Ebay Fees

[JSR]

As a purchaser, I've pretty much given up with ebay these days.

It's not ebay themselves that are the reason, or the people selling on ebay either. It's those horrible automated software thingies that leap in and out-bid you at the very final second. There's absolutely no point bidding on items anymore, because you know that, having waited 7+ days for the auction to finish, someone will leap in on that very last second using those software things to outbid you by one bid.

While that's allowed to continue, ebay auctions are pointless as far as I'm concerned. If it's literally impossible to buy anything from them, why bother even trying? I wonder how many other past users feel the same?

[Paul]

same here! If i need anything and go to ebay I am looking for buy it now. if is not buy it now i ma not bother bidding that much any more

[gorgall2]

Or you could wait until the very last second yourself, or use automated sniping software yourself. As for the fees it's only a rip off if you don't get what was promised for the money you paid. It's your choice to list on there or not, they tell you in advance how much it is going to cost you, where's the rip off?

[JSR]

Or you could wait until the very last second yourself,

I've tried that. I sit there with the app on my phone and it's counting down the seconds - 8... 7... 6... 5... 4... 3... 2... 1... outbid, auction over. You can't get in quickly enough yourself because you need to click the button to send the bid and you can't do that in one second.

The silly thing is that you'll then get an email from eBay saying "you've been outbid - bid again to secure the item" or somesuch. You can't bid again, because it's over.

I've seen "real" auctions on those TV programmes and the auction tends to continue until no one bids any more. It's this "countdown to the last second" that ruins the ebay auctions.

or use automated sniping software yourself.

I've often wondered how that'd work. Doesn't the software work by somehow working out the highest bid, and then bidding again? If there's more than one sniping app going on, either they're all fighting each other so the final bid would be extortionately high, or it'd be pot luck who actually placed the last bid for it to be the highest.

Either way, it's all a bit ridiculous and makes ebay auctions look like a very bad joke.

[gorgall2]

I always bid in the last 5 sec with the highest I am willing to pay, that way if higher bids have already been entered, ebay automatically bids for me until I have the winning bid or my maximum bid is exceeded. Depending on the competition, sometimes I get a bargain, sometimes I pay my max, sometimes I lose.
If it was run like a "real life auction" the prices could go a lot higher and potentially never end as the auction room never closes.

[viccar]

Quite simply the highest bidder wins, no matter when you put the bid in !
Nothing to do with a sniping tool winning, they simply bid more than you.

[JSR]

I always bid in the last 5 sec with the highest I am willing to pay, that way if higher bids have already been entered, ebay automatically bids for me until I have the winning bid or my maximum bid is exceeded. Depending on the competition, sometimes I get a bargain, sometimes I pay my max, sometimes I lose.
If it was run like a "real life auction" the prices could go a lot higher and potentially never end as the auction room never closes.

With the sniping, though, the auctions always seem to go higher than they should. I'm regularly looking at the price of printers on ebay and it's commonplace to see a price under £20 for the entire auction and then, when the auction is over, it sold for £70 - sometimes the final price is actually higher than the cost of a brand new one from Amazon. And all that bidding went on in the last couple of seconds. Somehow the sniping software knows that the highest bid from the bidder was £68 and then it bids £70. It can't possibly have bid every single bid from £22 to £70 in the last two seconds.

[JSR]

Quite simply the highest bidder wins, no matter when you put the bid in !
Nothing to do with a sniping tool winning, they simply bid more than you.

In a real auction, you don't need to reveal your "highest bid" to the auctioneer in advance of placing a bid. You have chance to consider and reconsider whether you're prepared to bid higher, based on the last bid that was made. Sniping software prevents that from happening.

[gorgall2]

Bidder 1 enters a max bid for £70 starting price is £20 so their first bid is £20. Bidder 2 at last few seconds enters £68 max bid.
Bidder 1's bid goes to his max of £70 he wins.