WTF? (was Re: Microdata "Microprogramming Handbook")

From: Pat Barron <pat_at_transarc.ibm.com>
Date: Mon Jan 28 09:24:44 2002

Just as a point of information, I asked this specific question of eBay
customer service (i.e., whether or not I could reject bids from snipers),
and was told that as long as I clearly indicated what types of bids and/or
bidders I would not accept, that this was fine. This was in June 2000; I
don't know whether or not, if I asked them the same question today, I'd
get the same answer.

In thinking about this over the weekend, though, I realize that this
policy doesn't actually do what I intended it to do (which is, to
discourage bid sniping). Actually, it just moves back the "sniping
deadline" by two minutes. So, I'm just going to delete that section from
my Me page later on today.

I still like the idea (both as a seller, and as a buyer) of just letting
an auction continue as long as there are bids still coming in, so I may
check out the Yahoo! auto-extend format auction (that Ian pointed me
towards) for some items and see how well that works out.

--Pat.
Received on Mon Jan 28 2002 - 09:24:44 GMT