Bidding Bots

[gorbal-43]

Is anyone away of bidding bots to make last second (not minute) bids?

I lost two auctions yesterday to the same person within an identical 4 seconds of the close time.  I understand the maxbid strategy of placing a bid at the close of the auction but I get concerned when the same person is able to place a bid (which I never saw live and could only see via bid history) within an identical 4 seconds of closing time.  Sounds like the problems getting concert tickets online!

I am not a jilted bidder, as I understand the process, but I want to make sure that, if I ever bid again, I am not up against a BOT and can see the bidding in real time without delays so as to make it fair to all participants.

[femmefan1946]

Yes.

DH uses esnipe.com when he is bidding in an overseas auction.

This allows him to get a full night's sleep instead of having to hover over a keyboard at 2am .

The sniping program executes his bid in the last few seconds of the auction. Just as a particularly swift manual bidder could.

He usually has put in his bid within a few hours of the auction opening, because his collection is rather esoteric and material doesn't come up often. So he's not a last-second bidder.

Nonetheless, it is quite easy to beat the bots.

Just use the oft-repeated mantra "Bid Once. Bid Your Maximum".

Because the winning bidder is not the last bidder, but the high bidder.

I've won well under my maximum bid, even against snipers by deciding how much the item is worth to me , bidding, and going away until the auction is over.

And if someone outbids me? That sucker paid too much.

[momcqueen]

Yes. Honestly, I think it’s what ruined Auctions on eBay.

[silverpinups]

I think sniper programs have made it convenient for the bidder(s).

It allows the bidder to bid at anytime of the day or night... 24/7 and frees up their time for more important things in life. 

There are a lot of auction houses that have time delays on their auctions so that no sniping program is effective.  If the time delay is 2 minutes and the bidder places a bid with 10 seconds left, the auction will automatically reset to 2:10 and will continue to reset until no one else bids within that 2 minute window... 

[kawartha-ephemera]

Really, from the buyers' perspective esnipe serves a very useful function as mentioned above. I don't see how the use of such a service interferes with auction outcomes in a negative way. 

Just about all online auction sites I've seen other than ebay have gone to the "soft close" format which is a truly an awful format for the buyer, at least those that value their time and sanity. This practice has drove me away from participating in such auctions. 

[momcqueen]

You're welcome to feel as you do but I can tell you that as a former ebay bidder-buyer, I quit bidding on auctions as soon as I realized there were sniper programs as my opposition. I did NOT switch to sniping programs or a sniper service.

And now ebay completed sale items are 85 to 90 per cent Buy It Now. Auctions are dead in the water. 

Automatic bidder by a computer ruined the notion of fair play, and eliminated the thrill of winning. For me, for the Original Poster (from the sounds of it) and I assume for thousands of other buyers. It's all fine and good to say that countless more buyers love sniping programs; so where are they now? 

If bidding by sniper bot was so lovely and good, auctions would still be a thing. 

[femmefan1946]

Where are they now?

Same as they were. Bidding once.

Only now they win immediately because they were the  first to spot the (Fixed Price) listing.

The only one who loses is the seller who is unaware that her unwanted doohickey from the basement is actually a super-rare antique Marvel figurine from 1983 that the (former sniper now ecstatic ) neckbeard has been faunching over for three decades.

As for extending auctions, even public called auctions are not allowed to drag on and on. If bidding slows, the auctioneer (in our case DH , mentioned above) will bring the hammer down . He has another 750 lots to move out before supper time.

[retroman_studios]

In the truest sense of the action, a sniper will only win if the max amount they have allotted isn't beat.

So a human bidder who will pay up to $600 will always win against a bot that has a budget of $400 as a rough example provided the human lays the max bid up front.

The problem most bidders run into is they don't want to places high stakes too early. Especially those who bid on multiple auctions.

So really, it's the emotional handicap that annoys us, not the fact that someone was willing to pay more, if that was the case.

Auctions are like a pchycological game where we get a boost of endorphins and all sorts of other compounds like adrenaline. It's like the thrill of the hunt. Thus why it's dangerous.

[kawartha-ephemera]

It must be the adrenaline rush that causes so many "soft close" auction bidders to lose control of their mice. I really do despise that format.

[silverpinups]

And now ebay completed sale items are 85 to 90 per cent Buy It Now. Auctions are dead in the water. 

Automatic bidder by a computer ruined the notion of fair play, and eliminated the thrill of winning. For me, for the Original Poster (from the sounds of it) and I assume for thousands of other buyers. It's all fine and good to say that countless more buyers love sniping programs; so where are they now? 

If bidding by sniper bot was so lovely and good, auctions would still be a thing. 

Sorry, but auctions are alive and well in the Movie Memoriliblia categories that I sell in.... and probably still involve 50% of the sellers in those related categories. 

I'm one of those buyers who still participates in auctions on eBay on a weekly basis...

[gorbal-43]

Thanks for all the replies but I am done doing auctions on EBAY.  I watched the closing on another item and never saw the final 5 bids on my screen!!  Same person bought that item as the one that started this rant with the identical 4 seconds left!!

I personally think that the soft closes are the way to go - the seller will always get what the item is worth to someone at that tiime and the buyer gets the experience/entertainment/thrill of the chase of going head to head with some other person and not some AI/program.  I would much rather enjoy the rush of adrenaline from extended bidding than the sense of being screwed by some program.

Adios Amigos

[kawartha-ephemera]

Suit yourself but there's a great deal less accountability involved in the soft close process at sites like h*-**********. That site requires no more than a name (real or fictional), perhaps a phone contact and an email to register. No sales records are kept that are available to the public, even the final sale price is unknown a few minutes past final close. There is absolutely no accountability involved. I'll take an ebay auction over that sort of situation any day.

At the end of the day if someone truly wants to experience an honest to goodness auction then there is no alternative but to walk away from the computer and drive to your favourite public auction house, raise your hand high (or wink,wink) as often as required to prevail. 

[retroman_studios]

The key to being sane over eBay auctions is to have a price and not go over it. Second, lay that price up front and walk away.

Other bidders don't see your max bid so it's not like there is a PA System that announces that some bidder will go up to to invite people to bid and max the bidders budget out.

I don't know if it still works today but there used to be a way to casually bid up and reveal a max bid. You would keep bidding untill your bid and the opponent was identical. That was essentially the max point. This was something I did years ago when I was trying to see what bids a person had. The only backfire is if the other buyer retracts a bid and other bids were between yours that would maintain a high price, you are now a high bidder. But the item I looked at were never big ticket items.

I found some great watches that were auction only, had they been BIN, I would be paying probably triple the amount. Sure I lost a bunch. But I set a 10-20 max bid depending on what I liked and never budged.

[femmefan1946]

That strategy (bid until your opponent's max was revealed and then retract) was one reason why DH went to sniping in the first place.

• With last second bidding no one could shill his bid. Although to be clear, the retracting bidder was another collector, not the auctioneer.
• Another was, of course, the overseas location and late night endings.
• Unmentioned, because it doesn't really happen any more, that retracting bidder was also following DH, because bidder's IDs were not masked in those days, and using his bids to identify the good stuff then bidding against him.

[momcqueen]

"....using his bids to identify the good stuff then bidding against him."

Ah, yes. The good old days of auctions. I'd like to mention that once I retired from participating in auctions, the value of everything I was collecting at the time dropped by about 50 per cent because I was no longer actively seeking it and driving up the demand on existing supply.

[momcqueen]

Maybe 50 per cent is an exaggeration. But 25 per cent at least. I was a take-no-prisoners bidder and I rarely lost what I really wanted. (Even to snipers. Which disproves the notion that a sniping program is of any real value to me.) I would set an alarm to any time of the day or night and hit it.

[a51split]

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@gorbal-43 wrote:

Thanks for all the replies but I am done doing auctions on EBAY.  I watched the closing on another item and never saw the final 5 bids on my screen!!  Same person bought that item as the one that started this rant with the identical 4 seconds left!!

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Why don't you place your bid with 3 seconds left?  Or 2?

[retroman_studios]

In this case, as my previous comment showed, if a human bidder was willing to pay more than a bot and entered that bid, bots are useless.

Hence, pick a max price, bid, walk away and be surprised if you won. Anything else is setting yourself up for disappointment.

Hurts but it's true.

[stevenvillman]

I did the 'Bid once. Bid Your Maximum' TWICE in the same auction (meaning that I raised my maximum bid twice in that eBay auction because I was outbid by someone else who also didn't win the eBay auction) and *STILL* lost the auction because of sniping within 4 seconds of the eBay auction's end from someone who placed a manual low bid at the beginning of the auction! Honestly, sniping should really be banned on eBay when it comes to auctions – because I don't want rich people getting their figurative grubby hands on rare vintage/antique items in eBay auctions as they bid far, FAR, *FAR* too high out of my financial reach (I'm not about to spend over USD 200.00 on a vintage Christmas light set in its original but beat up box that doesn't include *any* light bulbs or light string wire harness but *does* include light socket adapters in the shape and size of peppermint sticks!)!!! 😡😡😡😡😡🤬🤬🤬🤬🤬😤😤😤😤😤😤

[stevenvillman]

If someone, who is of low-income status and yet likes joining in eBay auctions from time to time, does as what you say in regarding eBay auctions – they'll probably lose those auctions most of the time to richer people who snipe in eBay auctions. That is the main problem with sniping in eBay auctions.