eBay Bid Time Extensions
Some eBay auctions now being extended
As some of you may be aware, eBay started testing and rolling out bid time extensions. These extend the auction end time 1 minute from the time of the last bid. So far this is rolled out on eBay Motors and eBay Australia. The other markets may follow, including the biggest, eBay UK and eBay US.
There is no doubt that this hurts sniping somewhat, but so far, the difference, while noticeable, is not huge. Statistical analysis I conducted indicates (nothing about statistics is conclusive or a sure thing) that Gixen now wins around 10% less auctions. Gixen users still win far under their maximum bid amount, which makes sense – submitting your bid 1 minute before auction end is still far better than submitting it hours or days before.
In responding to this, based on feedback from users so far, here are the changes Gixen is introducing:
1. Gixen will do the bidding incrementally, instead of submitting the maximum bid to eBay at once. It will also detect extensions as late as possible and delay bidding until as late as possible. Gixen will wait the maximum of 12 extensions (this is typically far more than needed in practice), bidding incrementally during this time, before submitting user's maximum bid.
2. Gixen Mirror server will do the same, however instead of user-specified offset it will bid 1 second before auction end. This is in order to save the number of calls to eBay, as Gixen mirror is a failsafe measure.
3. For extended auctions Gixen main server will default to 6 seconds. This is necessary in order to detect whether or not an auction extends, which requires 3 calls to eBay instead of one.
As I am unsure what the optimal strategy is, and it may differ depending on value, category or specific auction, I am considering giving users more choice and control in the future. I am open to all constructive suggestions and comments.
Why is this happening? It looks like eBay believes (but is not sure, hence this is still being tested) that this may raise the final price. This is likely true, if the buyer interest in auctions remains the same, so it pretty much depends on how majority of buyers feel about it over the long term. My guess is that not much will change, but let me know how you feel about it.