch tulip mania.

"Men, it has been well said, think in herds; it will be seen that they go mad in herds, while they only recover their senses slowly, and one by one."

James