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eBay, last second bid, why?

D

Drea

Experienced Member
Joined
Jan 25, 2012
Messages
79
Location
Denmark
What is the purpose with this? Other than it's extremely annoying...I assume people will place their maximum bid long before the last seconds anyway, so it's not like they will get the item cheaper...And they can't see other people's bids, so the winning chance also seems rather poor!

I watched 5 PET related auctions get these kind of bids yesterday!

Oh well, got the 8032 I wanted :D
 
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It's a trick used by many serious bidders on Ebay. Usually at the last five seconds of an auction this will happen. They want the item so bad that when the duration is almost up, other bidders think that there isn't any more time to place another bid, so someone will come in and bid the highest with two seconds to go, and winning the item.

One time, another person and I were bidding on a Philips Velo 1. In the last 20 seconds, he bid 4 times in two dollar incriments. I had a feeling that he would bid three or four dollars at the very end to see if he could trick me with him only going up two dollars. At the three second mark, I bid 5 dollars and won it. I compare bidding sometimes to road rage.
 
Allthough Ebay has an "AutoBid" function, there are a lot of users that isn't aware of this. As a result many bidders manually only bid the minimum amount untill they have reached their max bid. Since this kind of bidding is based on reaction-time, they stand no chance against last second bidders.

Another factor is that when people bid their maximum for an item, and are outbid, some tend to increase their maximum. Because of this, when last second bidding, the other bidders don't get the chance to increase their maximum bid and the winning bid is likely to get the item for less... Unless several people place last second bids simoultaneously, or if anyone has placed a signifficant maximum bid earlier in the auction (which is in most cases unlikely due to the fact that most people tend to avoid taking risks).
 
Why does it matter to the OP whether someone comes in at the last second? Whether they bid that amount in the last few seconds or days before they end, they still would have won the auction. If you lose the auction, bid more.

Maybe those people were just on the fence about spending an obscene amount on an item and the euphoria of a counter ticking down pushed them over the edge.
 
It's known as sniping. I haven't heard of this in awhile but I know there used to be apps you could install that would do the sniping for you.
 
strollin said:
I haven't heard of this in awhile but I know there used to be apps you could install that would do the sniping for you.
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I would hate it if the application failed and started autobidding wildly or started bidding aginst itself. I have also seen on there when two people are furiously bidding aginst each other, one tries to run the other bidder up. Eventually those prices get to be something to laugh at. The same scenario with storage building bidders.
 
You see, there are people in this world called "cheap asses". These "cheap asses" don't pick a huge maximum amount that they're willing to pay and bid that, they put in nickel bids over the top in an attempt to get an item cheaply. Now, which do you think is going to net an item cheaper, having five days' worth of nickel bids against your maximum, or five seconds' worth?
 
I almost always "snipe" when I bid on ebay. I wait until 5 seconds or less remaining and enter the absolute maximum I'm willing to
pay. When you do this, you have a higher chance of winning the auction at a lower price.

Here's why...although ebay has an "autobid", some people don't use it. If you are competing with this kind of bidder, advantages to sniping should be obvious. Say an item starts at $10 and your competition is willing to pay up to $50. They put in an $11 bid and are winning. You are willing to pay up to $40 so you put in your $40 bid early. Your rival sees he is losing the auction and enters a bunch of $1 bids until he is winning again. Now the item is at $41 and you are losing the auction. You don't want to pay more than $40 so you lose the auction.

But if you had sniped, the item would have stayed at $11 until your last-second bid. You put in a $40 bid and win the item for only $12 because your rival doesn't have time to respond to your snipe. Of course, if there is another sniper, you might end up paying more than $12 or losing the auction if he snipes with a higher bid. (But you accept that, because you bid the absolute max you wanted to pay).

Other bidders on ebay use the autobid, but they either don't bid their absolute max or are obsessed with "winning" during the auction. Once their autobid gets outbid, they decide they are willing to go a "little higher" and bid again so that they are winning the auction again...when you snipe, you don't allow them to keep driving the price up. You let them "win" during the auction, until the very end when you enter your bid. Usually you will win the auction and get the item for less doing this. Of course, if their autobid was higher than your snipe bid, you will lose. But again, that's why you always snipe with the absolute max you want to pay.
 
Will add that these bids came in between 1 and 0 seconds before the auction ended! This must be some kind of software!

I see the point, that you can make it impossible for others to over bid you, and that way maybe keep the price down, but the chance of not winning is pretty big for you, since you cannot increase your bid before the time is up!

And the reason why i'm kinda mad about it, is that my new PET ended up costing me 30€ more, than I thought it would :lol:
 
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One such service that I use a lot is eSnipe As a charter subscriber, I don't pay a fee on items less than $25, so it's worth it to snipe--I don't have to watch the damned auction action--just read my incoming email--and I get to the end of the auction to figure out if perhaps I really wanted the item. There's absolutely no reason that anyone should know what I'm prepared to pay for an item.
 
Drea said:
Will add that these bids came in between 1 and 0 seconds before the auction ended! This must be some kind of software!

I see the point, that you can make it impossible for others to over bid you, and that way maybe keep the price down, but the chance of not winning is pretty big for you, since you cannot increase your bid before the time is up!

And the reason why i'm kinda mad about it, is that my new PET ended up costing me 30€ more, than I thought it would :lol:
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It's only impossible to be outbid by the "reaction" bidders--those who wait until they have been outbid and then bid again. If someone else snipes with a higher bid, they will win the auction. If someone else bids early with a higher bid, they will win via autobid.

The important thing about sniping is you always bid the *absolute max* you are willing to pay. If I snipe on something and lose, I would not have won that auction no matter when I bid because I simply was not willing to pay more. I don't need another chance to increase my bid because I already bid my max. I would say your chance of winning an auction (at or below your max price point) is actually greater with sniping since there is less opportunity to be outbid.

I do understand your frustration...a lot of times you really don't know how much something will go for until the last minute of the auction.
 
The bottom line is that at the end of an eBay auction, the person with the highest bid wins. If say I put in a maximum bid of $125 for an item and you put in $110, of course I would win. If I lose an auction, it's ONLY because someone else was willing to pay more for the item.
Sniping protects me from the bidding frenzy that some people get into. I'm don't play that game! I've seen it too many times. Two bidders get into a bidding frenzy and wind up paying way more for an item than it's worth. It could even be a common item they could have bought locally.
For some people it can be like gambling obsession. Once they start bidding, they just can't stop.
 
Exactly, if your max bid on an item really was your max bid then it's all good if you lose since technically you didn't want to pay more than that anyway. If you think the item is worth $600 then the first person to bid $600 will win nomatter if someone came in last minute and put $600 for their max. So it's fair but annoying yes since usually there's a last minute bidding frenzy.

I speed read the thread but the main goal I think that wasn't mentioned was the lack of interest game. If everyone bids upfront other folks will come across the auction and see that it has interest and that may spawn interest in itself. What's funny is as the seller they're seeing 0 bids but see the 32 people watching and waiting for the auction to get near the end before everyone jumps in on it.
 
As for the winning bids coming in the last second or so. There is a feature that puts more bids above your maxim amount. Some auctions places like the States, will actually extend the auction time if a lot of bids come in at the last minute, to neutralize snipes.
 
There are a huge number of ebay sniping programs, often also promoted as "bid when you are not home/busy".
As far as I know ebay does not allow the use of it, however I'm not sure how they could detect them when you run it yourself.
These things also do a trial run to measure latency, as to ge as close to the end of the auction as possible.

I'm a bit weary of those third party programs, as obviously they do need your ebay account and password to function.
 
commodorejohn said:
Because auctions go on for days or weeks, and the more people bid at the start, the higher the overall price tends to go.
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Very true. The more bids an auction gets early on, the more noticed and "heated" that auction becomes, and when an auction becomes hot then its final price is ALWAYS higher. Therefore, it stands to reason for the buyer not to show his interest in the auction until the very last moments, in order to get the other buyers in cold temper (and without time to react, i.e., "become hot about the auction") and therefore win the auction at a lower price.

It may not be 100% rational, but it's the way the (passionate) human mind works.


Consider this: I was winning this auction at a dirty cheap price (0.99 UK Pounds), and for six days that auction had been life with only one bid: my bid. It was not a particularly "hot item", in fact it is quite vintage, so I thought there was not real interest from other buyers in it. My highest bid was set at 5 UK Pounds. So I got relaxed.

ebaysnipping01.png


Then in the last seconds, someone came snipping and got the item for 5.5 UK Pounds, and I had no time to react. This way, the snipper got the item cheap, because he avoided turning the auction into a "hot auction".

ebaysnipping02.png


Could I have bidded early on with a higher maximum bid? YES. But I was also bidding on other ZIP disk auctions, and I didn't want to win them all and end up with a thrillion ZIP disks, I was just shopping for the cheapest priced auction of ZIP disks.

To tell the truth, I was expecting the snipper in the last seconds, and that's why I did take the screen snapshots: I wanted to see if my fear of a last second snipper was founded, or not. And it certainly was!
 
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