A solution to eBay auction sniping October 28
I've been on eBay for over 10 years now, beginning firmly in the dialup era, and have always been of the view that if you're bidding on something - put in a reasonable bid and leave it. Not being constantly connected to the net, or knowing how long it would take to dial-up or for the server to respond made auction 'sniping' a lot more difficult.
For those not aware of the term, auction 'sniping' in ebay terms is placing a bid right in the final seconds of an auction in the hope that other bidders won't have time to place their bids to outbid you. It's not very considerate and is bloody annoying to other bidders who, if they were given the chance, would more often than not put a higher bid in.
Now in the age of constant net connectivity, snipers can wait until the last 10 seconds of an auction before putting their bid in and winning the auction, before any other bidders even get notification that they've been outbid.
The fix for ebay sniping is simple, and is based on an auction site a friend was using 10 years or so ago that I forget the name of:
If a bid is placed in the last 5 minutes of an auction, extend the end time of the auction by 5 minutes.
This would give all bidders a chance to receive a notification saying they've been outbid with time remaining for them to place another bid if they wish to. To stop an auction going on forever, eBay could set a hidden fuzzy absolute end time of around 24 hours after the auction end time - a bit like 'extra time' in football - so bidders don't know exactly when it's going to end.
There are several other advantages to this system:- More bidders have a chance to counter a last minute bid, so the seller may well get a higher price for the item
- Since ebay bases a portion of it's revenue on the final selling price of an item, ebay stands to make more money per auction by letting all bidders get their final bids in
Any extra cost from running the auction for additional time would be either be a) covered by the seller at a cost of a few pence which would be offset by the higher bids that are causing the auction to be extended or b) added on to the total paid by the bidder that caused the auction to be extended.