Is eBay Extended Bidding Bad for Buyers?

by: AddyUp

"extended bidding would be good for buyers"

Everything ebay does is "good" for buyers and sellers.At least it is in the special ebay dictionary.

This reminds me when ebay UK put up the fees to 10%. Ebay said this was good for sellers as it made it easier for sellers to work out their fees.  

by: Rexford

It's quite funny to behold how eBay killed auctions and now tries to bring them back from the dead.   My guess is that they are only want to extend the time because few are participating.

by: IFindBugs

I am a professional buyer. I buy collectibles items for inventory for my company. Extended bidding would likely destroy my ability to buy on eBay. In July I bought almost 500 eBay items; August is on track to be even higher. At any one moment I have between 125 and 225 snipe bids pending (through a service). I buy as many items as I can per seller and obtain agreement to accumulate items for between 14 and 28 days before combined payment and combined shipping. For some of my sellers I pay sooner than that if the count of items gets over 40-50 items; my record so far is 67 different items from one seller. All of that would likely go away with extended bidding. The eBay process is already extremely inefficient for a professional buyer -- and I have not been able to find a way to communicate to eBay a few SIMPLE things they can do to improve the process for buyers, WITHOUT increasing eBay's cost or work (other than very minor software bug / feature fixes that are easy to implement -- and which will help small buyers too).

by: NJSRR

The Ebay beancounter's graph in some backroom probably shows a 1 7/8 % increase in bidding amounts if you go to a "Soft Close" auction.  But I am guessing that just like me, there are millions of bidders who use snipe bids mainly for convenience.  What will happen to them?  I guess we'll just have to drop our high bid and hope for the best.

by: MikeD

If this is going to be the way that eBay runs in the near future I will no longer be using eBay for buying or selling. For me it's fun and exciting of bidding at the last second to see if I win, and I always put in my maximum as it is when I bid. If the bidding/auction time is going to be extended and there is even more of a chance that I am going to lose an auction that I would have won by either overbidding or maybe even using a snipe tool, then I am just not going to bother anymore. Ebay used to be fun and exciting, however, it's becoming less fun. Besides, there are now so many other auction/discount sites out there to purchase items from nowadays. So eBay is going to shoot itself in the foot if they end up making all items 'Extended Bidding'. What a drag!

by: walkinwillie

As a seller, I went to fixed price listings because auctions just were not doing near as well. That being said, I like the auction extension deal as it might cause me to try an auction or two. As far as sniping is concerned, sure, I've done it although the software I used became a bit buggy when eBay's security wasn't sure if it was ''me'' or not so some snipes didn't go through. But I don't like sniping as like the article said, eBay auctions are not like real in-person auctions and I like the ''going once, going twice, sold!'' part of a real auction. Heck, WhatNot uses the 10 second auction that extends by 10 seconds on every bid and that seems way better, especially for assessing the value of an item - yes, I know it depends on how many people are at a particular WhatNot show. Finally, I lost some auctions I was bidding on recently and yes, I was manually sniping at the last 10 seconds and kept getting beat by snipers getting in there with one or two seconds left - so again, I like the extended auction... a lot! eBay auctions would then become real auctions and that is a good thing IMHO.

by: AddyUp

Snipe or no snipe highest bid wins regardless.

Biggest problem with extended bidding will be an increase of "buyer regret".

by: spooky

eBay does not police the site for shill bidding. I have 100% proof that 2 of the biggest sellers on there (one for general antiques and artwork and one for sterling silver) are shill bidding their listings. I am no longer able to even report the listing as eBay ended the link and now says out AI will always figure it out. What a blatant lie. This is one main reason auctions are dead, nobody trusts them.

by: Snapped

What they needed to do right after they trashed the .99c start and it would sell for market value or above marketplace by trying to wooden-shoehorn their way into retail, was get rid of increments at the low end.  And make sniping moot.

An auction item will sell for as much as, and no more than, the most someone is willing to pay.  Yes, they will hesitate and cogitate, but they will bid - IF there is an incentive beyond their own desire.  And that incentive in bidding, live or otherwise, is the hammer.  All are given fair warning, and that’s it.  As it should be.

Now, as for increments, whatever is bid, even 10x current increment, THAT is the current high bid.  Gets rid of jokers bidding 100 on something they believe will peter out at 50, just so their snipe holds.  You bid 100.  Next bid tops THAT or YOU own it when the hammer falls.  Alternately, be prepared to pay a bit more, as the market may not give any f’s about what your pain point is.

And get rid of the nickels dimes and quarters.  One buck up to 20.  5 bucks up to 100.  20 bucks up to 300.  25 beyond that.  100 after 1000.  500 after 5000.  A bid can be anything to the penny above current increment.

Finally, shorten ALL auctions to 72 hours, max.  

by: Andy

''Confidence at the close: The final moments of an auction are clear, visible, and decisive, so buyers and sellers understand exactly what’s happening as the auction ends.''

This paragraph is mind-boggling as it absolutely contradicts their entire argument. A soft-close auction could in theory go on forever; there is nothing ''clear, visible, and decisive'' about that. Whoever wrote that seems to have no idea of the functional differences between open-outcry and on-line auctions.

eBay auctions are time-based, so the winning bid is the highest, not the latest. That is not a difficult concept to understand and it works just fine. If your bid does get sniped at the end, it simply means that someone with deeper pockets wanted it more. If you regret not bidding more for it, then your highest bid was not really your best one. Live and learn.

by: Andy

''What they needed to do right after they trashed the .99c start [...] was get rid of increments at the low end.''

God, yes. Their current bidding interface is a very poor design, sticking three chump-change bid increments in the user's face and playing down the fact that they can plug in a much higher bid of their own.

For example, an auction currently at, say, $25 might offer bid increment buttons for $27, $29 and $31, something like that. This simply encourages nibble-bidding rather than serious competition, letting the seller tear his hair as the price crawls upward day by day, instead of seeing more common leaps and bounds from the old days when a bidder would actually have to think of what number he wanted to type in.

Instead, they should be offering small, medium and large bid increments for those users who need a button for everything, such as (in this example) $27, $35 or $50. Nervous Nellies could still pick a small increment, but more determined types could go significantly higher with equal ease.

It does not appear that the contractors writing code for eBay actually use the site, or this rather obvious idea would have occurred to them already.