I was trying to buy some tack through Facebook auctions. Some of the deals were pretty good. But then I started noticing some issues. If the auction ends at a certain time, people bid over that time, sometimes even the next day. It makes it impossible to win, unless you bid overtime as well. To me that defeats the point of having an end time to an auction.
Then I was sent a message saying shipping was an additional $10 ($20 total) because they needed to split my order in 2 shipments. Why can’t my order be placed in one box? It said combined shipping is $10, not $20.
So while it seemed like a good idea to get some cheaper tack, I guess I won’t be wasting any more of my time. Especially when you drop everything to be online at the auction end time, only to see someone else win because they bid overtime.
Well - the shipping extra charge is pretty shady, but I can provide an explanation about the overtime bidding.
Many auctions are set up (though I don’t use facebook for auctions) to make sure that snipe bidding does not happen. Basically it can be set up so that if someone bids within a set amount of time before the end of the auction - most I’ve seen have been either 1 or 10 minutes - it resets the end timer. It’s apparently easy to set up a program that does not bid on an item until the last few seconds with the hope of stealing it out from under other bidders, and not getting the seller the full amount a different bidder would be willing to pay for the item.
I don’t understand this. If a “snipe” bid wins the auction, it’s the highest bid, isn’t it? So how is that stealing it out from under other bidders? If person “A” bids $25 and there are no more bids, person “A” wins that auction and the seller gets $25. But if a “snipe” bid comes in at the last moment for $26, the seller gets more. Or am I not understanding how the auctions work?
Because in an internet auction, as opposed to a live auction, the timer’s determining the close, not a human auctioneer. The goal is to get as much money as possible, yes–so extending the bidding gives the competing bidder time to put in an even higher bid. In a live auction, if someone calls in a last-second bid after ‘going twice’, the auctioneer’s going to take that bid, but he or she is ALSO going to look back to the person who was high bidder a second ago to see if they can get more. Before eBay initiated anti-snipe software, people would wait until the last thirty seconds (often on something with a fairly low winning bid) and jump in. Especially in ye olden days before near-universal wifi and high-speed the now-underbidder didn’t have time to reload and find out they’d been outbid before the auction closes, which was leading to a lot of pissed-off buyers, and sellers who lost out on multiple higher bids. Most auction sites now automatically extend if a bid comes in within a certain amount of time close to the close to give the underbidder a reasonable chance to see and bid again. Usually it’s not a big extension–I think Everything But the House does four minutes, sporthorseauctions says ten minutes–but enough that if someone’s serious and paying attention they should be able to get in a higher bid.
In your example, say I bid $25 on something, and you come along and with thirty seconds to go bid $26. If it extends five more minutes, I can now get a notification, come back, and bid $27. Or $30. The seller is likely to get even more if they extend the competitive part.
They should notify you if you are bidding on an auction that extends the end time. On eBay if it ends at a certain time, that is it. If an auction states it ends at 7pm on Friday, I expect that to be the end of the auction. Not whenever someone bids on Saturday and Sunday.
Exactly. If I can’t manage to get my highest bid in before the end of the auction, that’s my tough luck. As I understand it, a sniped bid has a set upper limit and will go only to that limit. If the person setting up the snipe puts the limit at $26 and I have bid $27, I win. If my highest bid was $25, then so be it, I don’t win.
There is no official mechanism for running auctions on Facebook, so as long as the other site rules are followed (they aren’t selling banned items, etc) it’s really up to the person running that particular page or group. If the group itself doesn’t have any rules or the group owner isn’t following their own rules, I would just go somewhere else. This particular person sounds like they may be pretty disorganized and I would wonder if I was even getting what I ordered/won.
And all online auction sites that extend say so. You have to read the terms. I’m bidding on the Chincoteague sale and if someone comes in in the last minutes, it adds time.
Real auctions don’t have end times until the auctioneer decides it’s done. The goal is not to be fair to snipers, it’s to make as much money on the object for the seller (because the auction usually gets a percentage.) Any smart seller and auctioneer know that the “max bid” number can turn into “not really a max” in pretty short order. People have a sense of ownership when they have the high bid. Sniping screws the seller as much as the suddenly-underbidder, so auctions are going to favor the strategy that gets them the most money. I’ve never seen one with an unreasonable extension time that would mean the sniper, too, couldn’t get in when the new bid extends it again. (If I am dealing with a sniper and a sight with flexible amounts, I’ll also do very oddball high bids including decimals where allowed to lower the chances they can easily outbid. You try to snipe something at 42 by jumping to 46? I’ve got it set at 47.79. I still pay more than I would without the sniper, but if I’m doing that, I want to win.)
That’s not the way on-line auctions work. There is no auctioneer, but there is (almost always) a set end time. I’ve not participated in on-line auctions other than ebay, so I don’t know how all of them work, but I know that on ebay you are free to put in a maximum bid. If your maximum bid is higher than the sniper’s bid, you win. If you don’t like that setup, you might want to stick with live auctions.
