Snipes are killing ebay auctions

[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