Re: HP Calculator Website/Prices
Message #11 Posted by W. Bruce Maguire II on 2 Nov 2001, 12:54 p.m.,
in response to message #10 by Frank
Frank wrote:
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...Today I was sniped in the last seconds on ebay by this
same fellow (name withheld for fairness/politeness) on an HP item I needed and
had bid on a few days ago but failed to put my best bid on (my error), when I
checked his history sniping was seemingly his only method of
bidding...
Frank:
I wanted to comment on your mention of "sniping" in eBay auctions. There is a
fairly new service/web-site called "Bidnapper" (www.bidnapper.com). This
service allows a bidder to place an order ahead-of-time for an eBay item, and
Bidnapper will place the bid with only a few seconds left in the auction (the
average is about four seconds). I, myself, have signed-up for this service
and I use it exclusively now. I don't feel that there is _any_ moral or
ethical problem with it at all.
eBay bidding (proxy bidding) is based on the premise that everyone places _one_
bid---the bid that is their true maximum amount. If eBay allowed all bidders
to place _only_one_bid_, then there would be no problems and there would be no
need for sniping. Unfortunately, that is not the case. If I bid _early_ on an
item that I really want, it just gives the "competition" time to see that
someone else is interested, and the time to try to determine the amount of my
maximum bid. As a result, that "competition" may bid a bit more than they
would have otherwise, given the knowledge about my bid. This means that the
competition has more information about the auction than do I. This obviously
puts me at a disadvantage---especially if I'm not camped-out watching the
auction in the last hour!
Sniping, in my opinion, just levels the playing field. In fact, I wish
_everyone_ would use Bidnapper. That would ensure that the bidding proceeds as
it should (actually it would be identical to a sealed or silent-auction).
But, as I said, I just don't have the time to monitor all the auctions I bid
on, to guard against someone bidding 12 times in the last hour in order to
out-bid me---and in the process bidding higher than they would have originally
bid if they had only one chance.
All ethical concerns that you have for this other fellow (and they sound like
legitimate concerns) aside, I defend the practice of "sniping."
My two cents,
Bruce.
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