| Definition of Terms | | | Debunking the Myths | | | Proposed Solutions | | | I Like Snipers! | | | Beating the Snipers | | | In conclusion... |
| Sniping the process | These myths mainly deal with the action of sniping itself as a physical process, not so much the people who do it | |
| # | Myth | It's not true because... |
| 1.1 | Sniping isn't fair because it deprives me of the chance to outbid them. This doesn't happen in "real" or "true" auctions, which let everybody bid until they're satisfied. | Far and away, this is the most common complaint against sniping. Over 90% of the entire arguement against sniping boils down to this
one simple statement. Most people, it seems to me, are used to the "Going, Going, Gone" Auction format. They expect eBay to
behave exactly like this format, and get suprised, hurt and even angry when this happens. They blame the system and the people who
outbid them. They feel cheated, since they would have bid more if they had the chance before the clock ran out.
What they fail to realize is that they DO have exactly that chance. eBay mimics this format by their use of the Proxy System. By entering their True Max bid, they are present during the entire auction in spirit. Every time somebody else makes a bid, eBay uses enough of your proxy to retain the lead, and this continues until either you win the auction or are outbid. Using the proxy bid system, you really do get a chance to outbid them, provided you know your true max. It is true that you have to handle things a little bit differently than in a Going, Going Gone auction, but as you will see below, the environment of the eBay auction is fundamentally different, so we must make some adjustments. Remember that the highest bid wins, no matter when it was placed. If my True Max is higher than yours, I'll win whether I bid in the first 10 seconds or the last. If I bid higher than you at the last second, I have not cheated you or stole anything from you. I was just willing to pay more than you. If you believe that you would have bid more given the time, then you should have bid that amount earlier. That's the fundamental nature of the proxy system. You simply put in your last minute bids ahead of time and save them for when they're needed. Since I am a sniper, you can beat me by bidding more than I do before you even know I exist. If this sentence seems odd to you, then you need to learn about proxy bidding and the True Max Bid. Basically, you must determine, in advance, the absolute most that you would ever pay for the item, then bid that. You will either win, or you will lose to somebody you know FOR CERTAIN was willing to pay more than you. It still hurts to lose, but you will have some closure. |
| 1.1 Sub-Myth | Sniping is wrong, because it prevents bid and counter bid. This is the only real way to run auctions, and bidding against each other in
realtime is the only way to find my True Max, if it even exists.
Many people, more or less directly, but really pushed by eBay users terryl (the first part) and phone-a-holic (the second part). |
The first part of this myth is more or less a re-stating of the main 1.1 myth, so I'll just say that with proxy bidding, the increment
schedule and the True Max bid, bid and counter bid simply does not and should not apply to eBay, so preventing that effectively prevents
nothing.
Let's concentrate on the second part. The OP who pushed this idea claimed that there was no such thing as a True Max (see another myth from him below). The only way he could bid was to bid against others in little bits. Then, somehow, he could get a sense of how much he was willing to pay, and that such a process was the ONLY way he could determine what he was willing to pay. I see a lot of problems with this philopsophy. If you're always willing to let others determine your price for you, you could end up paying more than you're willing to. In a fixed-time ending auction, you will lose a lot. Finally, what if you're engaged in an auction with 5 or 6 other people, and they all have the same idea you do? Each one will outbid the others and if they all want to bid just a little more than everybody else, the auction would in theory never end. When I brought that point up, the OP backpedaled and said that in such a situation, he would eventually realize that the price had gone past his limit and he would stop. I contend that this means that the OP does indeed have a True Max, and had one all along. Further, I don't believe that directly bidding against others in real-time is the only way to expose that amount. If you can't use my bidpage directly, then run a pretend auction in your mind. Visualize yourself bidding on the item, and have imaginary opponents. Pretend that each time you bid, one of these imaginary opponents outbids you and that they never stop bidding. Is there an amount that would finally make you pause? If so, that's your True Max, and you should bid that no matter what others are doing in the real world. I suppose there are those that simply cannot do this, and are so emotionally attached to the GGG type of auction and the bid/counter-bid way of doing things that they could never bid in any other way except that. Well, to those people I say, you're gonna lose a lot on eBay, and if that attitude follows you into real life, it won't be pretty there, either. :-) |
| 1.2 | eBay is not a "real" or "true" auction, like those in the non-computer world, and that's not fair.
Direct from the land of small price. |
I blame TV, the one-eyed monster, for this one. :-) the one type of auction that people are most familiar with is the Going, Going, Gone
Auction, or GGG. The GGG auction is very controlled. Everybody sits in a room together and bids up in little bits. Everybody bids a little
bit at a time until everybody else gives up, and you win. People have usually been invited in advance, they rarely if ever show up late
and almost never place bids unless they have been bidding all along. Items are auctioned off in only a few minutes.
The GGG auction is the one that we see most often of TV and movies, after all, and most people who join eBay do so knowing that format and nothing else. They skim the rules, but don't really pay attention to them, because in their minds they alreay know what an auction is and how it works, and it does not occur to them that anything could be different. Then, they meet a sniper. :-) In contrast to the GGG auction, eBay is a world-wide 24/7 format. Anybody in the world can drop in and bid, even if they just found out about the item today. Auctions need to run several days so that people can have the time to discover them, do research, and plan their bid. I do not believe that it is reasonable to demand that eBay conform to other auctions that have entirely different circumstances. Even in the non-computer world, there are many different auction formats, some of them timed. Besides Going, Going, Gone, we have Silent Auctions and Sealed Auctions. Anybody can walk up, even in the last second, and drop a bid. The GGG auction is not the only type of auction in the world. There are many types, and each has their own set of rules. eBay is simply another environment, and thus has some different ways in which things are done. |
| 1.3 | Sniping is a dishonest way of bidding and it's just like cheating.
Direct from the land of small price. |
From a strictly legal point of view, this is false, because eBay is set up in such a way that dishonest or invalid bids CANNOT be
entered. The only way that bids can be entered into the system is if they are from a registered user and are entered in the
established timeframe. Bids also assume that the bidder is willing and able to pay the full amount, if necessary.
From a moral point of view, it's still false. If I bid $40.00 at the end of the auction, it's as much of a bid as any other. If I bid $40.00, and I'm willing to pay that much, then it's an honest bid. The timing does not matter. The timing of the bid only affects me. The timing of my bid should not affect anybody else and does not prevent anybody else from bidding whatever they want whenever they want. Every bidder is an entity unto themselves. When you bid, it should not be based on what other people are doing. You should decide your True Max and place a bid whenever you want. When I bid, I'm not doing anything to prevent you from bidding. If I bid more than you did, and you feel cheated, you should have bid more to begin with. This is proxy bidding. This is the heart of eBay. Bidding only when others do is a defensive, reactive strategy and it will not work against sniping. You must bid only what you think you are willing to pay for. This strategy, proxy bidding, is a more offensive and proactive strategy. If other people know the rules and use the system in a superior manner than you do, and win, it's not their fault. |
| 1.4 | Snipers wait until the last minute and choke the site with so much bidding and other activity, that honest people can't bid.
Contributed by eBay user htbmd (converted!) |
eBay's servers are capable of handling a fairly large load of bids, and I can't imagine that even a dozen bids in the last few
seconds would prevent any other bids from coming in, and even if that were the case, how would the servers "know" to allow the
sniper bids in, and keep out the non-sniping late bidders? The contributor suggested the Gatekeeper Solution as a partial way,
but the fact is that this simply can't happen. Further, the snipers would have to act together in a conspiracy, and why would
they do that, when the only result would be the raising of the price, as several more bids came in?
Besides, if snipe bids prevent your bid from being recorded, then weren't you trying to snipe, too? Barring the Gatekeeper solution, of course. This combination suggests that many anti-snipers do NOT consider a bid a snipe if they have already bid before. As of this writing, I estimate that there are generally no more than 140 bids per second being entered into the eBay bidding system, and that's a pretty high estimate. IMHO, eBay is more than capable of handling this. |
| 1.5 | I don't like rational thought or using logic. They both give me intense headaches. I find thinking illogically must more enjoyable.
Direct from the land of small price. |
This is not really a "Myth", but the logic of this Anti-Sniper speaks for itself. :-) Yes, a well-known anti-sniper actually said this.
It was Post 110 of the IDIOTIC ANTI-SNIPER POST OF THE WEEK for Week of May 13 thread on the Bidding Board. This post was entered
Wednesday, 16 May, 2001 at 16:06:31 PST.
I'd really like to make some clever, sarcastic remark here, but I can't. That comment says it all about the Anti-Sniping philosophy. :-) Note that this does not necessarily capture the attitude of anti-snipers themselves. Most of them are new and do not fully understand the system. About 95% of the time, once the situation is explained to them, they turn around and become full fledged supporters. :-) |
| Mechanics of Bidding | These myths are centered around the way that bids are entered and how the amounts of the bids affect the auction | |
| # | Myth | It's not true because... |
| 2.1 | You can't beat a sniper because the last bid always wins.
Direct from the land of small price. |
On eBay, the HIGHEST bid always wins, no matter when it comes in during the timeframe of an auction. It seems that snipers often
win, because there are so many lowballers out there, so that a snipe will almost always overtake the current high bid. However, snipers
lose many auctions because the current high bidder placed a proxy bid high enough to beat back the sniper.
Snipers also lose to other snipers, too. Sometimes, in an ironic twist, the earlier sniper will wins! |
| 2.2 | Snipers have some special, magical way of knowing how high my Proxy Bid is, and they outbid me by just a few pennies. | This often seems to happen, given the nature of proxy bidding and the increment system, but it's usually not the case. In a bidding system
like eBay, the second highest bidder plays a pivotal role in determining the final price. If you bid $10.00 for an item, and I come in at
the last second with a bid of $200.00, then I will win for a price of $10.50.
Here's the important part: You don't see my max bid and neither does the seller. That $189.50 is my margin of safety and in this case it was never used. From your perspective, you see me beat you by 50 cents, but it's a tip-of-the-iceberg kind of thing. I actually won by a lot more, I just didn't need to use it all. The winner pays a price equal to the max of the second highest bidder plus one increment, which for many items is $1.00 or less. From my own experience, I'm pretty sure that the sniper who wins often bids far more than the final amount. Your True Max Bid (and mine) are kept absolutely hush-hush by eBay. There is no way that anybody, including a sniper, can know this, unless they are hacking into eBay or getting inside help. This is probably very illegal, and highly unlikely. If you suspect this you should report it to eBay immediately. For the record, "He outbid me and won the item, and that's not fair" doesn't count as evidence in this case. :-) Another cause of this myth is that many eBayers, especially newbies, tend to bid in round dollar amounts. I bet most of the bids chugging through eBay right now are of the $1.00, $5.00, $10.00, $20.00, $25.00, $50.00 anf $100.00 variety. Other people have picked up on this and commonly bid 1, 2 or 3 cents over these benchmark values. |
| 2.3 | Snipers have a unique way of bidding that others cannot duplicate. They do something with their machines to allow them to snipe and nobody else can do this. | While this myth has only been directly stated once, to my knowledge, it's clearly implied in many anti-snipers posts. It's closely related
to the myth above, and probably results from a lack of information. Most new people do not fully understand how the system works. When
they lose to a sniper, they sometimes figure it's because he's using the system in some strange way that the newbie can't figure out.
This is, of course, completely false. We don't have special versions of Windows or IE from Microsoft. We don't enter a super secret password that enables a "snipe" button on our window. We don't have control of satellites or anything else. All we do is bid toward the end of the auction. Anybody can do it, and it's not really that hard. That's the sad part of this whole thing. So many of us have spent so much time writing huge web pages about sniping, getting into huge arguments over it on the chat boards, and ultimately it's a very easy simple thing for anybody to do. Oh, well. |
| 2.4 | Snipers take advantage of others who have slower internet connections and limited access to computers. | Snipers only take advantage of their skills and that of others who don't fully understand eBay's proxy system. My very own mother is a sniper, God bless her, and she has a slow modem. Even with a slow modem you can get in a pretty good snipe bid, and of course if you put in a good proxy bid, you cannot get sniped in the sense that most people think of when they say they were sniped. |
| Bidding Philosophy 101 | These myths are centered around how people bid and think about bidding | |
| 3.1 | Proxy bidding makes no sense because there is no such thing as a True Max Bid, therefore snipers win by default
Contributed by eBay user phone-a-holic, but echoed in some way by sherriff jimmie. |
The originator of this myth seems to be saying that the final amount can never be determined, therefore the only
fair way to run auctions is to lowball indefinitely until somebody gives up, for whatever reason that may be.
In the first place, if that were true, then lowballers and nibblers would run auctions up into the millions, and I've never seen that happen. In the second place, I believe that for every item, every person (or nearly every person) does have some amount above which she will not spend even one penny more. That amount may not be known right away, but it can be determined through research, soul-searching and my max bid page. As dr.gizmonic says, would you pay $10,000.00 for a jar of peanuts? I doubt it. In fact, I'd be willing to bet that just about anybody could come up with an amount for any item that's too much, and as soon as you determine that, then you know your True Max exists. Now go find it. :-) |
| 3.2 | The rules and strategies of proxy bidding and sniping are extrememly difficult and time-consuming to learn, so that
the average eBayer cannot become a good bidder. To that end, sniping should be banned to force equality on those few
that unfairly have the time and ability to learn the system.
Contributed by eBay user ecollects. |
A classic case of "dumbing down", and completely false. Proxy bidding and the true max bids are very easy concepts to learn.
I myself picked it up in about a week. Bidding once and bidding late are very simple. Even figuring your max bid can be easy.
Ignore my semi-logarithmic method for the time being. Just run an auction in your mind. Pretend that you are bidding for the item,
and that somebody else always bids just a little more than you. Eventually, as you bid up, you will give up and let the other bidder
have the item. That point of giving up is your true max bid. Easy to do and very quick.
Further, even if I have some esoteric skill that others don't, why should I weaken myself just to let others win? Should standards for being a pilot or running a nuclear power plant be lowered because not everybody can learn all of the things there are to doing these things? Should the basketball hoop be lowered in the NBA because some people can't shoot as well as others? In every activity and occupation in the world, there are those who are good, those who are poor, and those who are outstanding. Rather than punish the good ones, why not simply let them do what they do best? And educate the others to do as well as they can, too? Then everybody wins. |
| 3.3 | When snipers bid and lose, they unfairly raise the price for the bidder who bid earlier, who now has to pay an artificially
inflated price. Snipe bids who don't win should not count toward the final price.
contributed by eBay user winterhusky179 |
On the surface, it sounds to me like somebody bid too much. Why would you bid that much if you weren't willing to pay it? If you
place a bid on ANY item, you must realize that there is a chance that you will pay the entire price. Like we have always
said, a bid is a bid is a bid. Any bid can come in at any time. If this sniper had instead bid two days before, you would pay
just as much. What would you do in that case, retract? Refuse to pay? This "solution" would also hurt the seller, as legitimate
bids would no longer count toward the final proxy price.
This myth sounds more like buyers remorse than anything else. The user bid, then got mad when he had to pay what he bid. Then don't bid that much! Kind of like the old joke "Doctor, it hurts when I do this. Then don't do that". :-) Never bid more than you are willing to pay or can afford, and always keep in mind that you might have to pay the full price of your proxy bid, even if it's unexposed with 3 seconds left. |
| 3.4 | Snipers make astronomically high bids, so there's no way I can beat them, even with a proxy bid.
Direct from the land of small price. |
The evidence seems to be against that, since snipers lose a fair amount of bids to early proxy bidders. I suppose this tactic, which I
call "nuclear bidding", could work if there was only one person on eBay doing this. What would happen if became widely known that this
person was so successful using this method? Other people would probably copy him. Then you would have 2 people doing this, then 5, then
10, then 50, then 200, then 5000, then a million. Eventually, 2 of these nuclear bidders are going to meet, then you've got problems. :-)
If somebody routinely bids far more than they should for items, they will eventually get burned. If that's the risk they're willing to take, let them. Of couse, some people believe that ANY amount over their own max is "astronomical", but that's just sour grapes. Whoever bids the most wins, no matter what. There are several auctions where several snipers all bid in the closing seconds of the auction. The price has never, to my knowledge, jumped an astronomical amount. True, the price has often surged by a few hundred dollars, but IMHO the other bidders were lowballing it to begin with. Further, it's my opinion that if such activities were commonplace, we'd hear complaints about low priced items going for thousands of dollars, and people backing out. Since there has never been such an outcry, as of this writing, I dismiss this myth as completely false. |
| 3.5 | Snipers make astronomically low bids, which hurts sellers by forcing prices far below what they really should be.
Direct from the land of small price. |
It is true that one of the main reasons for sniping is that it prevents the final bid from going too
high. It prevents lowballers and shillers from nibbling you. However, I don't believe that using the
system to get the lowest price equates to hurting the sellers. Bargain hunting is a tradition. When
you go shopping on the town, do you drive around deliberately looking for the HIGHEST prices
around? Remember too that the seller sets a minimum bid on each of her items.
For example, suppose that I want an item and the seller has set a minimum bid of $5.00. No matter when or how I bid, I can't bid below that. All bids will be at least that amount, and I have to assume that the seller will be happy if she gets that much. More is ok, naturally, and obviously every seller wants each item to for as much as possible, but if the seller would be unhappy with a final bid of $5.00, then she can (and should) raise the minimum bid to a price that she will be happy with. The way I see it, the seller wants to get the highest price possible. The buyer tries to get the lowest price possible. Those two desires, combined with market forces, create a price that is acceptable to both. There is no pre-defined mark where a price "should" be. Further, I do not believe that it is the duty of the buyers to inflate the price of an item. Is it just me, or does there appear to be a contradiction between this myth and the one just above? Particularly since these two myths orginated from the same person! :-) |
| Responding to Snipers | These myths are centered around how people respond to snipers and their actions, if possible | |
| # | Myth | It's not true because... |
| 4.1 | There is not much you can do to defend yourself against snipers.
Direct from the land of small price. |
Stuff and nonsense. :-) This Myth is similar to the one above, but more generic. Specifically, this just says that snipers are unbeatable and gives no reason. This is an outrageous lie. Snipers lose on eBay every day. It's true that certain bidding styles will almost never win against sniping, but that's not our fault. By proxy bidding, or sniping yourself, you can easily beat snipers. Also, this Myth cannot be true for a very basic reason. What if multiple snipers bid on the same item? According to this myth, they must all lose to each other, yet they must all win at the same time. That violates not only the rules of eBay, but also the laws of physics. :-) |
| 4.2 | Sniping prevents other people from bidding.
Contributed by eBay user easterhope. |
I'm not sure if the OP in this case meant re-bidding in the sense of manually responding to another's bid or bidding at all, but the OP
used the word "bidding" twice, so for the moment, I'll assume all bidding. When a sniper wants something, he goes into magic mode and,
Star-Wars like, uses the "force" to paralyze everybody else in the world and physically prevents their fingers from touching their
keyboards. Note that this must happen before the fact, since snipers never bid until the end, yet the auction is somehow targeted by
the sniper and their magic begins before they even bid! :-)
No bidder can affect another. As an eBay user, I can bid on any auction I want, whenever I want, for any amount that I want, as many times as I want. Nothing any other bidder does can prevent that. As long as you are a registered eBay user, you can bid whenever and however you please. As a sniper, I am powerless to stop you. |
| 4.3 | Snipers only push up the price a dollar or so, and that's not worth the aggravation of even trying to counterbid.
Direct from the land of small price. |
This is not necessarily so. If the current bid is $20.00, but that bidder has a True Max of $80.00, and I snipe with $100.00, I've just pushed
the price up $61.00. Even if I snipe with $75.00 and lose, I'm still giving the seller an extra $56.00. Besides, with all the comments about
eBays fee increases, I can well believe that for many people, every dollar counts!
Even in the cases where this does happen, the sniper is not to blame. If my snipe bid only raises the price by one increment, then the cause is the earlier bidder who did not bid his max. Remember that the top two bidders together decide the price of the item. If I as a sniper bid my max, then I've done my job. I've followed the rules and eBay's suggestion to bid my max once. If you, as the second highest bidder, do not, then YOU are the one who failed to raise the price. I can't make you bid correctly. I can only control my own bidding. :-) |
| Snipers and Me | These myths discuss how sniping affects others bidding and overall experience on eBay | |
| # | Myth | It's not true because... |
| 5.1 | I led the bidding for this item for six days, then some sniper stole it from me.
Sub-Myth : Sniping is like going up to somebody who is carrying a toy from the store shelf to the cash register, and ripping it out of their hands. The sub-myth was contributed by the fruit loop J-Monster. I forgot her name, but about six of her id's are now NARU. :-) |
Sniping is not stealing. Any bid that comes in during the auction timeframe is as equally valid as any other bid. The time of the auction
is clearly marked, so you can bid at the beginning, the middle or near the end.
Bidding early, bidding often or holding the lead for a long time does not give you ownership or control of the item, the auction or the bidding process. eBay knows no "dibs". By bidding early, you are registering your intent and willingness to purchase the item at a certain price should you be the winner when the auction is over. You are not making a claim of ownership. The seller, and only the seller, and nobody else, retains full ownership and control of the item, the auction and the bidding process until the auction ends and there is a listed winner. At that time, and only at that time, payment and transfer of ownership begins to take place. As for the sub-myth, this gets into the process. If I go to Toys 'R' Us and take a game off the shelf, I am doing more than registering my intent and willingness to purchase the game. By touching the item and holding it, I gain exlusive rights to purchase the item if I so desire. I do not yet own the game, but as long as I am holding the item, I control the buying process. If I choose, I can buy the game, or I can return it to the shelf (retract my bid) with no penatly, and somebody else can take it off the shelf. In other words, if you are physically holding an item in a store, but have not yet bought it, society recognizes your implicit claim to buy the item to the exclusion of all else. The analogy ends there. Buying an item in a store is different from an auction. In a store, one person grabs one item and pays the listed price. In an auction, multiple people bid at different times and whoever bids the highest wins. While an auction has a current leader, that person has no more right to the item than anybody else, including people who have not bid yet, until the auction ends. |
| 5.2 | Sniping is disruptive and takes away from the "fun" of a a friendly auction and bidding process. | The last time I checked, the purpose of bidding on an auction was to WIN something, not just to have fun and socialize. Yes, it's fun
to bid on items, and take the lead, and watch the price go up as the lead goes back and forth. I was like that too, once. However, that is
all secondary to our prime purpose of getting stuff.
I can't see how sniping in and of itself is less friendly than any other bid. If you want to socialize, go to the chat boards. I do that all the time, but an auction is a place to bid on something and win it. Any bid that comes in during the pre-specified timeframe is as equally valid as any other. A snipe bid is no more likely to beat you than any other bid. Besides, if enter a snipe bid at the end, and am beaten by an earlier proxy bid, I could claim that the winning bid was disruptive and unfriendly to me. If your main goal on eBay is just to have fun bidding and enjoy the process, then what difference does it make if I snipe? If your main purpose is to bid and have fun, and my main purpose is to win the auction, then we all achieve our goals together. |
| 5.3 | Snipers prevent people from bidding because many people won't bid until others do. Since nobody can see the snipers until the auction is over, snipers make the prices lower than they should be by fooling others who want to bid. | The original person who said this clearly subscribes to the philosophy that "bids beget other bids". That is, the mere fact that an
item is getting bids makes it more desireable, and hence other people bid on the item, making it even MORE desireable, and so on.
However, the ramifications of this statement are profound and more far-reaching than the original anti-sniper may realize.
I basically see this as a case of people blaming snipers for the habits of others. Yes, I know that many people won't bid until somebody else does and the bids beget other bids theory is true in many cases. However, I am not responsible for the bidding habits of others. I am responsible only for my own bids. If somebody else is afraid to bid first, that's not my fault. If this myth were true, then there would be no bidders at all except for snipers. In the cases where the snipers is the only bidder, at least he is preventing the item from going unsold. Even if the herd mentality were everywhere, somebody would still have to bid first. For people who won't bid until somebody else does, they have only themselves to blame. I put no store in "The devil made me do it" or in this case "The Sniper DIDN'T make me do it"! :-) I've seen the effect of this myself. There are a few issues with this, though. Somebody has to bid first. Even in a situation where people won't bid until somebody else does, and in an auction with 500 bidders, somebody has to step up to the plate and bid on the auction before anybody else does. This makes sense, if you think about it. If nobody bid on eBay until somebody else did first, then nothing would ever sell. For every auction that ends with a winner, somebody had the courage to bid first. One of the most important factors in proxy bidding is that every bidder (and bid) is an entity unto themselves. You should never let your bidding be affected by what other people are doing. Even if this was the way it was done, why am I being singled out? In other words, why should I bid early just to inspire you to bid? Why don't you bid early and inspire me? It makes no sense to demand that some bidders on eBay act as "pioneers", whose only job is to bid on items so that others, who are afraid to bid, can then do so. If there are people out there who won't bid until I do, that's not my fault. It's their fault for not using the system properly. There are a number of auctions where I have won as the only bidder, and that means by definition I must have bid "first". Why can't others do this as well? Consider this. If snipers are willing to bid first, last or whatever, and some bidders won't bid until somebody else does, and the believers of this myth demand that snipers bid earlier to give them the guts to bid, which they would not otherwise do, then where does that leave us? We now have two classes of bidders. Those who are willing to bid first, and those who wait until somebody else goes first. The problem is that as a sniper, I have a responsibility to other bidders that I did not have before. I am now virtually required to bid to help out others who don't have the guts to bid first. I'm basically being asked to be your daddy, and to hand-hold you through the auction process. Well, why can't you be the daddy, bid first, and hand-hold ME through the process? If we're going to have different classes of bidders, we must have some means of identifying them. Do we have to register as one or the other? Will eBay assign us to the role? What if everybody wants to be a secondary bidder? Finally, and this may be just another way of saying the same thing, I don't prevent anything. If you want to bid $50.00 on an item, then nothing I do can prevent it. You can bid on as many items as you want, as many times as you want, for any amount that you want, and there's not thing one I can do about it, nor would I want to. It can be argued that if you want to bid $50.00 on something, and just before you do, two people bid over $50.00, then we are preventing you from bidding $50.00, but that's just a function of the system. You can still bid, it's just that in this case the system would prevent you from bidding $50.00 because there's no way you can win or affect the final price with that bid, assuming that nobody retracts or cancels, and eBay makes that assumption. |
| 5.4 | Snipers would never bid on anything at all unless other people bid on it first, so they ruin it for the rest of us.
Contributed by eBay user card4s |
This myth is a fascinating complement to the one directly above it. That myth claims snipers prevent other people from bidding early, thus
snipers ALWAYS bid first and ruin things. This myth claims that snipers would not bid at all were it not for these early bidders, thus
snipers NEVER bid first and ruin things. This myth has deep roots in the more basic myth that claims snipers don't want the items that
they bid on. This myth takes it a little further and claims that the act of other people bidding on items makes the item more desireable
for snipers, or possibly that they only bid to steal items away from people, and never because they want it.
Oddly enough, this theory actually describes nibblers and lowballers, the very people who rail against the snipers. :-) It seems that once again, anti-snipers are blaming the snipers for their own shortcomings. As of this writing, I have won 300 auctions, 137 of which saw me as the only bidder. In short, no, we don't wait to bid until somebody else does. That is the philosophy of the lowballer, which is in direct opposition to sniping. Snipers make their bids first, second, last or whatever. Our bidding is NEVER based on what other bidders are or are not doing. Remember, "each bidder is an entity unto himself". |
| Sniper Lite | These myths question Snipers committement and desire for the item | |
| 6.1 | Early bidders are more committed to the item than snipers. Snipers win items from people who want it more and deserve it more than they do.
Direct from the land of small price. |
Judging who deserves the item more is hard to do. Why should any one person be more deserving of getting something than somebody else?
Should the poorest person get the item? The oldest? The youngest? The person who's a member of an ethnic minority? The person who was abused most as a child? I mean no disrespect to anybody who may fall in these groups. Poverty, child abuse and racial oppression are terrible things and I oppose them vigorously. Instead, I use them to illustrate that these kinds of rules would cause all sorts of problems. Should we not have bidding, and just have an eBay committe read everybody's sob story, and simply award each item to the person who, in their view, is the most deserving? Besides, the timing of the bid has nothing to do with how much somebody wants it. Maybe the sniper happened across the item at the last minute, or maybe the sniper knew about the item for days and spent his time researching it to determine the amount of his proxy bid. The only objective measure we have is that of the all mighty dollar. Whoever is willing to pay the most for each item wins. Fair and Square. |
| 6.2 | Snipers don't have a sense of community. They don't care for eBay or other bidders. They only want to ruin things for everybody. | Oh, this one hurts! :-). The sense of community on eBay is apparant on the chat boards. People talk about their
lives, share stories, ask questions and give and receive help. Most people on the chat boards are very friendly and snipers go out
of their way to be friendly and helpful, except when the same complaints about them keep coming up.
When it comes time to bid on auctions, however, all bets are off. When I'm bidding on something, I'm not anybody's friend. I want to win the item, and I don't care who else is bidding on it. Let's suppose that dr.gizmonic, englandboy, tiptie and myself (we're all legendary snipers) are all bidding on the same item. Normally, nobody would know about this, but suppose that we somehow tipped our hand, and revealed our intentions. There would be no love lost. We would all still want the item, and bid the highest we could to win. None of us would ask or give quarter. This myth is basically asking snipers to "take one for the team". That is, we should lose on purpose to make other people feel good. I can turn this around easily and ask why can't the anti-snipers lose on purpose and make ME feel good? :-) In some ways, it's like the National Football League. Many players on opposing teams are good friends. They work charities together, help disadvantaged youth, go on speaking tours together, and so on. However, once they get on the football field, it's war. Their only goal is to win ball games, and if that means making their best friend lose, so be it. eBay is a community and snipers are a very important part of that community. We really are friendly and helpful. Just don't expect that to extend to the auction pages. :-) |
| 6.3 | Snipers ignore the auctions and do not participate at all until the very end. | Snipers are in fact VERY involved in the auction the minute they see it and want it. While lowballers are furiously beating each other's
brains out in meaningless bidding wars, the sniper is researching the item, checking it out, asking the seller questions and determining
their TRUE MAX BID. Just because you can't see the sniper doesn't mean he's not there. He's not bidding as soon as he sees the item,
but that's irrelevant since you should not bid until you get all the information you can.
I suspect that the root cause of this myth is that people view bidding as the only activity possible regarding an auction. To them, it makes no sense not to bid as soon as you see the item. Also, they assume that anybody who doesn't show their hand as early as possible must not exist. |
| Reading the Snipers minds | These myths attack the motivations of the snipers | |
| # | Myth | It's not true because... |
| 7.1 | Snipers are craven cowards, afraid to show themselves and try their luck with an early bid. They hide behind the sniping shield so nobody will know what they're doing, the wimps. | Sniping is merely a bidding strategy, one of many out there. eBay user dr.gizmonic compares this to playing poker. Nobody I know shows their cards
while playing. Are they chicken? Are they afraid to try their luck? No. They're simply playing the game to win.
Much like that, snipers bid on eBay to win items, not to show how "manly" they are. If anybody, it's the lowballers who are afraid to enter their True Max bid. I don't believe fear, cowardice or even machismo enter into most people's bidding, though. We're just trying to get things we want for the lowest price possible. I believe that sniping is the best way to do that. Here's a thought for the people who believe in this myth. Why not just bid $50,000 on each and every item? You would win virtually every time. Don't want to? Why not? Are you "chicken"? |
| 7.2 | Snipers don't really want the items. They're just bidding for the fun of it.
Direct from the land of small price. |
I can only analyze my own bidding patterns, and I only bid on items that I want. I have never, ever bid on an item that I did not
really really want, and that was true even before I became a sniper.
Early bidders are not necessarily more committed to the item than snipers, and it may not be the case that they are more serious about their bid. Joke and deadbeat bids are equally likely to come in at all times. In fact, early bidders retract all of the time, or decide that they don't want the item after all. Snipers are often aware of them item days before they bid. They're just waiting for the right moment. Many people search for items and find what they want minutes before the auction ends. Do they want the item less because of this? I don't think so. Maybe I really needed the item, but was unable to search until just before it ended. Maybe I've been watching the item for days, but I prefer to choose when to strike. The timing of when I choose to reveal my hand has nothing to do with how much I want the item or how serious I am about paying for it. |
| 7.3 | Snipers bid the way they do because they're afraid of competition.
Direct from the land of small price. |
This appears to yet another one of the so-called Projection Myths. That is, the anti-snipers are once again projecting their weaknesses onto
Snipers because they can't admit to their own failings.
Competition is one of the greatest things in the world. It causes us all to continually strive to do better. In the arena of eBay, there is competition in the sense of winning items. Each of us places our bids, and the highest wins. As a sniper, I do not specifically seek out competition, since that only raises the price, but neither do I shy away from it. I welcome anybody at all onto the site and I challenge them to bid the best way that they can. How do you judge whether or not a bidder is "afraid" of competition? If we were truly afraid, we would never bid. By entering our max, we give it all we've got and thereby challenge anybody to beat us, even though we don't challenge directly. By not entering their max, it's the lowballers who don't want to compete. Like many others, this myth results from a lack of knowledge of the system. Many anti-snipers view competition as multiple people directly bidding each other up in little bits, like a GGG auction. Since eBay is different, the nature of the competition is also different. On eBay, you compete by simply bidding the most you are willing to pay. Since bidders, especially proxy bidders and snipers, do this on their own, it appears as if we're not directly battling other bidders. We're not, but in this type of auction, being "afraid" of directly bidding against somebody else simply does not apply and demonstrates a complete lack of knowledge of how the system works. |
| 7.4 | Snipers bid the way they do, because they can't stand to lose.
Direct from the land of small price. |
This may be the most truthful "myth" out there. You bet I don't like to lose. :-) I don't bid on eBay to feel good and happy, and to
let somebody else get things. I'm on eBay to win items. Period. That being the case, why shouldn't I use the strategy that I believe
best gets me there?
Of course, this myth is always said in a sarcastic way (as much as you can on the internet anyway). That is, snipers are portrayed as whiny babies who throw hissy fits if they lose, thus they resort to underhanded tactics to make sure that they win. This, of course, is completely false. Nobody (nobody I know anyway) likes to lose, but whenever snipers lose, they just accept the disappointment and move on. I've lost, and I don't like it much, but I'm philosophical enough to know that it happens sometimes. Finally, who is it that whines the most on the boards anyway? What group continoulsy moans how unfair the system is, how everybody is cheating them, and how the entire system should be re-engineered to cater specifically to them? You guessed it, it's the anti-snipers. Mostly from ignorance, true, but this is yet another case of classic transferance. This myth is an excellent example of hypocrisy, since the ones who shout it the loudest also complain the loudest about losing themselves! :-) |
| 7.5 | Snipers are cheap and afraid to bid the true market value of an item. Contributed by eBayer allegrad |
If by "cheap" you mean "tries to get the lowest price possible for things" then yes, I'm cheap. I work hard for my money,
and I don't want to waste it. I like to buy things, but I would rather spend less than more. If you want to call that cheap, then so be it.
Besides, how do you know that I'm cheap? The winner will always show a bid equal to the second-highest bidder plus one increment. You, as an observer, have no way of telling how much I actually bid. If the current high bidder has a Max Bid of $10.00, then suddenly somebody else takes the lead with $10.50, how can you tell if that person bid $10.50, $25.00 or $500.00? You can't. Comments that snipers are cheap are at best a wild guess. My Max Bid is what I would be willing to pay if the need so arises. If the need DOESN'T so arise, then that's not really my fault, and there's no need to pay more than I have to. If I snipe and item with an "unfairly" low bid, and win anyway, what does that say about the bids that came before me? Aren't they cheap bidders too? The second part of this myth is a little harder to analyze. I'm not sure if the one who said this meant True Max or the Market Value due to the context of his speech. Let's take them one at a time. The whole point of sniping is to bid your True Max. Figure out the absolute most you are willing to bid, then bid as late as you can. If you're not doing this, then you're not really a sniper. You're just a lowballer who happens to wander in at the end. That may not even be the True Value. Suppose that you're mildly interested in an item that every expert in the world has appraised at $500.00. You, however, are only willing to bid $100.00. Are you afraid? A chicken? A wimp? The answer is no. You're just not willing to pay as much as others think you should. If, on the other hand, he meant Fair Market Value, then that's another can of worms. If I want to pay Fair Market Value, I'll go to the mall. Auctions are for getting things at a bargain, at least from the buyer's point of view. Why should I deliberately pay more than I need to? Some items may not have a market value. The whole reason I joined eBay in the first place was to find a copy of Dungeons & Dragons Module T1-4, The Temple of Elemental Evil. I found one in excellent shape, but this myth could not apply here. This module has been out of print, to my knowledge, for 15 years. How, then, can I judge the market value for something like this? All I can do is bid what I can and hope for the best. I won, of course, and that was one of the auctions that led me to being a sniper. I just don't buy this whole "afraid" business anyway. I'm reminded of elementary school, where we would dare each other to do stupid things, then call each other chicken if we didn't. I'm sorry, sir, but I'm not going to throw away my dead presidents just to prove to YOU how much of a "real man" I am! :-) |
| 7.6 | Why can't snipers bid their True Max like everybody else? | I must confess that this myth has me buffaloed. It is completely contradictory to almost everything that most anti-snipers say about snipers.
Bidding your Max is at the heart of sniping. If you don't, then you're not a sniper. The people who say this may not actually know what a
sniper is. The may be confusing various terminologies and jargon that we use on the boards.
Also, "Everybody else" does not bid their max. That's the source of over 90% of the complaints against snipers: That the lowballer get outbid before they can bid again. That implies that they have NOT bid their True Max. If "EveryBody" bid their max except for snipers, then snipers would nearly always lose, which they don't. |
| 7.7 | All snipers care about is winning, and they want to win at all costs.
Contributed, in various ways, by rickbuds and danlcat (danlcat has been converted to pro-sniping). |
This is two myths, but they relate to each other pretty well, so I'll combine them. Every once in a while, an anti-sniper will say the
word "win" like it's a dirty word. Well, of course I want to win! Why else would you EVER bid in an auction? Do anti-snipers bid
hoping to lose? Do they get upset if they win? I doubt it. The answer is yes, when I bid on an auction, I want to win and nothing else.
If that means others are going to lose, so be it. It seems to me that anti-snipers come on the boards to complain only when they lose,
so doesn't that imply that they want to win also? Since when is losing, or the direct attempt to lose, a noble thing?
Winning "at all costs" could mean two different things here. I'll assume that the original meaning was "win even if it makes others lose". I hate to break it to the anti-snipers, but if there's more than one bidder on an auction, making somebody else lose is the only way you can win. :-) The other possible meaning is "win by bidding an insane amount", and we've already covered that in the myths where small price brice claims that snipers make astronomically high bids and astronomically low bids AT THE SAME TIME. :-) To sum up, yes, I want to win, and if you bid too, even if you hate sniping, then you want to win too. :-) Please note that this myth contradicts the myth that says that snipers DON'T want to win. |
| Character Assassinations | These myths are direct personal attacks on snipers and their quality of character and morality | |
| # | Myth | It's not true because... |
| 8.1 | Snipers are mean-spirited rotten people. They love stealing things away from good decent people. They are full of hatred and intolerance.
They hate everybody in the world, other snipers and even themselves.
They are miserable excuses for human beings, scum of the earth, undesireable members of the eBay community and so on. They are just like Hitler and Satan. Other words that have been used are ones I won't repeat. :-) |
Again, I can only speak for myself, and I consider myself to be a pretty nice guy. :-) Most of the snipers I have encountered on the
chat boards seem pretty decent to me, so I can only assume that this particular comment comes from jealousy. Lowballers, upset at
losing, resort to name-calling and personal attacks.
Here's a thought to keep you awake at night. If you demand that I change my bidding tactics specifically so that you can win at my expense, then aren't YOU being the selfish party here? |
| 8.2 | Snipers are immortal ogres who do nothing but sit at their computers 24 hours a day, going without food or sleep, buying up everything in sight just for the joy of taking things away from people who deserve them more. | As a sniper, I can guarantee that I only snipe items that I really, really, really want! It's hard to decide who deserves an item more.
For the record, I'm cranky if I don't get my nine hours of sleep every night, and I eat more than enough food every day. :-)
Besides, you don't need to be at your computer all day to snipe. The irony of this myth is that sniping actually allows you to spend LESS time online, and that many of the solutions propsed by anti-snipers, for this reason, would require them to spend MORE time online. :-) |
| 8.3 | Snipers are mean and hostile to anybody who dares disagree with them and their way of doing things. They believe that their way
of bidding is the ONLY way.
Direct from the land of small price. |
The mere existence of this web page disproves this immediately. Snipers, more than anybody else on eBay, even more so than
eBay itself in a few cases, go out of their way and bust their buns EVERY DAY to help people on a variety of topics. Whenever
anybody posts questions on things like retractions, Dutch Auctions, Reserve Prices, etc., it's always the snipers who leap
in to give advice. Many of us such as myself, dr.gizmonic, tiptie, englandboy and Sir Snipes A Lot have web pags devoted
to explaining things to eBayers, and not just about sniping.
We rarely get angry at those who disagree. It's the anti-sniper who continually demands that the entire system be changed for their exclusive benefit. They're the ones who almost always resort to name calling and angry remarks. It's true that some of us are rather blunt, but that rises out of frustration at the fact that anti-sniping posts and complaints appear over and over and over again. Always the same complaints. Always the same unfounded reasoning. It's hard to put on a happy face all the time, but we try, and often succeed. :-) If I was this way, why would I have this web page and why would I have an entire page devoted exclusively to the defeat of snipers at auctions? Every sniper I know (including myself) acknowledges that there are a variety of bidding styles out there, and as long as they follow eBay's rules, they are all valid. We believe that sniping is the best way, but not the only way. When snipers debate bidding philosophy, we're inclined to educate people on eBay and defend sniping. We will criticize other bidding methods as inferior to sniping, but we never ever judge them invalid or wrong. As long as you follow the rules of eBay, I honestly don't care how you bid, and neither do other snipers, although we will happily teach our bidding philosophy if you so desire. Overall, we snipers are very open about bidding. Bid any (legal) way you want, just allow us the same privilege. I do believe that sniping is the best way, though, and as you will see in the Mechanics section, sniping is more successful than it would be because so many people DON'T snipe. If everybody sniped, then snipers would win less often, and prices would rise. If you're interested, I have identified five separate bidding strategies, not counting invalid ones that are against eBay's rules. While some are better than others, they are all valid and acceptable, and they each have their own advantages and disadvantages. You can read about them on my bidding stratagies page. http://members.home.net/cruenti/ebay/strategies.html |
| 8.4 | Snipers are clueless morons. They are stupid ignorant buffoons who have no idea what's going on with anything.
Contributed by eBay user jrsetters. |
This is probably the ultimate of the "sour grapes" myths. People who have lost to snipers many times are usually the ones who spout this
line, probably as a defense mechanism. They don't want to admit that their bidding strategy fails against snipers, so instead they turn
it around and make fun of them. However, consider the logic behind this myth.
Snipers (and my implication all Proxy Bidders) are the most stupid, brain-dead people in the Universe, yet they consistently win auctions. Anti-Snipers are ultra mega super geniuses, the most brilliant people the world has ever seen. They are skilled at everything, yet every time they bid in an auction against a stupid idiot sniper, these rocket scientists get the pants whipped off of them, and despite their massive intelligence, they remain perpetually unable to figure out how this happened, why this happened, or how to prevent it from happening in the future. Let me put in another way. If I'm so stupid, then why do I win 97.6% of the time? :-) |
| 8.5 | Snipers are deadbeats, auctioneering houdinis who bid at the last second, then vanish, never to pay or be heard from again. | While I can only speak for myself, and I've never failed to pay a winning bid, the anecdotal evidence amassed to date indicates that snipers are among the best customers on eBay. Most sellers love them, and nearly all say that they pay promptly in a friendly manner. This is because snipers are very serious bidders. We know what we want, we know how much we're willing to pay for it, and we know how to win. |
| 8.6 | Snipers have a moral obligation to bid in such a way that others, who are not as good as they are, can have a chance to win.
contributed, in some vague indirect way, by eBay user beery1@attbi.com Note that beery never directly said this, but it's strongly implied in a lot of his posts from his anti-sniper thread. |
This myth gets more into a life-based philosophy rather than sniping, but it's an interesting question. I believe that, on a basic
level, we all have a moral obligation to help and assist our fellow humans. Through donations, charities, churches, etc., we can
donate food, clothing, medicine and other sundries to those less fortunate than we are. I think that this is a duty of ours, although
it should not be forced upon us. It's when we choose to do good of our own free will that marks us as honorable and good people.
However, I think that this myth takes it a little too far. I don't believe that we should be expected to hurt or otherwise lessen ourselves, either to boost others up (rob from the rich and take from the poor) or just to lower ourselves so that everybody is reduced to the lowest level. In other words, if I have skills on eBay that others have not yet learned, I should not be expected to throw those skills away just because others don't have them, and only so that I can become as unskilled as everybody else. The fact is that I (and other snipers) know how to use eBay better than most. I sincerely believe that this creates a moral obligation upon us to teach and to help others learn to use the system as well as we do. We gladly do this, through our web pages and our daily efforts on the chat boards to educate people and show them how to be more effective eBayers. However, I will not, not for one second, force myself to be a worse eBayer just so that others can have a better chance of winning against me. That's not "honorable". That's just plain silly. :-) |
| 8.7 | Snipers are always pushing Proxy Bidding as a way to beat their bids. But if it's so great, why don't they use it themselves?
Direct from the land of small price. |
On ocassion, we do use it. I'm not always at my computer (see the immortal ogre myth below), and I will sometimes enter an early
proxy bid and leave to go and do whatever. However, I do not ALWAYS use this method because as good as it is, it's only the second
best strategy on eBay, while sniping is the absolute best. Why shouldn't I use the best strategy whenever I can?
Proxy bidding and sniping are nearly exactly the same. In fact, they are completely equal when they go head to head. The only difference is that bidding late protects us against nibble bidding, shill bidding, enemy bidding and parasite bidding. Therefore, sniping has no special advantage against any other proxy bid, but it DOES have defensive advantages against other valid and invalid bidding strategies. We often hold up Proxy Bidding as the only way to beat sniping (aside from sniping itself) and it is. Lowballing, by definition, and its derivatives, will lose nearly every time to snipers. The only way to beat a sniper is to enter a higher bid, and you can just as easily do that early (pure proxy bidding) or late (sniping). |