Post #93413 by Kono on Fri, May 28, 2004 7:53 PM

On 2004-05-28 17:32, Trader Woody wrote:

On 2004-05-28 17:07, Kono wrote:
Acewipe57 would've lost as Darwinism intended.

Shudder.....

Nah, this survival of the fittest crap still makes me wince. Surely we're above all that these days? I thought that's what civilization was all about? Decency? Sportsmanship? Ring any bells? No? Oh well....

Trader Woody

Give me a break. Maybe if I inserted a :wink: after that sentence you'd be more comfortable with it. It was meant tongue in cheek. For the most part...

If Acewipe was willing to spend 45.00 on the item then why didn't he bid that originally? More likely he did not initially think it was worth that much but worked himself up and spent more than he intended. The poor lad might even be suffering some buyer's remorse as we speak. :(

Curiously, I've never heard of ebay referred to as a sport. It's a marketplace. If you found a Ren Clark mug in a thrift store marked very cheap would you discretely snag it up or would you make wager with the shop owner: "Tell you what, let's play a hand of poker. If I win, I get the mug at the marked price. If you win, I'll pay what it's worth."

I'm incredulous that anyone would think "sniping" is unethical, uncivilized, barbaric, or what have you. Maybe the practice needs a new name. "Fashionably late," perhaps? Maybe people just don't understand it!

What do you think sniping is? It's simply bidding what you feel an item is worth and waiting as late as possible so that competitors do not have time to reconsider, check the bank account, ask the spouse etc. You can bid in the first minute of an auction and if your bid is high enough then it doesn't matter what the so-called sniper bids. You still win. Lesson: bid what you think it is worth the first time.

Ebay is like a cross between a standard auction and a silent auction. You submit a bid as in a silent auction, the difference being that they tell you who is in the lead. That is to entice you to spend more, to rethink your original bid and raise it higher, to make you spend more of your hard earned money. A responsible bidder IMO will set a bid amount, place his bid and be done with it. Win or lose. What is more fair than that? People who get all hysterical and keep upping their bid amounts likely spent more than they intended anyway. Maybe for some people it is a game. For me the only sport in ebay is digging around (like Laney said) and finding stuff that others miss (oh, and I got a king size one recently - will post when it actually arrives). Spending as much as you can is no sport for me.

Once again, so-called "sniping" is merely bidding what you think an item is worth and bidding late enough that other (IMO, less responsible) bidders do not have time to be overcome with buyer's lust and rebid at a higher amount than they originally thought was reasonable (reconsider their original bid). How is that unethical?

Damn, I need to learn to be more concise. Sorry to make you shudder TW! :D