Ebay strategies and morality

[herbgeek]

So I'm looking for other people's experience with their Ebay strategies.

Here's my specific situation: there's this purse I've been lusting over for about 6 months, that is available new in a very spendy store. I have an ebay alert set up to notify me if one becomes available. I don't care if its new or used.

One showed up a few days ago, new, at about 25% of the price it sells for new. There is one bid on it. The auction ends tomorrow mid morning.

My plan was to wait until there is less than an hour left to put in my bid. I know that in the past when I've bid for a few items as the sole bidder, I was all excited only to have someone outbid me in the last few minutes, but here I am thinking of doing that to someone else. I'm feeling a bit guilty, should I?

What is your personal morality with regards to Ebay sales? Is any bidding activity ok?

[Float On]

I think that is the "Way of Ebay" since they first started the 'watch this auction' years ago. Seems every auction is won by a last minute bidder.

[Miss Cellane]

It's perfectly acceptable at Ebay. It's called "sniping." If you bid early on in the auction, you alert others that someone's interested in the item. So more people will bid, thus driving up the eventual price.

It's not illegal to do this. It's not immoral. It's smart shopping. Heck, there's even software out there that will do your sniping for you, so you can bid at the last second on something at 3 in the morning and still get a full night's sleep.

Don't forget how Ebay auctions work. What you see as the current bid may or may not be the highest bid that person is willing to make. If there's only one bid, the bid amount will show as the low bid that the seller set. So an item might have a starting bid of $5. I think it's worth $200 to me, so I bid $200. All that will show on someone's computer screen is a $5 bid. If someone else comes along and bids $100, my bid will now show $105 (or something like that), and so on. I'll have the high bid until someone bids more than $200.

The key to winning an auction on Ebay is to figure out what your highest bid is before you make your bid. Bid your highest, bid once, then walk away until the auction is over, so you don't get sucked into bidding more than the item is worth to you if a bidding war erupts.

You could bid at the last second and still lose the item, if the other person has made a higher bid. And you can bid at the last second and score a real bargain, if the other person doesn't understand Ebay's bidding strategy.

My advice would be to wait until the last 5 minutes of the auction to bid, or the last minute, if you have high-speed internet. There may be more than one person out there planning to snipe that auction.

[Miss Cellane]

Oh, and Herbgeek, do remember that it's not the last bid that wins an auction, it's the highest bid.

It's just that you stand a greater chance of having the highest bid if you bid as late as possible in the auction.

[fidgiegirl]

+1 to Miss Cellane. It's the norm in the eBay community.

[iris lily]

I remember being very disappointed back in the early days of ebay, in missing something in the last 5 seconds.

But that said, go for it! That's exactly what the system is set up to support, and besides, there is no guarantee that you will get the item with a snipe bid, your last shot may not be enough.

That's competitive capitalism, god bless America.

[herbgeek]

Update: I sniped. I swooped in at 2.5 minutes before the auction ended (just in case I had an intermittent internet glitch or my browser misbehaved). I didn't get it as cheap as I may have wanted- the other bidder was willing to go quite a bit higher than the opening bid. I still got it at 40% of retail. :)

[redfox]

Morality in the world of commerce? Why, what an interesting concept.

[early morning]

Enjoy your prize, herbgeek! What sort of bag is it, if it's not too noisy to ask? I have to say I've only lusted over those really nice leather ones printed with old-style maps..I think they are Martini, I know they're Italian. And they are WAY out of my league!

[herbgeek]

Its an Osgood Marley mini organizer bag. I like tiny purses, but they have to have pockets and organizational areas for me. Here's what it looks like on the Levenger site:

http://www.levenger.com/PAGETEMPLATES/PRODUCT/Product.asp?Params=Category=11-1001-1006|Level=2-3-4|PageID=8188

[rosarugosa]

Congratulations on your score, Herbgeek! Nice bag. Unfortunately, I favor HUGE bags, and my left should has begun to protest :(

[early morning]

That's a really nice looking little bag, Herbgeek - thanks for sharing. I rarely carry a purse these days, at least to work. I just take my wallet and cell and drop them in my big tote-bag. And it is a shoulder killer, for sure!

[leslieann]

VERY cute bag and congratulations.

Since I have gone phone-free, I only have a wallet in my little purse and could probably even skip the purse part if the wallet part contained better. This feels like freedom.

[AnneM]

Speaking of last minute bids. I think sometimes the seller will set up additional user names and then bid high at the last minute to drive up the price. They win, and then five minutes later, I see them put the same item up for bid again. They keep doing it until someone else bids at a price they want to accept.

[Miss Cellane]

Speaking of last minute bids. I think sometimes the seller will set up additional user names and then bid high at the last minute to drive up the price. They win, and then five minutes later, I see them put the same item up for bid again. They keep doing it until someone else bids at a price they want to accept.

If you suspect someone is doing that--it's against Ebay rules. The seller should be reported. It's a huge infraction of the rules, enough to get a seller banned for life.

[AnneM]

It happened when we were bidding on a 1980's model Sharp calculator. We could never get it from this one particular seller due to what I mentioned above. We wound up purchasing from someone else.

[DonkaDoo]

omg - do not feel guilty for that. It personally annoys me how people bid so early and drive the price higher than it might be otherwise.

[jennipurrr]

Speaking of last minute bids. I think sometimes the seller will set up additional user names and then bid high at the last minute to drive up the price. They win, and then five minutes later, I see them put the same item up for bid again. They keep doing it until someone else bids at a price they want to accept.

That is very very difficult to do in ebay. One time I told my sister to bid like everyone else on an item on ebay. Ebay shut down my auction because it could tell I had logged on from that IP before.