Rargh. Now I remember why I hate ebay. - by Elentari
sparhawk on 16/2/2007 at 11:37
Quote Posted by Elentari
Bid on a copy of Thief Gold. . .outbid someone three times from 1.24 to 6.50us and there it sat all week. . .
First error - you bid to early.
Quote:
until the very last few moments of the auction then someone jerked the price up to 14 and by the time I woke up, the auction was closed. :mad:
Second error - why do you think that, just because it was sitting for a week, this would be the end price? Did you enter the highest bid you were willing to accept? If not, then it's your fault. If yes, and your were still outbid, then you have won, because you didn't pay more than you were willing to in the first place. If you had outbidded yourself, then it would mean that you fell prey to the auction. So I don't really know what you are complaining about.
I spent six months until I finally snatched a copy of Visual Studio Enterprise, for the price that I were willing to pay. Of course it is frustrating when you see an auction where you think that this time it works, and get outbid. But on the other hand, you must decide how desperatly you want it. And if you get outbid on your highest bid, then you must decide, wether your expectation is unrealistic, and consequently raise your lowest bid, or you must wait.
Quote:
I was so close to getting myself a copy too. Its infuriating. Now of course there are no others copies coming up in the search. And Amazon still has those two listed but for ridiculous prices. :nono:
I don't know how much they charge for shipping, but I found my copy on Amazon. It's much safer that way, because when you find on there then you can be sure to get it and often enough you pay less fee for shipping as well.
Here in Germany you can also find very cheap copies in some of the bigger shops like Karstadt or Quelle, where they dump the old software for 2-5 Euros. Don't know what your equivalent of these shops are, but maybe you should try there?
sparhawk on 16/2/2007 at 11:38
Quote Posted by pbldcttr
i remember finding lots of awesome games on this store too, so cheap! the console ones are the expensive ones. like the megaman games, $15 bucks or more! so i guess i'm lucky to have find thief gold for so cheap :-)
Videorental shops also often enough carry used games for cheap prices.
Yandros on 16/2/2007 at 11:46
Quote Posted by Mortal Monkey
The only one actually losing money on sniping is the auctioneer though.
Quote Posted by Elentari
How does the auctioneer lose money? I mean, they price their goods to a certain 'base' price, then people bid incrementally. If a sniper snipes moments before the auction's closed, they raise the price only slightly anyway.
Unless you mean because it rules out the chances of anyone bidding higher after that. I would say its not so much losing money as removing chances it can be driven higher.
I mean, technically if the seller wanted to make money off it, truly, they'd base-price it at or just below what they actually wanted so the bids would either match that or go past it. At least. . .thats what I'd do. :D
But many sellers don't do that for fear they won't get any bids. MM is exactly right, and it's the reason why my wife snipes (besides the thrill of it I suppose) - you get it for less. When 2 or more people start bidding early, they start nickel-and-diming the price up in an attempt to figure out how much the other person is willing to pay. The best deals (aside from making the only bid on an item, of course) are had when there's only one bid on an item and you snipe it right at the end, because chances are that person's max bid wasn't all that high (maybe not their real max), since they were expecting someone else to counter with a little bit more long before the end of the auction. You nearly always pay less for something when you snipe it.
KuBiLaY17 on 16/2/2007 at 12:13
I usually w8 until the last hour of the auction, this helps alot especially when there are a few bids. So i outbid them in the last hour, and most of the times i win. But sometimes i loose on the last 15 seconds, so i dont have enought time to rebid. it sucks but thats how it works:joke:
BrokenArts on 16/2/2007 at 13:33
Have to get good at that last minute *sniping*. Nothing you can do about it, it's how the game is played unfortunately.
I've done it before, not proud of it, lot of people do the same thing. if I really want the item, I usually get it.
bassmanret on 16/2/2007 at 15:27
Yeah, I've now learned to "snipe", but it took me a little while to figure it out. Before I started just entering the max I'm willing to pay, I nearly screwed up with one particular item. Retail price was $20.00, but it was now pretty hard to find. The bidding started at around $10.00, so I bid $15.00 and was winning up until the last day, when three other bidders started the nickel-and-dime war, raising each previous bid by no more than 25 cents, sometimes as little as 1 cent. Slowly, I got sucked in, and found myself placing bid after bid, each time being trumped by a few cents. Finally, when the bids reached the upper $20s, I got pissed, thought, "Screw this!", and bid $100.00 thinking I'd end this crap. I continued watching the bids rise, with me always in the lead. But, as the bids reached the $50s, I got scared. I didn't want to pay THAT MUCH! The bidding competition stopped for the last 5 minutes, with the last bidder giving up at $85.00, now MUCH more than I wanted to pay. Lucky for me, though, a completely new bidder "sniped" in at the last minute, and outbid me by 50 cents! Whew!
... I don't do that anymore. :)
Go2doug on 16/2/2007 at 15:28
I recently bought Thief: Gold from half.com without a problem. The game was $10.99 + 3.50 for shipping. I try to buy from half.com whenever possible to avoid the bidding hassles on eBay.
Yandros on 16/2/2007 at 15:57
Quote Posted by bassmanret
Yeah, I've now learned to "snipe", but it took me a little while to figure it out. Before I started just entering the max I'm willing to pay, I nearly screwed up with one particular item. Retail price was $20.00, but it was now pretty hard to find. The bidding started at around $10.00, so I bid $15.00 and was winning up until the last day, when three other bidders started the nickel-and-dime war, raising each previous bid by no more than 25 cents, sometimes as little as 1 cent. Slowly, I got sucked in, and found myself placing bid after bid, each time being trumped by a few cents. Finally, when the bids reached the upper $20s, I got pissed, thought, "Screw this!", and bid $100.00 thinking I'd end this crap. I continued watching the bids rise, with me always in the lead. But, as the bids reached the $50s, I got scared. I didn't want to pay THAT MUCH! The bidding competition stopped for the last 5 minutes, with the last bidder giving up at $85.00, now MUCH more than I wanted to pay. Lucky for me, though, a completely new bidder "sniped" in at the last minute, and outbid me by 50 cents! Whew!
... I don't do that anymore. :)
And that's why you only bid once - the most you're willing to pay, in the last 10 seconds of the auction. :cheeky:
sparhawk on 16/2/2007 at 19:00
Quote Posted by bassmanret
The bidding started at around $10.00, so I bid $15.00 and was winning up until the last day, when three other bidders started the nickel-and-dime war, raising each previous bid by no more than 25 cents, sometimes as little as 1 cent.
Actually this is normally the owner of the item with either some friends, or his second account. This is done to see how far the max would go. I would bet money on it, that this "bid-war" was the auctioneer himself.
Quote Posted by Yandros
And that's why you only bid once - the most you're willing to pay, in the last 10 seconds of the auction. :cheeky:
Correct. The funny thing with this letting yourself get drawn into a bidding frenzy is that I have seen items, which went 20-50% higher then the price you would have paid on Amazon. And there you wouldn't even have to have paid the shipping. :)
