Idea? Bid *only* if there are other bids

[bflaminio]

Sometimes if an item does not sell, the seller will re-list the item at a lower starting price. In the neverending quest to pay the lowest possible price, it may be better to not bid on such an item, in the hope that you can get it even cheaper on the re-list. But if someone else does bid, then I'd want to be part of the action and get my bid in.

To that end, I'd like to see an option to place the snipe bid *only* if there are other bids, and therefore to not place a bid if there are no bids. This strategy can obviously be thwarted by other snipers, or if the re-list attracts additional bidders that ultimately put the price higher than it originally was. But it might be a good option to try...

[Cupid]

At what time before the auction end would you be thinking the snipe should be cancelled if there were no bids, 10 minutes, 2 minutes, or just a few seconds before the auction was due to end ?

I expect the later you wanted it cancelled the harder it would be to be to implement in a reliable way.

Another thing to be considered would be whether the logic should also be able to be applied to Grouped snipes. If it were to be applied to a snipe in a Group should it also result in the later snipes in that Group also being cancelled, in order to remove the possibility of winning a later auction at a higher price, but perhaps miss out on a bargain, or not, and perhaps end up paying more for a later item than would have been possible if the earlier bid had been placed ?... I think it would probably be too confusing for users if it were applied to Grouped snipes.

Personally it wouldn't be an option I'd ever be likely to use; that's because I'm confident that I'm happy to pay the amount I set for my snipe, which goes back to my primary recommendation, for successful sniping, that more time spent researching value is often more productive than anything else.
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Mark

[Guardian]

Just my 2 cents. I have seen several items where there was not a single bid till the last few seconds. So, if you really want it, better to bid while it is still available. Also, eBay usually automatically relists the unsold item for the price listed earlier and very few sellers lower the relisted item's price.

Take this item as an example. Item number 234007173354. 7 days auction with not a single bid till the very end. Starting price - 99.99 I was willing to pay upto 150 for it. But on a side of caution I added another 5. The other sniper was too over confident he would win this one and entered 100 as his maximum bid.

The reason I added the additional 5 was because initially I too was like the other bidder thinking no one else would bid and had been outbid in the last few seconds.

[Daisypop]

That's not an option I would use, and not only because of last second bidding. Occasionally sellers relist unsold items at a lower starting bid but some sellers have actually started relisting items at a HIGHER starting bid (to teach watchers a lesson?? I don't know.) or listing the item at a Buy It Now price much higher than the starting bid used to be.

[Gixen]

[Synthetiq88]

I was going to suggest the same idea. I think this feature would be useful for collectables and stuff with ambiguous value. I have been watching a video game for weeks now and it's gone from $900 down to below $300 starting, after being relisted several times. It's probably getting close to it's true worth now, so I will have to keep watching carefully for bids.. this isn't an item I NEED to have, I would be happy for the algorithm to simply check this contingency when placing the snipe. As a mirror subscriber, with my current settings, this would be at 4 seconds and again at 2 seconds.

I would actually pay extra for an uber subscription just to give me a third snipe at 1 or less seconds, if that would offset some risk. It's like full blown sniping warfare now lol it would be interesting if gixen could negate competition between its own users bidding on the same item, by only placing the snipe from the highest gixen bidder, regardless of their settings..

[Cupid]

[mario]

It's a questionable strategy anyway... there is no guarantee that item will be sold for less on the re-listed auction. It may be just the opposite.

[BuyIt]

Not one that I'd personally use, but it's potentially added value to users of Gixen?

For implementation, I'd just query the server about 15-60s before the end of the auction, if people want less time at the end, you can either allow them to set it themselves with the caveat that it might not be fast enough, or they can implement their own solution.

Any less than 15s, and you're competing against snipers of varying efficiency, which is one of the points of using Gixen anyway.

I too would strongly advocate against any "giving way", it just opens the door to bad actors, as a simple example, I put a bid of $1000 on everything I try to snipe, all Gixen users give way, I get the item for $10.

Everyone but me gets cheated there. :<