Nobody gets outbid because of a sniper. You get outbid because you don't bid high enough.

If you lost to a last second bid its your own fault. If you want something bad enough you should have put a larger bid in. Whatever the highest bid was that won, if it was put in at the beginning of the auction would you have bid higher than you did? If so, then its still your fault. You should have bid higher if you were willing to pay more. Next time put a million dollar bid in on that special cymbal or whatever it is you want and see if you get outbid by a sniper. I doubt you will.

You want ebay to ban it?? LOL!! Ebay is getting stupid, but not that stupid.

Besides. It seems like whatever you wanted this week will eventually show up again.

Point taken on the best bid wins. I wouldn't dispute that. I guess I'm looking at this from a sellers point of view too (even though I'm not a seller on Ebay but you have to consider the sellers as they are the ones payin the fees). On the NZ site they started by giving sellers the option on having auto extend on their auctions and pretty much all sellers opted to auto extend so now it's standard. The reason for this is that you know that all bidders get a chance to up their offer at the end. You guys are obviously used to it and that's cool it's just from here it resembles more of a closed tender than an auction process (I've worked in car auctions for many years and run tenders so I'm not a complete novice on this even though I'm from a small country).

I would argue that if it were a perfect (or near perfect) system then why the need to snipe with 2 seconds to go? Surely if everyone was happy to submit their best offer and walk away then you could do that at any point during the auction. Thing is it doesn't work like that. The reason for sniping is to take away the chance of other bidders increasing their offers. So in my mind this is a deeply flawed market system. (btw, the NZ system has the same maximum bid facility so you can leave your best offer and walk away)

Not to mention the unlevel playing field when one bidder is using sniping software and the other isn't; like when I got sniped while bidding on a drum recently - I had no idea such software even existed.

These are just my outsider observations. I'm not whining. Ebay will change if they see fit.

I ain't calling nobody an a$$hole either. If I were working with this system regularly I'd propably snipe too. If you can't beat 'em, join' em I guess.

Ok, I'm sniping ths thread! :p

Here's my :2Cents: on the subject. Ebay USED to be a sellers market. Fees were reasonable to list items, and if you had a deadbeat sniper bidder, which most sniped bids end up being, you had recourse. NOW ebay is a BUYERS market. Like someone else said before, if the buyer doesn't feel like paying for the item they won, they don't have to. They get a slap on the wrist and no worries about negative feedback. The way it is now, a seller can't leave feedback for a buyer until the item is shipped and the buyer feels everything is to their satisfaction. That is just plain wrong! If you're a seller and the winning bidder never pays you, you should be able to leave negative feedback whether the item was shipped or not! Sure you can apply for your fees back with a non-paying bidder report, but that seems to take forever now to process. Why ebay ever did an about face on their policies is beyond me. The system should be equally fair and right now it isn't. Sniper software SHOULD be banned! If you want it bad enough put the max bid in early like the rest of us do! I've bought and sold on ebay for a while now and it just seems to get worse and worse with people selling junk for huge asking prices (p00der2 for example) or hacked listings wth scammers trying to steal your info and all your money in your bank account......DOH

Lately I've done ok BUYING from ebay, but as far as selling....I've listed some things recently with REASONABLE reserves or buy-it-now prices and they just sit there. They are BELOW market prices and I can't give the quality stuff away it seems. I've come to the conclusing that Ebay is a waste of time for me for selling things, as is Craigslist with all the fake emails I get asking if I still have the "item" for sale......I just listed it FIVE MINUTES AGO! OF COURSE ITS STILL AVAILABLE!!.......once I'm done with this Leedy kit restoration, I think I am done with ebay period. Its not worth my time anymore, as lately all the deals I've been finding with these Leedy's are in, believe it or not, actual drum shops!

Maybe, just maybe, if Ebay gets its act together I will reconsider, but until then the clueless sellers with rediculous asking prices (that they will never get) and the scammers can have it.

Yep, it sucks to be a seller these days on ebay, but I don't believe for a minute that the deadbeat bidding problem is because of sniping. It's because of ebay's lopsided "new and improved" feedback system, and that bidder's identities are hidden from public view. Sellers have no recourse, and deadbeats are never exposed publicly for what they do. There are no consequences for the deadbeats. I agree that that aspect of the system is wrong. Both buyers and sellers need to be held accountable for their actions.

This will be my last post to this thread.

I am one of those that had a very high feedback rating, 100%, with over 1000 transactions. That was a few years ago. My ID was hacked, my papypal account hacked, and it was done by someone that was using very early versions of Sniping Software, built specifically to defraud and it included other types of hijacking apps. This was widely distributed and a handful of people actually found the apps and exploited them. Almost every person that had that software package had the fully enabled version, but were totally oblivious as to it's existence. I lost several thousand dollars, and a good business.

It took me almost 4 years to even try using ebay again. I haven't sold anything since, my feedback is 10 perfect purchases. Now,the last two purchases I made have been completed, I did my due and faithfully post the appropriate positive feedback immediately upon inspection of the packages and contents. They were the best packing jobs I have seen in years. Both drums as advertised. It took three weeks and several emails to get the next to last to post feedback in kind. I am still waiting for the last one. I have asked many questions of the seller, and ZERO communication from them, They don't give flyin' about the buyer. Why are they not posting immediately? Because they are waiting until the very last possible moment to post their response to your feedback, just in case you find out they ripped you, and you can't go back and update feedback? Because they don't care, they are busy taking care of the business they so carefully guard? I don't care how busy they are, it is their responsibility to reciprocate. Try not posting positive, absolutely glowing feedback, even if they lied, cheated and took three months to ship your goods....they will scream bloody rape, or murder. There is no accountability to the buyer anymore, and if you try to get your deal fixed, all of a sudden the BUYER is in the wrong, and the feedback slays the buyer, because the seller is ALWAYS right. And as for hiding the IDs? Who's brilliant idea is that...oh yeah, we are trying to stop fraudulent "second chancers"...And not allowing negative feedback on deadbeat biuyers??? What is that about, another Socialist way of saying it's OK to not take care of your business, we'll pay your way....?

And then there is the Sniping Software, sold and package so nicely..."We make your bidding a joy, you never have to even watch, because we are going to make sure you always win, and then you can laugh at all the suckers that actually want to participate in an AUCTION....

I was a victim of this practice, and I don't care what anyone says, it should banned.

I was just watching an auction for a 14 inch 6 ply tom natural finish. It had 20 seconds to go and the price was right at 90. It jumped to over a hundred. Then with 2 seconds to go, it jumped to 208.50. That one cracked me up. That tom isn't worth anywhere NEAR that price. You gotta love that stuff. "Ya big dummy!"

The feedback system seems crazy to me. I know ebay are considered the big boys in the online auction game but this seems a bit nuts. Why not have the facility to be able to change/edit feedback? Here you get to do this once after placing the initial feedback. Haven't heard anyone complaining about this system. And the auto extend feature means a level playing field and no chance for anyone to work the system to their advantage. Seems pretty simple to me.

Interesting that about 7 years ago, ebay had the opportunity to buy Trademe for around US$750000. They declined and teamed up with the largest telecommunications company and tried to steamroll their way to success. They failed. About 4 years later Trademe sold to a large Australian media company for around US$550 million. The young guy who started it still runs it and he just keeps refining it. Basically watching what ebay does and then trying to improve it.

BTW, ebay shut shop here and moved on.

And for the record, I have made 2 purchases on ebay (13" Super classic tom and parts and a '64 Supra) in the last few weeks and both sellers were great. Happy to ship to the other side of the world and brilliantly packaged. Both left good feedback before I had recieved the items, so I figure they were confident that the drums would be met with my approval.

Yep....utter morons. DOH

Yeah, who knows if the seller is using some sort of program to up the bid too.

I just bid on a no name 'vintage' blue sparkle snare drum with the opening bid of just 39.99 and was very surprised to come home and find out I won!

I was thinking for sure there would be come sort of snipe thing going on either buy the seller or another bidder.

BTW, I'll post some pics of the snare when I get it, can't wait to find out if it's anything worth a hoot. :)

The seller's woes, I totally sympathize with. The changes really don't make much sense to me at all.

But the sniping complaints, well, put me in the less than sympathetic camp. You can't treat a proxy auction like eBay like a live auction and keep upping your bid little by little whenever you get out bid. Well, you can, but you're going to lose often. If you enter the max you are willing to pay, you either win or someone else offers more than the most you were willing to pay and you lose. Pretty simple.

I've lost to snipers and I snipe. I've also won against snipers and lost sniping. But the method I've found best is to just enter the max and let it ride. Seriously, if you just put the most you are willing to spend as your bid, you'll either win or you'll lose without spending more than you'd intended. (Seems to me that when people treat eBay like a live auction, that's when the prices shoot up. Good for the seller, maybe not so good for the buyer.)

The bottom line is, as others have mentioned, someone apparently wanted whatever the item was more than you and was willing to pay more than you. I just don't get why it should matter if someone comes in with a higher bid 3 days or 3 seconds before close. In either case, someone was willing to pay more and that's all that matters.

EDIT: Hey, even the webmaster agrees! From the sticky at the top of this forum: