Ebay Sniping


My question to ebay and their response.

Here is the question I submitted to Ebay:

Subject: GS=C22001 Bidding and how it works [?01]

Member-stated User ID: gordon.tillman
User Feedback: 2
User State: ?01

Browser Info: Mozilla/5.0 (Macintosh; U; PPC Mac OS X; en-us)
AppleWebKit/125.4 (KHTML, like Gecko) Safari/125.9

Ask about bidding or buying > Bidding and buying > Bidding and how it
works

Message: Why in God's name don't you implement some kind of verification
process so people cannot use sniping software to gain an unfair bidding
advantage? All you would have to do is use a computer generated image
of a random number that users would have to enter when they submit their
bid!

Please consider this!

--gordon tillman


This is the reply I got from EBay:

Hello Gordon,

Thank you for writing in about this, my name is James, and I would be
happy to help.

There's no reason to prevent last second bidders. The use of sniping
software is allowed on the site, as long as there is time left on the
auction, it can accept a bid. If the previous bidders aren't going to
bid any higher, then there;s no reason to keep a seller from receiving
more from their listings at the last second by a sniper bidder.
Obviously no on else is going to bid any higher, so there's no reason
not to let someone else bid higher than everyone else and win the item.

Keep in mind, it's not the last bidder that wins, whoever bids most
wins, regardless of when the bid is placed. there is no advantage to
bidding at the last second. if the previous bidders bid a higher maximum
bid, then the sniper does not have time to bid again, and the rule of
whoever bid the most, wins, still applies regardless of when the bid is
placed.

It was my pleasure to be able to assist you. We appreciate that you
chose eBay, and I wish you success with all of your eBay auctions!

Regards,

James L. W.
eBay Customer Support


In other words, Ebay states officially that sniping is allowed. As I am tired of constantly losing Ebay auctions (on the rare occasion that I participate in one), I shall go with the flow and SNIPE!

Posted: Wed - September 22, 2004 at 06:48 PM        

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