This was my belief for many years, but then I tried sniping (with the same prices I was putting as my maximum bid before!) and my success rate skyrocketed and the prices I was paying dropped.

It seems that despite repeated reminders and explanations, there are three groups of people using eBay "incorrectly" that make the sniping strategy viable: 1) People who do not understand proxy bidding and think that they "need" to repeatedly bid in increments. 2) People who are irrational about their price ceiling and are willing to bid above their price ceiling because they want to "win". 3) People who want to drive up the price either to deprive others of a good deal, or to drive up the price on behalf of the seller by starting a bidding war with the two above groups.

From a sellers perspective it is common to deal with buyers who won't pay because they paid "more than they wanted", although this is against the eBay ToS and a bid is a contract to purchase the item, because there are few consequences for not doing so.

For some reason, auctions with more bidders seem to attract more bidders, whereas auctions with zero bids seem to go unnoticed. I wonder if this has to do with eBay's search ranking algorithm or some other irrational behavior that I don't understand. At any rate, bidding with 5 or less seconds left to go seems to defeat the above behaviors. I find it distasteful and irrational but it works so I put up with it.

eBay's reputation and trust network is really what makes it a viable product at this point. Given how unreliable Facebook Marketplace buyers are and how many scams are present, I would hesitate to conduct any major transactions beyond a local area.

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JohnFen 11 hours ago | parent | next [-]

> For some reason, auctions with more bidders seem to attract more bidders, whereas auctions with zero bids seem to go unnoticed.

Huh. I'm a "buy it now" guy and filter out the auctions, but maybe I should start looking for zero bid auctions too.

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cm2187 5 hours ago | parent [-]

Auctions are 90% bad deals because you often end up with someone getting over excited and bidding more than the next buy me now price for the same product. But 10% of the time you get lucky, particularly if auctions end at odd time of the day. So I find it's worth throwing some bids, knowing that you should almost always lose. Ebay is best when you are not in a hurry and happy to wait for the right bargain.

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JohnFen 2 hours ago | parent | next [-]

> you often end up with someone getting over excited and bidding more than the next buy me now price for the same product.

I don't find auctions exciting or compelling, so I doubt I'd get overly excited about bidding. I'd just set a max bid (probably about half what I would expect to pay with "buy it now", to compensate for the extra delays and hassle involved with auctions) and call it good. If I'm outbid, I'd just do the straight purchase like I would have anyway.

The reason that unnoticed auctions might be worth me looking at is to expand the pool of possible sellers to buy from. Although if my bid makes the auction suddenly attract the attention of automated bidders/snipers, then there's no point to it for me. This might be a nonstarter.

I'll probably give it a try and see how it goes, though.

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globular-toast 5 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

I mean, an auction is something where you "win" by agreeing to pay more than anyone else. It's always going to be a bad deal for the buyer. The key with Ebay is to actually sell stuff on there too. If you're just a consumer you'll lose out on auctions in the long run.

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Dylan16807 4 hours ago | parent [-]

> It's always going to be a bad deal for the buyer.

That's not true. Sometimes there's not a lot of demand and you pay much less than average market price.

If something is priced super low then someone might step in to arbitrage, but even with perfect knowledge in a perfectly efficient market, an arbitrager will only be willing to pay the true value minus the cost of relisting, the cost of reshipping, the cost of their time, the cost of tying up their money, and the cost of the risk it won't resell. If you beat that by fifty cents you'll get a great deal on the item.

	▲	blitzar 2 hours ago \| parent [-]
		Some items are poorly marketed - in the wrong category, missing a model number, listed as 1MB rather than 1GB, poorly described, poorly photographed etc. This either limits the number of bidders though worse discoverability or just less desirability and lower prices.

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lazylizard 6 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

another group..

i am looking for a bargain not a bidding war. i dont know what is my price ceiling but i know i will only increment twice. if someone outbids me instantly twice in a row i dont want the thing anymore.

	▲	tempestn 6 hours ago \| parent [-]
		The instant outbidding is likely automatic due to you not having reached the previous bidder's entered bid.