eBay idiocy
 

Behavior witnessed today:

Item X is up for auction on eBay. Two bidders are hard at work outbidding each other:

Yutz#1: $13
Yutz#2, one minute later: $14
Yutz#1, one minute later: $15
Yutz#2, one minute later: $16.50
Yutz#1, one minute later: $17.51

et cetera. The bid count went from a handful to double digits in a very short time.

Why is this stupid? Because the item STILL HAD HALF AN HOUR TO GO ON IT.

Thus,

1) Neither one was "winning" anything,
2) Neither one was gaining any measurable advantage over the other, as there was still plenty of time to counter the counter to their counter to the counter to their counter, and so
3) All they were doing was driving the price up for no good reason,
4) When I was sitting there waiting to snatch the item up in the last ten seconds anyway.

Which I did, paying about what I expected to pay for the item in the first place.

SO THERE!

But they had all that fun and it didn't cost anything.:rolleyes:

Do people have automated auction managing software that handles this sort of thing?

There is something I cannot understand about many eBayers... why do so many people do the whole bid/counterbid thing? Just put in the max you're willing to pay in the proxy bid, and will automatically outbid anyone until the price goes over your max threshhold. It's straightforward, it's easy, it helps retard eBay "sniping"... but people still insist on hand-entering the bids over and over.

Blah.

See my post above. I know people that bid like crazy hoping they won't win. They have fun seeing how high they can go without winning. Whatever blows your skirt up, I guess. Seems stupid to me.:confused:

Well, there's one theory that says that if people see a large number of bids, they think it's a hot item and they get discouraged from bidding--so you should make several small incremental bids so that anybody shopping for the items says, damn, this turkey is SERIOUS about winning the auction, I better not bother bidding. This line of thinking requires that people be kinda dumb, so I dunno, there may be something to it.

Ebay is living proof that one of the basic assumptions of many economic theories, that people behave rationally when making decisions about money, is not necessarily true.

Sometimes I wonder who's worse, clueless sellers or clueless buyers. Take this one for instance:
http://cgi.ebay.com/ws/eBayISAPI.dll...category=28181

Meade dealers are currently selling this exact same telescope new, with the computer hand-controller and a tripod, for $495. Is this seller clueless to put his starting bid at $700? Or is he hoping that some bidder will be clueless?

If you really want an item, sniping is the only way to go. If you put in a proxy bid early on, people might talk themselves into paying more for it than they originally planned on. If you snipe 'em, they don't have time to think.

.

that would explain why the auction closed with 0 bids.