Snipes are killing ebay auctions

[ChiefBenderForever]

Originally Posted by Bosox Blair

Hi Johnny,

Interesting - I noticed this too. I have been buying cards off eBay for 13 years. This week I had 2 bids from 2 different sellers cancelled because the auction was ended early. Both auctions had underwhelming bids going into the final day.

In the prior 13 years, I never had a bid cancelled like this!

Cheers,
Blair

Like Ozzy says 'Paranoia the destroyer' . I was waiting to put a nice hammer down and all of a sudden it ended, it was also doing ok. Another one that was ended was up five minutes later with a huge starting bid lol ! In the auction description it said 'bid with confidence' !

[vintagetoppsguy]

If I remember correctly, you can't retract your bid within the last 12 hours of an auction (is that correct?). It should work the same way with sellers - they shouldn't be able to end the auction early if the auction has less than 12 hours. That's just my opinion.

[Peter_Spaeth]

Originally Posted by vintagetoppsguy

If I remember correctly, you can't retract your bid within the last 12 hours of an auction (is that correct?). It should work the same way with sellers - they shouldn't be able to end the auction early if the auction has less than 12 hours. That's just my opinion.

I understand that viewpoint, but on the other hand, if it's my card (and I have not turned it over to a third party seller, i am just using a service to sell it), why can't i change my mind?

[Exhibitman]

Originally Posted by Peter_Spaeth

I understand that viewpoint, but on the other hand, if it's my card (and I have not turned it over to a third party seller, i am just using a service to sell it), why can't i change my mind?

+1. Ebay goes out of its way to state that it isn't an auctioneer, isn't responsible, and so on. I don't think it could make those claims if it prohibited sellers from withdrawing their items at will. That said, I don't think a consistent pattern of those sorts of shenanigans will go on for long before the Ebay police start closing down the accounts of the offenders.

[Peter_Spaeth]

I'm not sure it's in ebay's interest to close down accounts. It apparently is not in their interest to take action against obvious shills, judging by their inaction in response to complaints.

[53Browns]

It's time for my "stupid question" of the day. What is an auction snipe? Help? Thanks in advance!

~Bill

[Rich Klein]

That Barry or it might have been another dealer that when no bids come in on items earliy -- that could be a sign that there is no interest.

From the seller's view, I understand this totally, instead of risking a major loss thay cancel the item and go home.

WHat might work for BOTH sides is for a "middle ground" bid to be put in, that middle ground bid would show the seller that the items do have interest but you are still not tipping your hand as to how much you want to bid. If I were a seller and I had a item which usually sells for $100 and saw a $50-60 bid, I might let it continue to run. If I only see a $20-25 bid -- I might say enogh is enough and take the item off.

Regards
Rich

[vintagetoppsguy]

Originally Posted by Peter_Spaeth

I understand that viewpoint, but on the other hand, if it's my card (and I have not turned it over to a third party seller, i am just using a service to sell it), why can't i change my mind?

You can change your mind. That’s my point. I’m asking why can a seller change their mind and end the auction early, but a buyer cannot change their mind and retract their bid within the last 12 hours?

If you’re selling a card that ends in 5 minutes and want to pull the auction early for any reason, there’s nothing keeping your from doing so.

However, if I place a bid on a card on Sunday for a card that ends tonight and I change my mind an hour before the auction ends because I would rather spend the money on something else, why shouldn’t I be able to retract my bid?

All I am saying is that is should work both ways. It just seems like a double standard. Ebay is saying it’s okay for the seller to change their mind, but it’s not okay for the buyer to change their mind.

[Peter_Spaeth]

Originally Posted by vintagetoppsguy

You can change your mind. That’s my point. I’m asking why can a seller change their mind and end the auction early, but a buyer cannot change their mind and retract their bid within the last 12 hours?

If you’re selling a card that ends in 5 minutes and want to pull the auction early for any reason, there’s nothing keeping your from doing so.

However, if I place a bid on a card on Sunday for a card that ends tonight and I change my mind an hour before the auction ends because I would rather spend the money on something else, why shouldn’t I be able to retract my bid?

All I am saying is that is should work both ways. It just seems like a double standard. Ebay is saying it’s okay for the seller to change their mind, but it’s not okay for the buyer to change their mind.

Because allowing buyer retractions would make the whole system unworkable. Only result of allowing seller retractions is a non-transaction.

[vintagetoppsguy]

Originally Posted by Peter_Spaeth

Because allowing buyer retractions would make the whole system unworkable. Only result of allowing seller retractions is a non-transaction.

I understand what you're saying and agree. But the system isn't working now if eBay is going to allow sellers to end auctions early just because they don't like where the current price is at. That's the whole point of this thread. I had one happen to me last week and I was pretty upset about it.

My suggestion is to not allow sellers to end auctions early (say within the last 12 hours). This would incude most items (yes, cards), but some things would have to be excluded. If anybody has a better idea, I'm all ears.

[barrysloate]

I blame the state of the economy. In better times sellers could almost count on a tremendous bid in the last few seconds, and a great final price, so auctions were rarely closed early. Today sellers are afraid of what the final price might be, so if their lots look like they may do poorly, they may just decide to close them. If the money is there the lots stay open. That has nothing to do with ebay, they're just the messenger.

[glchen]

Originally Posted by vintagetoppsguy

I understand what you're saying and agree. But the system isn't working now if eBay is going to allow sellers to end auctions early just because they don't like where the current price is at. That's the whole point of this thread. I had one happen to me last week and I was pretty upset about it.

My suggestion is to not allow sellers to end auctions early (say within the last 12 hours). This would incude most items (yes, cards), but some things would have to be excluded. If anybody has a better idea, I'm all ears.

I don't really think this is a problem because ebay limits sellers to only 50 free listings per month. After that, sellers must pay an insertion fee based on the starting price of the item. The higher the starting price, the higher the insertion fee. Therefore if a seller ends an auction early, they either lose out on their freebie listing or they lose their insertion fee. This is how ebay tries to prevent sellers from ending early especially because we all know snipes are out there. What sellers do is to look at the current price and the # of watchers, and if there aren't enough watchers, they end the auction early because they likely won't get their price. Frankly, as I've had some auctions set all time lows for VCP by hundreds of dollars, I've been burned by the 99 cent start price and can completely understand seller rationale here.

[nebboy]

Yep Ive seen alot of this of late. My watch list and/or snipes bids have been getting wiped out early. Even when they have a bid on them already. Some have been relisted right away with higher starting bids, some have yet to be relisted. So I keep the listing to check for feedback later so I could figure out if someone came in with a buy now offer or maybe they were sold locally away from E-Bay (one was a local auction company). The other seller Ive seen the most of this kind of thing from is not new/used to selling cards and I would'nt think should have that level of paranoia about late money to the party.

[deadballera]

one seller responded to me that their house was broken into and all of the cards were stolen.

[steve B]

Originally Posted by ChiefBenderForever

Like Ozzy says 'Paranoia the destroyer' . I was waiting to put a nice hammer down and all of a sudden it ended, it was also doing ok. Another one that was ended was up five minutes later with a huge starting bid lol ! In the auction description it said 'bid with confidence' !

I was going to put this at the end, but realised the main bit of the post is rantish and it might be taken wrong
That's not actually Ozzy. It's from "destroyer" by the Kinks.

Anyway, Here's my harsh view of Ebay..

I think the biggest problem with Ebay is their "need" to attempt to continue double digit growth. After a period of time a business needs to stop acting like a startup and more like a blue chip. Steady growth, steady profits, halfway decent dividend. 15-16 years is well past that point.
In order to attract 10% more buyers each year they've put policies into place that favor the - For lack of a better term, stupid people. - The ones that have no concept of transit time, actual shipping costs, paying on time, actually reading the description, or looking at the picture. And the sellers they've attracted are the tailenders who would fail at anything because their idea of business is making 1% on something. Sometimes because they think any more is evil profiteering, sometimes because they just don't know any better. Then once the pinch is on they start doing stuff like cancelling auctions if it's not going their way. And that only makes the problem and their behavior worse.

Steve Birmingham
Who did apparently listen to too much of both Black Sabbath and the Kinks

[Jantz]

I've been seeing this also, except the 3 auctions ( 2 different sellers ) that I was watching ended shortly after they were listed. I think someone threw out an offer and the sellers pulled the auction and took the cash.

All 3 auctions were listed Sunday night and by late Monday afternoon they all had ended. Only one of the auctions had a current bid.

I've had auctions end early before, so this is nothing new for me, but never 3 in a 24 hour time span. Ironically, both sellers had multiple auctions running, but only a certain few of their auctions were ended early.


Jantz