4 ms·

Off the block

23 points by jeo1234 11y ago

gadders 11y ago
From the article: >>Even for the snipers clever or lucky enough to make the winning bid, this process takes time and energy. I'd be surprised if most if not all snipes were't automated. I don't think people sit round their PC with their finger on the buy button as the auction counts down.
- dropit_sphere 11y ago
  Which raises the question: why not extend the time after the last bid that raises the price? Is this not how regular auctions function? Another idea is: why doesn't eBay write their own bots for users to use, and call it a "bidding strategy"?
  - Ao7bei3s 11y ago
    > I'd be surprised if most if not all snipes were't automated. I don't think people sit round their PC with their finger on the buy button as the auction counts down. Most non-technical people, heck, even most technical people I know who use eBay regularly, don't use snipers. (Too bad for them.) > Another idea is: why doesn't eBay write their own bots for users to use, and call it a "bidding strategy"? eBay takes a percentual share of the selling price, so they have an interest in high selling prices. Making sniping easier would lower selling prices. When all (or most) bidders will make bids shortly before the auction, and - which is the important part - see each others bids and respond to them, that drives up the selling price "nicely".
    - exelius 11y ago
      > eBay takes a percentual share of the selling price, so they have an interest in high selling prices. They could also charge for snipe bots; setting off an arms race inside their platform which they profit from. I mean, it's scummy, but so is every eBay seller at this point.
      - Ao7bei3s 11y ago
        I doubt that'd work; I don't think they could make it expensive enough that they don't loose money without driving users to free sniping tools. (It's funny that there's a fee for the auction scheduling feature when good auction scheduling increases selling prices.)
        exelius 11y ago
        Easy, just charge say 1% of the selling price to snipe. Your "pro" buyers will still flock to free tools (because they know how to use them) but occasional buyers might go for it. They also have the "Buy it now" feature which kind of does the same thing.
  - eterm 11y ago
    eBay has had that for well over a decade. Just enter your maximum price, ebay proxy bids up to that value. If you get "sniped" you were just outbid.
massysett 11y ago
This article focuses too much on economic theory of auctions generally, and it focuses too much on what buyers prefer. There are some fundamental flaws to eBay in particular that have doomed auctions, and these flaws affect seller behavior even more than buyer behavior. eBay does nothing to screen buyers. Therefore there are many bidders who are not serious about buying. They bid on items, win them, and do not pay. I have had bidders win my items and then say "I don't want to buy this item, sorry." As a seller there is no practical recourse against these bidders. This could easily be solved by requiring bidders to put down a deposit. They could be required to post their entire bid amount, but even requiring some deposit--10%, or 50%--of the bid amount would cut down on people bidding who have no intention to buy. If you win the item but don't pay, you would forfeit the deposit. As it is, a bidder wins the auction and does not pay, and as a practical matter the seller must re-list the item. This is a hassle, and time is lost. Sniping is another problem that is easily solved. Simply make the auction more like a live auction: each bid extends the auction time by a time period (a few minutes, a few hours, whatever) to allow additional bids. You set a reasonable bid increment so that this does not become a massive waste of time. eBay has not done this either. As a result the auction winds up being a time sink for sellers and buyers alike, with doubtful value for price discovery. It does nothing for price discovery if some fool bids $200 for something that is worth only $150, especially when the fool is just jacking around and has no intention on paying. I will never again auction on eBay. If I have something whose value I don't know and I really want to practice price discovery, I would just post it at a high "Buy It Now" price, with a note in the listing stating that I will lower the price periodically until someone buys. But even that is a lot of trouble. eBay is just too much hassle, and the auctions are even more hassle with no benefit. It's no wonder sellers are jumping to platforms like Amazon, especially for commodity items with obvious prices.
rm999 11y ago
The best way to buy used products since web 1.0 has either been craigslist (local, negotiating) or ebay (online auction). But both are terribly run companies that have let their business models fail. Sadly, they're the de facto market leaders, and network effects mean they won't easily be replaced or "disrupted". IMO this isn't a failure of auctions, it's a failure of ebay.
PaulHoule 11y ago
This is old news. A while back I was running out of space so I was selling old books and other things and thought auctions on Ebay would be a good way to get rid of the stuff since the stuff would be gone in 7 days. Unfortunately it wasn't. Many of the auctions had no bidders, so this was not a working discovery mechanism. One issue with eBay, the Amazon Marketplace and many other online marketplaces is that you don't get to see the bid and ask spread. That is, you might see somebody selling a book for $135 but you have no idea if anybody will buy the book at $135 or even $35 for the matter. This uncertainty creates conflict for anyone who wants to participate in the marketplace. I did some searching on the web and found a market maker, who had me type in the numbers for my books, movies and video games and gave me a quote. I put the stuff in a box, and they paid me by e-check. Another ebay killer is the emergency of Etsy. It used to be that you could find quirky things on Ebay that you could not get in stores, but now so many stores list inventory on Ebay and the quirky stuff is on Etsy.
- glibgil 11y ago
  EBay has search on ended auctions. It is easy to see what people have paid for something in the past.
- sosuke 11y ago
  "market maker"? What is that and how did you find yours? I'd love to see what I could get for some stuff that is just taking up space.
sosuke 11y ago
EBay was wonderful, like most services it started off with normal people buying and selling their junk or stuff. Then you have sellers coming in to "make a living" on Ebay flooding the market with retail priced items. You've got buyers coming in who don't pay. These are hard problems to solve and have hurt other platforms. I have lots of stuff to sell, but I'm not sure I'd turn to EBay and have to compete with the flood of actual junk. Pinterest has so much marketing spam now it is painful. Etsy has turned to the mass production sellers to turn up profits. Increasing the bid when a bid is places is infuriating, if you want that stuff go to the penny bidding sites. Sniping only happens if you didn't set your bid to a level you were comfortable paying. If someone goes over that bid then you aren't out anything you weren't ready to part with.

23 points by jeo1234 11y ago

From the article: >>Even for the snipers clever or lucky enough to make the winning bid, this process takes time and energy. I'd be surprised if most if not all snipes were't automated. I don't think people sit round their PC with their finger on the buy button as the auction counts down.

dropit_sphere 11y ago
Which raises the question: why not extend the time after the last bid that raises the price? Is this not how regular auctions function? Another idea is: why doesn't eBay write their own bots for users to use, and call it a "bidding strategy"?
- Ao7bei3s 11y ago
  > I'd be surprised if most if not all snipes were't automated. I don't think people sit round their PC with their finger on the buy button as the auction counts down. Most non-technical people, heck, even most technical people I know who use eBay regularly, don't use snipers. (Too bad for them.) > Another idea is: why doesn't eBay write their own bots for users to use, and call it a "bidding strategy"? eBay takes a percentual share of the selling price, so they have an interest in high selling prices. Making sniping easier would lower selling prices. When all (or most) bidders will make bids shortly before the auction, and - which is the important part - see each others bids and respond to them, that drives up the selling price "nicely".
  - exelius 11y ago
    > eBay takes a percentual share of the selling price, so they have an interest in high selling prices. They could also charge for snipe bots; setting off an arms race inside their platform which they profit from. I mean, it's scummy, but so is every eBay seller at this point.
    - Ao7bei3s 11y ago
      I doubt that'd work; I don't think they could make it expensive enough that they don't loose money without driving users to free sniping tools. (It's funny that there's a fee for the auction scheduling feature when good auction scheduling increases selling prices.)
      - exelius 11y ago
        Easy, just charge say 1% of the selling price to snipe. Your "pro" buyers will still flock to free tools (because they know how to use them) but occasional buyers might go for it. They also have the "Buy it now" feature which kind of does the same thing.
- eterm 11y ago
  eBay has had that for well over a decade. Just enter your maximum price, ebay proxy bids up to that value. If you get "sniped" you were just outbid.

massysett 11y ago

This article focuses too much on economic theory of auctions generally, and it focuses too much on what buyers prefer. There are some fundamental flaws to eBay in particular that have doomed auctions, and these flaws affect seller behavior even more than buyer behavior. eBay does nothing to screen buyers. Therefore there are many bidders who are not serious about buying. They bid on items, win them, and do not pay. I have had bidders win my items and then say "I don't want to buy this item, sorry." As a seller there is no practical recourse against these bidders. This could easily be solved by requiring bidders to put down a deposit. They could be required to post their entire bid amount, but even requiring some deposit--10%, or 50%--of the bid amount would cut down on people bidding who have no intention to buy. If you win the item but don't pay, you would forfeit the deposit. As it is, a bidder wins the auction and does not pay, and as a practical matter the seller must re-list the item. This is a hassle, and time is lost. Sniping is another problem that is easily solved. Simply make the auction more like a live auction: each bid extends the auction time by a time period (a few minutes, a few hours, whatever) to allow additional bids. You set a reasonable bid increment so that this does not become a massive waste of time. eBay has not done this either. As a result the auction winds up being a time sink for sellers and buyers alike, with doubtful value for price discovery. It does nothing for price discovery if some fool bids $200 for something that is worth only $150, especially when the fool is just jacking around and has no intention on paying. I will never again auction on eBay. If I have something whose value I don't know and I really want to practice price discovery, I would just post it at a high "Buy It Now" price, with a note in the listing stating that I will lower the price periodically until someone buys. But even that is a lot of trouble. eBay is just too much hassle, and the auctions are even more hassle with no benefit. It's no wonder sellers are jumping to platforms like Amazon, especially for commodity items with obvious prices.

rm999 11y ago

The best way to buy used products since web 1.0 has either been craigslist (local, negotiating) or ebay (online auction). But both are terribly run companies that have let their business models fail. Sadly, they're the de facto market leaders, and network effects mean they won't easily be replaced or "disrupted". IMO this isn't a failure of auctions, it's a failure of ebay.

PaulHoule 11y ago

This is old news. A while back I was running out of space so I was selling old books and other things and thought auctions on Ebay would be a good way to get rid of the stuff since the stuff would be gone in 7 days. Unfortunately it wasn't. Many of the auctions had no bidders, so this was not a working discovery mechanism. One issue with eBay, the Amazon Marketplace and many other online marketplaces is that you don't get to see the bid and ask spread. That is, you might see somebody selling a book for $135 but you have no idea if anybody will buy the book at $135 or even $35 for the matter. This uncertainty creates conflict for anyone who wants to participate in the marketplace. I did some searching on the web and found a market maker, who had me type in the numbers for my books, movies and video games and gave me a quote. I put the stuff in a box, and they paid me by e-check. Another ebay killer is the emergency of Etsy. It used to be that you could find quirky things on Ebay that you could not get in stores, but now so many stores list inventory on Ebay and the quirky stuff is on Etsy.

glibgil 11y ago
EBay has search on ended auctions. It is easy to see what people have paid for something in the past.
sosuke 11y ago
"market maker"? What is that and how did you find yours? I'd love to see what I could get for some stuff that is just taking up space.

sosuke 11y ago

EBay was wonderful, like most services it started off with normal people buying and selling their junk or stuff. Then you have sellers coming in to "make a living" on Ebay flooding the market with retail priced items. You've got buyers coming in who don't pay. These are hard problems to solve and have hurt other platforms. I have lots of stuff to sell, but I'm not sure I'd turn to EBay and have to compete with the flood of actual junk. Pinterest has so much marketing spam now it is painful. Etsy has turned to the mass production sellers to turn up profits. Increasing the bid when a bid is places is infuriating, if you want that stuff go to the penny bidding sites. Sniping only happens if you didn't set your bid to a level you were comfortable paying. If someone goes over that bid then you aren't out anything you weren't ready to part with.