OFFSET TIME

[ameneses54]

Dear sir,
Could you thoroughly explain why it's not recommended to lower the offset time below 3 seconds?

Thanks

[Cupid]

It would increase the possibility that bids arrived at eBay too late, so more bids would fail as a result. This can happen due to factors outside the control of the Gixen servers, like network latency on the internet or overloaded eBay servers.

It would not provide any advantage for sniping as 3 seconds is already too little time for anyone to respond to a bid placed on eBay with a new bid.
_________________
Mark

[juangrande]

As an addendum to Mark's reply, the only way someone could respond to a 3-second snipe is to be sitting at one's computer watching eBay's dynamic bidding updates and then use 1-click bidding (which requires that you've already placed a bid on the item previously). Since 1-click bidding automatically bids exactly one bid increment more than the current winning bid, you would still win unless your snipe was less than a bid increment over the current winning bid at the time the 1-click bid was placed.

Personally, I think 1-click bidding was a stupid idea. In fact, I could envision someone making a 1-click bid just before someone's snipe arrives and end up bidding more than they thought they would because the current bid they saw when they pressed "1-click bid" was much smaller than the current bid after someone else's snipe arrived.

In any case, Mark is right: it makes no sense to try to bid with less than 3 seconds remaining unless you're willing to risk your bid not making it to eBay on time.
_________________
John

If you don't know where you are going, you will wind up somewhere else.
--- Yogi Berra