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Bids Refused, Seller Stuffed.


david robertson

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This decent-looking Lachenal MacCann just sold for £470 - surely less than half its true value. I had placed a bid with a sniper service, and on looking it up at the end of the auction, I found the sad words, "Auction restricted: requirements not met". The seller tells me that the only requirements he set for the sale were UK residence and Paypal membership - I qualify on both counts. He also tells me that another potential buyer contacted him with the same tale, and I'd be prepared to have a small wager that I wasn't the only member of cnet ready to have a punt on the instrument. Was anyone else sniping, and did anyone else have the same experience? I don't suspect any kind of skulduggery, but clearly some automated system is kicking in and blocking legitimate bids. I feel a bit sorry for myself, but much sorrier for the seller, who has potentially lost around £500. Can anyone shed any light?
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This decent-looking Lachenal MacCann just sold for £470 - surely less than half its true value. I had placed a bid with a sniper service, and on looking it up at the end of the auction, I found the sad words, "Auction restricted: requirements not met". The seller tells me that the only requirements he set for the sale were UK residence and Paypal membership - I qualify on both counts. He also tells me that another potential buyer contacted him with the same tale, and I'd be prepared to have a small wager that I wasn't the only member of cnet ready to have a punt on the instrument. Was anyone else sniping, and did anyone else have the same experience? I don't suspect any kind of skulduggery, but clearly some automated system is kicking in and blocking legitimate bids. I feel a bit sorry for myself, but much sorrier for the seller, who has potentially lost around £500. Can anyone shed any light?

I think you, the other blocked bidder, and the seller should all contact eBay, explain the problem, and request that they nullify the auction and allow a re-listing. It seems that their software did not conduct the auction according to the seller's instructions, and so the auction is not valid. And I would advise the seller to refuse to deliver the instrument to the "winning" bidder, on the ground that eBay made an error. If that results in legal action from the "winner", your own bid -- which your sniping service can verify -- should be conclusive evidence that eBay was at fault. If eBay had ignored your bid, they could claim that they never received it, but if they sent a message saying they rejected it, you've caught them red-handed.

 

I would hope that eBay would agree to nullify the auction. But if they refuse, the seller shouldn't waste time taking them to court, but the three of you together (seller and two failed bidders) should contact the tech columnists at several major media (e.g., BBC, CNN, NY Times, etc.) with your story, making sure you keep your evidence (both on line and in printouts).

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Another possibility is that the problem lay with the sniping software. I have a suspicion that an automated last-minute bid from a sniping service might not enable ebay to check that the bidder met the "must have paypal" criterion. I'm not sure about this, but I think its quite likely. In which case the "blame" may be difficult to pin on ebay, or anyone.

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Another possibility is that the problem lay with the sniping software. I have a suspicion that an automated last-minute bid from a sniping service might not enable ebay to check that the bidder met the "must have paypal" criterion. I'm not sure about this, but I think its quite likely. In which case the "blame" may be difficult to pin on ebay, or anyone.

 

That seems a likely explanation, I agree. In fact there's a page full of the same problem in the forum of Gixen, the sniper service that I usually use. But I suppose we can hardly expect eBay to publicise the fact that demanding a Paypal account may reduce your sale price by 50%!

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Another possibility is that the problem lay with the sniping software. I have a suspicion that an automated last-minute bid from a sniping service might not enable ebay to check that the bidder met the "must have paypal" criterion. I'm not sure about this, but I think its quite likely. In which case the "blame" may be difficult to pin on ebay, or anyone.

I think you're wrong on that, Leo. Snipes are entered under eBay user-IDs. If eBay can validate the ID, then they should just as easily be able to validate other information about the user... including and especially PayPal membership, since PayPal is owned by eBay.

 

But "blame" or not, if an error was made, eBay should be willing to nullify the auction. They're certainly able to do that in other cases, and as far as I know they're not required to justify the action.

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The Gixen server from where your bid was sent is US based. Seems reasonable to block it for a UK only auction. Uk account bids from a US server also ought to ring their hijacked account alarm bells if they have any.

I see your argument, but I don't buy it. By that logic, any bid by a Brit should also be rejected if (s)he submitted it while on holiday (vacation) outside of the UK. The snipe server is a service which forwards the bid; it is not the bidder.

 

But carrying your argument to an extreme (very extreme, I admit), all bids on every UK-only auction should be rejected, because they are all being received through a US-based company... eBay! :o

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I for one am glad to see the 'snipers' lose out for once.

 

This automated sniping is ruining ebay for the majority of decent users, and it is high time ebay did something to stamp it out.

I don't quite see what's wrong with sniping. It is just bidding. Why are you so bitter about it?

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Rob, a snipe shouldn't deprive you of buying something, don't get upset about them. They are a last minute bid, that's all. If they are prepared to pay more than you then you lose, as you would have done before. If you are the high bidder, you win. If you bid the same you win because you entered it before the sniper. The only ones they 'beat' are someone who hasn't sat down and thought exactly what an item is worth to them beforehand; (and this is a very dangerous way to approach any auction, live as well; you should always take the decision BEFORE it gets exciting or risk over-reaching in the heat of the moment), or people who don't understand the system and try and bid like a live auction, one step at a time.

 

The Ebay system bids automatically to your limit, it doesn't put it all on at one go, so you should only put one bid on, your maximum.

 

I've never used a snipe but, realising there are clots who don't understand the system or don't think about it beforehand I occasionally make sure I'm about when the auction finishes, refresh the page until the time is down to 20 seconds or so and then bid. The way I work it out it's too late for a 'knee jerk' bidder to react but before the snipes, and if someone has sniped at the same level as me I win 'cos I got in first. It's how I bid on that Aeola I bought.

 

I think Chris Algar probably HAS to use them to stop the rest of us thinking 'Oh well if he thinks it's worth that I'd better bid another £5' and regularly stealing potential stock from under his nose!

 

There is a local version of Ebay here in NZ, Trade Me, that has a thing called 'autoextend'. If you bid in the last seconds it holds the auction open for a couple more minutes and will continue to do so until there has been a clear period without any bidding. Sidesteps all this.

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Hey, I do like the idea of your NZ auction site. "Trade Me" ..... makes it like a 'proper' auction which doesn't have a time cut off but which sells to the highest bidder. Does anyone know if there is a UK online auction site that works like that?

 

David

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Hey, I do like the idea of your NZ auction site. "Trade Me" ..... makes it like a 'proper' auction which doesn't have a time cut off but which sells to the highest bidder. Does anyone know if there is a UK online auction site that works like that?

 

David

 

Hi

I don't use a snipe service and rely on being there at the end. Just lately I have left quite a few seconds but have been told 'Auction over' when there has been time still to run. Has anyone else had this or do snipe systems override us technophobes/

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I don't use a snipe service and rely on being there at the end. Just lately I have left quite a few seconds but have been told 'Auction over' when there has been time still to run. Has anyone else had this or do snipe systems override us technophobes/

Actually, that's one reason why I've used snipes in the past. You can lose out because of local transmission delays, resulting in your bid arriving at eBay well after you press ENTER. It's not unusual for me to experience delays of several seconds to as much as a minute from my local biggest-in-Denmark phone company, even though I have what is supposedly "broad-band" service.

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I agree with Dirge on this. Sniping (whether it is done automatically, or by sitting at your PC and putting a bid in with 10 seconds to go) is the only way to beat the illogical bidder - the person who bids and bids until they win it.

 

Suppose you decide that £500 is the most you will pay for something. If you, the logical bidder, bids £500 early, the chances are that Mr.Illogical comes along and keeps going until he reaches £510. If you keep your £500 bid until the end, and Mr.Illogical is sitting pretty as the highest bidder on £400, you will win. If Mr.Illogical complains that it's not fair, then he should have bid his maximum. As Dirge says, you only ever need to put in one bid - your maximum. But do it as late as you can.

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As Dirge says, you only ever need to put in one bid - your maximum. But do it as late as you can.

This is what I do, though I don't particularly like it. I once came across an auction site that extended the auction end time by 1 minute if a bid was received in the last minute. This seems to me to emulate best a real auction. Unfortunately this is not the environment we bid in here. The other point to remember is: never bid a round number. I set a top bid of $41.46 on something the other day at about the one minute mark. The sniper came in at the 5 second mark with a bid of $41. I smiled quietly to myself.

 

Chris

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I once came across an auction site that extended the auction end time by 1 minute if a bid was received in the last minute. This seems to me to emulate best a real auction.

A nice thought, but no live auction has anything close to the number of attendees -- or even bidders on a given item -- as eBay. I suspect that on most items the eBay-to-live ratio would be at least 10-to-1, and on some it might be 1000-to-1 or more. In such an environment, live-auction rules would likely fail catastrophically. :(

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I suspect that on most items the eBay-to-live ratio would be at least 10-to-1, and on some it might be 1000-to-1 or more. In such an environment, live-auction rules would likely fail catastrophically.

Maybe so, (though I don't think it would have this effect) but worth a small trial, wouldn't you think? Sadly, it will remain a gedanken experiment I reckon.

 

Chris

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Hi Guys,

 

Am I missing something obvious here ?

 

Surely the best plan is simply to decide what is the maximum you are prepared to pay, set that as your max. bid and see whether it is sucessful or not. Easier to stick to this on ebay than in a live auction room.

 

On quality instruments, the price is likely to be high and the bidding increments would be fairly large so by sniping, you are not going to 'steal it' for an extra couple of pounds.

 

It seems to me that this bid rejection situation would probably not have arisen if this had been the plan of attack.

 

For every sniper, there is another sniper squinting down the crosshairs and now and again, they are bound to hit each other.

 

Cheers

 

Dave

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