EBaying; howling after an auction

From: Aaron Christopher Finney <af-list_at_wfi-inc.com>
Date: Mon Oct 18 02:00:45 1999

On Mon, 18 Oct 1999, Dave McGuire wrote:

> >Sniping is the art of ignorance on the value of something.
>
> Huh? No, man. Sniping is a means to an end. Nothing more, nothing less.
> Not entirely "nice", not entirely what the eBay designers had in mind, but
> extremely effective.

I'd have to agree with Marvin. You don't bid early on something because
you don't want to attract attention to something that might be mis-labeled
or poorly described. If other people don't know what it is, and the
bidding price stays low, you bid in the last 5 seconds and get it for much
less that you would have had a bunch of people been after it.

Myself, I go on eBinges. I might spend a couple of days pouring over ads
for stuff that I've been looking for for a long time. Sometimes I buy
things just to buy them; once I bought an IBM thermal printer for $.25 and
paid $5.00 shipping for it. Recently I got an IBM Fortran manual for a
buck or so, and the guy just sent it without payment. What else...oh yeah,
I picked up a SCSI adapter for an Atari ST for $1.00, because the guy had
it listed only as "SCI Adapter"...total fluke, because I myself misspelled
"scsi" in the search...

I'm certainly no power user of eBay (shallow pockets, too lazy to ship
things), but I find that their format drives me to "snipe" things, but I
look at it, as Marvin said, as a Sealed Auction way to buy. People who try
to be *fair* about bidding there, when their system doesn't cater to the
kind of fairness that allows everyone to have their turn to bid until
the last call, just end up frustrated and disappointed.

My .02,


Aaron
Received on Mon Oct 18 1999 - 02:00:45 BST