P3D Re: ebay question

[roberts@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx (John W Roberts)]

>Date: Mon, 26 Oct 1998 20:56:39 -0700
>From: jacob@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx (Gabriel Jacob)
>Subject: P3D Re: ebay question

>>> Difference is that the in "real" auctions you have a chance to outbid
>>> the proxy bid. Again..., this is not the case with snipers on ebay!

>Mike replies:
>>One does by using the proxy mechanism that ebay provides everyone. 

>This is misleading. If you place a proxy bid on ebay and get outbid
>by a sniper, you don't have a chance to outbid them if you decide
>to bid higher. You do with a live auction.

So petition ebay to institute a "sniping surcharge", for example any bid
put in during the last 10 minutes has a 10 percent surcharge added to it
if it's the winning bid, though in the bidding it only counts for the
dollar amount bid. That way last-second snipers automatically have to pay
more than people who put their bids in earlier, leaving time for people who
really desparately want an item to get a chance at it (by throwing in more
money). (Bidders would have to be informed of this surcharge in advance of
the placement of the bids.)

Since P3D has now been about 90 percent discussion of the fine points of
bidding on ebay for a considerable length of time, I would like to comment
that for those of us who have never had any interaction with ebay, it's
getting pretty boring. I think it would be a very useful application of
one percent of the P3D ebay bandwidth for someone to post a general
introduction of what ebay is and how to get involved with it. If that were
done, at least us poor ignorant folks would know what's being discussed at
such length on P3D.

John R


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