| Definition of Terms | | | Debunking the Myths | | | Proposed Solutions | | | I Like Snipers! | | | Beating the Snipers | | | In conclusion... |
| # | Proposed Solution | Why it won't work |
|---|---|---|
| 1 | Each time a person bids, the end time should be extended a few minutes to allow others to respond. (I've seen everywhere from 30 seconds to 24 hours per bid) | Without a doubt the most commonly suggested solution. This solution is usually put forth by newbies
who may have just been sniped and are used to the "Going, Going Gone" format that
is very popular on TV and movie. There are several problems with this format.
Sellers schedule auctions to begin and end at certain times. Under this policy, sellers would never know when or if their auction ended. This makes things such as bulk deliveries and vacations hard to schedule. An auction format where people could bid against each other indefinitely would encourage shill bidding like never before. Non-snipers without a defineable True Max would be more tempted to get caught up in the moment, getting into a bidding frenzy and perhaps bidding more than they could afford. Buyer's Remorse would then increase. This would still not solve the basic perceived problem. If you're not at your machine in the final hour, what good is an extra 15 minutes going to do? You would still have to be on the internet at the end of the auction, and you would no longer have the luxury of knowing exactly when that would be. Finally, even if you were at your computer at the end of the auction, your would be forced to sit at your computer indefinitely, since each time somebody bids, the endtime would be extended. The stress factor would increase a fair amount on people who are already upset in their belief that the system is unfair. What if you have to leave, and the Overtime period is still going? Undoubtedly almost every anti-sniper would still consider this unfair and still not be satisfied. |
| 1.1 | Solution Number 1 - In many different flavors |
The Auction Extension is by far the most commonly made suggestion by anti-snipers, and as such it has manifested itself in a plethora
of variations. They are too numerous to list here, so I'll discuss five parts of the solution that are variable.
A - Trigger. The Overtime period must be fired somehow. In other words, what event or series of events causes an auction to go into the overtime period? Does an auction always have an overtime period? Must there be at least one bidder? At least two? Does there have to be a lead change? Does it happen only if there is bidding in the "Red Zone"? (a period at the end of an auction). How long is the Red Zone? 5 minutes? 1 hour? 24 hours? Must there be a lead change in the Red Zone? B - Entry requirements. Who gets to bid in the overtime period? All of eBay? Only those who bid? Only those who held the lead at least once? Only those who bid in the final hour? Only those who took the lead in the final hour? With or without the bid leader, if he didn't bid late? Just the old leader and the sniper? Only the old leader? Once OT starts, do the requirements stay the same or shrink? If you're eligible to bid in the first OT period, but fail to bid or take the lead, are you unable to bid in later rounds? C - Recursion. Is there only one overtime period or do we run the auction until somebody holds the lead for an entire period? By far, the majority of AE people favor multiple overtime periods, but enough have suggested otherwise to make it a valid variant. D - Set your clock. How long is the OT period? 30 seconds? 1 minute? 5 minutes? 1 hour? 2 hours? 24 hours? Is the first one longer or shorter than the others? If somebody bids or takes the lead, does the next OT period start right away, or does the current one run down, THEN the next one starts? E - Shots from the Line. Can you only bid once per OT period, Or can you bid as many times as you like? F - Here we go round the Mulberry Bush. What triggers going to the next OT period? Any bid? A lead change? As you can see, by manipulating the various parts of an AE solution, we can come up with an amazingly diverse number of different solutions and formats that all, ultimately, have their roots in AE. |
| 2 | Only those that have already placed a bid should be allowed to bid in the final hour. This will ensure that only those who have a long-term committment to the item, and really want the item will be able to get it. | This is also known as the "Forbidden City" or "Gatekeeper" solution.
I've seen proposals for such a solution close the gates as early as 1 minute and as late
as 24 hours. Most people seem to hover around the 1 hour mark.
This solution merely pushes the snipe window back a certain amount of time. People like me will bid just outside the line of death, get the key to the city, then wait and snipe anyway. Very little is gained. Further, by forcing people to bid before they really want to, you open the door to shill bidding, nibbling, enemy bidding and auction stalking. Enemies can now track me more easily and find items that I am bidding on. This policy will only result in higher prices for items, since bidders who do not or cannot define a True Max will have a greater ability to respond. Essentially, this plan handicaps good bidders and forces them to behave like less skilled bidders. Finally, this also opens the door for more bad bids. With increased opportunities for emotional-based bidding, you have a greater chance of somebody getting caught up in the bidding and bidding more than they can pay. This already happens today, but such a solution would only exacerbate the existing problem. In response to my strategy, some say, you should be required to hold the lead at least once before being allowed to bid. This would keep most lowballers away except for the very first person to bid. Therefore, the logic goes, require that any person bidding in the final hour have taken the lead specifically away from somebody else. At this point, IMHO, we have a very complicated system, one that most people would not understand. Further, it would require a not-too-insignificant programming effort on eBays part, and I think that the whole thing would collapse under its own weight. Also, what about items that have no bids at all going into the final hour? |
| 3 | Split the bidding period into zones, each with more or less authority | I call this the "traffic light" solution. All but the final 24 hours of the auction is the green zone. The next 23
hours is the yellow zone. The final hour is the red zone. Note that the final "day" of the auction, the yellow and
red zones, is a raw 24-hour period, not necessarily midnight to midnight, and could easily be spread out over parts of two
calendar days.
Anybody can bid in the green zone and anybody can bid in the yellow zone. However, you can only bid in the red zone if you have already bid at least once in the green zone. This solution is much like the Gatekeeper solution above. Basically, bidding in the green zone gives you a key to the Forbidden City, and then once in the red zone, you can do what you want. If you don't bid in the green zone, you can still bid in the yellow zone, but you have to hope for the best as the red zonies go at it. :-) This solution has all the problems of the gatekeeper solution (with variants, like you can only bid in the red zone if you bid AND take the lead in the green zone, etc.) with the added complication of the time. IMHO, many people would get the zones confused, and might make assumptions that the cutoff point is midnight, and not 24 hours, and midnight in which time zone, etc. |
| 4 | Auctions should end randomly in the final hour. That way, no sniper can be sure that she's cutting it too close for me to respond. | One of the most common arguments against sniping is that others may not be at their computer at the right time to respond. This solution would actually require more presence than the current setup. Snipers will simply bid just outside the blind ending timeframe. After that, you must remain at your machine the entire time, and if you get outbid, you still may not be able to respond. What if the auction ends 2 seconds after the sniper bids, or 1 second before you submit your response? Sniping will be as effective as ever. |
| 5 | Whoever has held the lead for the longest time should win the item | This has sometimes been called the "Electoral College" method, although I
disagree with the analogy. I would call this the "Time of Possession" rule.
This would prevent many bids, IMHO, and not just sniper bids. If one person has held
the lead for a day or two, then it is unlikely that anybody else will be able to break
that record. What if I bid $1.00 on the first day, hold the lead for a while, then others
start a bidding war and get it up to $200.00.
Under this rule, the seller would still be forced to sell to me for $1.00. That is patently wrong. If I bid $1.00 on a ten day auction, hold the lead for four days, then lose to various bid warriors over the next three days, then I have won by default. Even with the three days left, nobody could overtake my lead. The auction has effectively ended three days early, and I doubt anybody would call a bid with three days left a snipe. Would the auction auto-end, or would we all be forced to watch the dead clock run out? |
| 6 | Sellers should retract any sniper bids unless they have already placed a bid. Sellers should specify in their TOS that they will not honor obvious sniper bids. | Similar to the above solution, but with many new problems. Everybody has a different definition
of sniping, and if this practice is adopted, buyers will go insane trying to keep everybody's
rules straight. Is this the 10-minute guy? The 20-minute guy? The one hour guy? Is this the seller
that requires me to take the lead before bidding in the snipe window or just place a bid?
Note that a smiliar situation is discussed on my Anti-Sniper page. What happens if somebody snipes an auction and the seller does not have time to retract the bid? When the clock runs out, the sniper is the winner by the official eBay rules. Can he leave feedback? Can he force eBay to force the seller to sell? If I was the person who was sniped, am I really the winner? Could the seller and eBay force me to buy? Can I buy at the old current bid, or will this Surrogate Shill Bidder force me to pay my True Max bid? I'm sure that every seller will have their own policy, which would make matters even worse. Read on... Overall, this would create a situation where everybody sells under different rules, and I'm not sure how long eBay would survive such a situation. From this and my other page, you can see that a host of legal and technical questions would arise from sellers having TOS's that are all different from each other to the extent that they can contradict eBay's basic rules. Above all else, it is imperative that eBay maintain a standard and consistent bidding system whereby every auction runs under the same rules. That's why I snipe. Under the current system, it's the best method to win items at low prices. If eBay changes their rules, I would change my bidding tactics. However, if we get to a situation where there are a thousand different rule systems at any given time, and they all change every few days, then I don't know what I'd do. :-) |
| 7 | End all proxy bids. This will make things more fair for everybody so that I don't have to nibble anymore. | This was actually a solution proposed by an anti-proxy bidder. This is the only case of such a
creature that I have ever heard of, but I'll list it here anyway. I assume that this person
wants to force everybody to only bid the minimum each time. There are two serious problems with this.
If you can only be at your computer at select times, it will be virtually impossible to win. You will no longer be able to enter your True Max and wait out the auction. In this scenario, the last bidder always WILL win, since every bid would cause a lead-change. If an item opens for $1.00, and I bid $100.00, and you bid $150.00, then in just two bids, we've moved the bid price up $101.50. Under this method, it would take 102 bids to do the same, based on eBay's increment system. Multiply that by the number of auctions eBay has every day, and the strain on the servers would be phenomenal. Crash, anyone? The proxy system effectively eliminates a lot of bidding activity, and makes the process move smoothly. |
| 8 | End all increments. Whoever bids the most should win, but they should pay their full bid. That way, snipers would not be tempted to place large bids at the end. | Sort of a complement to ending proxies. This plan would definitely benefit the seller. The
assumption is that the difference between the winning bid and my True Max is the amount that
I "cheated" the seller. I disagree. Most items, whether in auctions or in stores,
rarely sell for the absolute most that anyone is willing to pay. Usually, the price is at
a reasonable compromise between the minimum that the seller wants and the maximum that
most people would willingly pay.
While I often go to great lengths to explain to Anti-Snipers that eBays auctions are unlike those in the bricks and mortar world, in this case there is a similarity. Assume you and I are at a going, going gone auction. The bidding for a widget proceeds. You call out $1300, then I call out $1400. Nobody else bids and I win. How do you know that I would not have gone higher? I may not have won with the most I was willing to pay. I basically won by paying a little more than the second-highest bidder was willing to pay. In a bricks and mortar world, people see and hear me bid, and so assume that I paid my True Max. Not true. I may have been willing to go higher, but did not need to, so I only showed as much of my hand as I needed to in order to win. eBays proxy system mirrors that. Basically, eBay bids for me, up to a predefined max. It is true that eBay "knows" what my True Max is, but keeps it hidden until needed. The process is the same, it's just that eBay provides some electronic assistance so that I don't need to be at my computer 24 hours a day. |
| 9 | Have a silent auction. Each person bids once, and the amount is not displayed until the end. Whoever bids the most wins. | On the one hand, this would actually reduce the amount of bids, IMHO. I've seen some people with
as many as 40 bids for the same item. Under this system, you could only bid once.
As with all the other ideas, however, it's still not that great. In general, the silent auction winner pays the full amount, although that could be adjusted so that the winner pays the second-highest bid plus one increment, and the high amount is not shown. My main objection with this is that if somebody has already bid more than you are willing to pay, you could waste a great deal of time watching the auction and researching it. In this case, it's not eBay I'm protecting, it's YOU. :-) |
| 10 | eBay should only ALLOW you to bid in even amounts that way none of us would have to worry about this....
contributed by eBay user jonnyf1939 |
By "This", the user meant losing by one penny. It's not clear if the user meant all sniping.
That's beside the point, though. Forcing people to bid in dollar amounts will not prevent people from getting sniped. Whether you lose by 1 penny or 1 dollar, you still lose. Seeing that bigger gap may make people feel better, but in my experience, more people get upset over being sniped at all than specifically being sniped for less than one increment (although that's a common complaint, too). While this may soothe the minds of those who don't understand the proxy bidding system, the basic cause of complaints will still exist. |
| 11 | Eliminate the clock from display. Buyers and sellers would know the DAY that the auction ends, but not the time. Depending on which variant of this solution you're using, the seller may or may not know when the auction ends | Sellers need to know EXACTLY when their auctions end to schedule e-mails, post office runs,
list similar items, etc. Knowing within 1 day is not good enough.
One of two things must happen : If the seller knows exactly when the auction will end, since it will be an exact number of days from pressing the submit button, it will encourage shill bidding since the seller will have more information that the buyers. Otherwise, the auction must end randomly during the day. Random times will have to be generated for each auction. With over a million auctions per day, that's a fair amount of extra overload on the system. However, given the two, a random end time would probably be more realistic. Based on when you list, you may gain or lose an entire day with a random end time. Therefore, sellers would tend to list more items just after midnight PST, which might spike server demand at that instant. Also, eBay might not want to give away an entire extra day, so they might put limits on the randomness, which would increase bidding just BEFORE midnight, again causing an activity spike and straining the eBay servers. Bidders with limited computer access won't have as much time to research the item and other items and decide their proxy bid. By forcing people to bid earlier, we will increase shill bidding, enemy bidding and auction stalking. Frustration will ensue when bidders try to bid on the last day, but the auction ends while they are bidding, and their bid does not get in. Also, a bidding war may be interrupted when the auction ends. The person who would have bid more and taken the lead might feel that's unfair. This could also stop a nibbler as he's bidding against a higher earlier proxy. IMHO, complaints would increase if these things happened. Also, your bid and money will be tied up longer, so that you would have less freedom to bid on other items. This would work both ways. If you know EXACTLY when the auction ends, you can spend more time looking around before comitting to one item. If you bid, you may have to wait 24 hours before you know if you can look around again. People would still snipe just outside the blind ending time. This would cause people to have to monitor the auction ALL DAY and constantly re-bid. Stress would increase dramatically, since the clock would often "end" the auction right when somebody was in the middle of manuall re-bidding. |
| 12 | The buy it now option should be made mandatory for all items for sale until someone bids on it.
contributed by eBay user davisma |
This is, in my opinion, yet another "instant solution". That is, a quick knee-jerk idea that came from somebody without a great deal of
knowledge about the system. In the heat of their anger, this person decided on something that they thought would fix things.
This idea has a number of holes, which probably did not occur to the inventor at the time. Sellers may not WANT to force a BIN on everybody, and it's not fair to require that the seller do this. A clever seller could work around this by simply setting a BIN price of $50,000,000.00 on every item. Many buyers often use BIN without realizing what they're doing, and regret it later. By requiring every auction to have a BIN, even only until the first bidder, the rate of NPBA's will increase, and that hurts everybody. Auctions that have too high a BIN often scare people away, since they figure that the item will go for that much anyway. This might force sellers to list items with low BINs, and they will risk selling items for far less than the otherwise would have. Finally, most people don't use BIN and will just bid. This will kill the BIN, and the item will be sniped like before. This solution, like many others, solves no problems and creates new ones. |
| 13 | A bunch of little solutions
Sniper Registration (Sniper License): Last second bidding is only allowed for pre-registered bidders. There is a limit (sniping points) on the number of auctions that can be sniped in a month. Habitual snipers should be identified as such with a little gun after their stars. (contributed by eBay user johnmwells) Sniper Permission: Last second bidding is allowed only if the bidder has asked the seller for permission. Sniper Demerits: Excessive last second bidding will suspend the account of that bidder, or removal of positive feedback. (feedback removal contributed by eBay user johnmwells.) Sniper Fines: Excessive last second bidding will result in monetary fines levied against the sniper. They essentially seek to punish people for understanding the system and using it to their advantage. I would rather spend energy educating the people who DON'T understand. |
Overall, these solutions are to complicated for most people to work with and too punitive. They don't really offer to solve the alleged problem, even assuming that sniping IS a problem. They just offer ways to punish people who use the system better than the complainer. |
| 14 | Read my plan on the right. I don't even want to THINK of all of the problems this plan would cause! | Presenting the Tyler Jones ultimate solution to sniping. This is pretty much a combination of the Forbidden City
and Auto-Extend solutions.
The auction proceeds as normal until the defined end. If the lead changes at any time during the final hour, the auction enters into an indefinite overtime period. There are two triggers that would cause this to happen : Mary outbids John, or perhaps Sarah places the one and only bid in the final hour. Just placing a bid is not enough. If Jennifer is the bid leader at $15.00, and John Bids $20.00, and Jennifer remains the leader at $20.50, then overtime is not triggered. A new person MUST take the lead for this to happen. I suppose, though, that if an auction had only one bidder, even a snipe at the 1 second mark, there would be no need for an overtime period. Once we are in the OT period, a list is created of all of the people who bid on the item during the regulation timeframe. Nobody else may bid on the item. Bidding proceeds again, with two extra options. Anybody on the list may opt to drop out of the bidding. Unlike a normal auction, where a person drops out just by not bidding, in this case you would have to click a "give up" link, and confirm that you really are dropping out of the bidding. The one weakness in this plan is that a person could never give up, yet never bid, dragging the auction on for months. To battle this, we would ultimately have to have some kind of time limit. All people on the list who have not been the lead bidder for one full week are automatically kicked off. That is, eBay takes it upon itself to give up for you. At first, I was going to say that you only needed to bid once a week to stay in. It occured to me that if you are the leader at $100.00 and your max is $500.00, then I could up the bid by one increment per week and keep the auction going for months. To reduce this somewhat, I changed it so that you have to actually take the lead once a week. When the last bidder but one gives up or times out, then the last one standing wins. The key is that until the last person gives up or times out, THE AUCTION DOES NOT END. This would completely eliminate sniping, since each person would have to individually confirm that they no longer want to bid on the item, and each bidder would have every chance in the world to counter any other bid. There would be so many problems with this format that my fingers would fall off if I typed them all in. I only presented it to demonstrate that eliminating sniping is a bad idea that would make buying and selling on eBay a nightmare. |