Snipes are killing ebay auctions

[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.

[alanu]

I agree that's it's wrong for sellers to end auctions early if there are already bids on the item, but I find myself bidding on a lot of items using snipes that I wouldn't normally bid on because I' m busy during the ending time (at work, at a meeting, driving to or from work or asleep for those early ending east coast auctions) or if I'm out of town.

Also, I used to miss out on bidding on items just because I forgot about them and the actions ended before I got my bid in.

-Alan