How do users in this forum section use eBay?

How do you buy on eBay?

  • Buy on eBay? I generally don’t.

    Votes: 4 4.0%
  • I bid on at item I want generally when I find it.

    Votes: 21 20.8%
  • I am not very active, but when I bid, I bid manually usually near the end of the auction

    Votes: 38 37.6%
  • I buy a lot of items, and when I bid, I bid manually usually near the end of the auction.

    Votes: 23 22.8%
  • I am not very active, but when I bid, I use an automated (sniper) tool at the end of an auction.

    Votes: 14 13.9%
  • I am very active, and when I bid, I’m using an automatic (sniper) tool at the end of an auction.

    Votes: 1 1.0%

  • Total voters
    101

mclemore

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I thought it would be interesting to see how users of this specific forum section use eBay as a buyer. I might end up posting this survey in the general section too. If I do, and you vote in this one, vote in that one too. I'm curious about our bidding habits and if the bidding habits of users of this section are different then those of our forum group as a whole...
 
I usually just use buy it now. When I bid, I just bid my max amount at the last couple seconds. I used to use a sniper, but not really needed anymore.
 
Buy it Now is my main usage of the site by a LONG shot, but is not a vote option...

If I'm trying to win a bidding auction, I wait until the last second to vote. If you vote your full load early, you'll get nibblers raising the price slowly until it's out of their price range, but now you're paying more for the item because they tried to win. Obviously, whoever bids the most will win, but I obviously want to get it as cheap as possible if I am the winner.
 
I didn't include Buy-It-Now as an option because to me its different. When a buy-it-now price isn't available, the question becomes how does one bid.

BTW: I see a lot of comments above about people buying a lot of items via buy-it-now. I actually don't buy many items myself this way. There are so many overpriced and boring items with buy-it-now pricing, I tend to sort of ignore them. And if I don't find, I don't buy.
 
Buy-it-now is a very important missing option.

I don't think I've bid on a SINGLE item in eBay in 3 years or so, but have bought probably 100+ buy-it-now items in that time. Haha, wow - weird to think about it!

Bidding is too slow, annoying, and not worth my time. The prices almost always end up quite close to buy-it-now prices (and people reference those prices on when to stop... so they literally are almost the same) so I don't bid anymore, not surprised others here don't either.

The only thing I would bid on is a game, but for parts or anything else, buy-it-now only. Generally it seems that those listings are the majority these days anyways, I rarely see auctions anymore funny enough. eBay's changed with my tastes - woo-hoo!

If you list something on eBay list it as buy-it-now with make offer as it's basically the same thing and me and a bunch of people like me won't ignore your listing.

A lot of my reasoning besides bidding being SO boring is that the stuff I buy... I want and NEED it fast. Bidding on something that won't even leave the seller's house until 5 days later (plus however long it takes to get here ON TOP of that) is beyond a waste of time

It's funny to think about it, the bidding function is pretty much dead - this thread has been really eye-opening to what is going on, I've only done BIN for several years by personal preference, and almost all the ads I see are BIN. So for sellers and buyers it seems BIN is king even if we don't realize it. I didn't realize it at all despite it being so obvious :)
 
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The only time i'll use 'buy it now' is when its a well priced brand new item, or a ridiculously well priced used item, which is almost never of course. I DO use "make an offer" more commonly, because most of the time it means that the seller is worried that it won't sell at all, and its maybe 50% likely that they'll accept a low offer.
 
I use BuyIt Now or Make An Offer. I'm pretty much done bidding on things because it's a crap shoot and I might wind up paying more.
 
I used to swear by snipers but the ones I used died and the market seems to have changed in a way that I don't see the need like I used to.
 
I very rarely buy on ebay. The few times I have, I just used the buy it now button.
 
Buy it Now is my main usage of the site by a LONG shot, but is not a vote option...

If I'm trying to win a bidding auction, I wait until the last second to vote. If you vote your full load early, you'll get nibblers raising the price slowly until it's out of their price range, but now you're paying more for the item because they tried to win. Obviously, whoever bids the most will win, but I obviously want to get it as cheap as possible if I am the winner.
Love watching something start at a buck, then seeing the bid go from that to 300, 2-3 dollars at a time... :p
 
Auction bidding on eBay sucks so bad. I absolutely HATE bidding on anything on eBay. And it's 10 times worse when some bozo seller puts something up for 7+ days because we all know that 95% of the bidding occurs in the last 60 seconds anyway. The cherry on top is when they add a reserve price. At this point, the seller should just admit to themselves they are not actually serious about selling...or they are just using eBay as a price checker.

If I really want something, I'm just going to buy it. I'm not going to wait 7 days just to get outbid by some other knuckle-head that wants to win more than he cares about what an item is actually worth.

It will never happen, but I wish eBay would make everything "buy it now" with offers.
 
I only use buy it now on ebay as I am not waiting 7 days to see if I win.

As for selling, after being an eBay seller for 21 years, I am done with them. Between the ridiculous fees and the mafia PayPal tactics I had enough. The requirement to have my ss number to get paid was the icing on the cake.
 
I do manual bids close to the end of the auction. If everyone did this I think it would be considered a "Dutch Auction". It's the best way to avoid over paying and still have a chance to win.

A free sniper app worked well for me years ago, but I stopped using it because I didn't like sharing my eBay creds with some rando service.

In fact I seem to recall eBay technically disallowed use of these services. Anyone know if those is still the case?
 
An incentive for me to place a bid in the final seconds of the auction is because there are some sellers out there who use shill-bidding. Most sellers don't, but I have dealt with multiple sellers who have. For those who aren't aware, "shill-bidding" is when a seller (or a seller's friend) uses another account to place a high bid, thereby forcing the previous bidder's max bid. The seller then retracts their fake bid, causing Ebay to make the current bid be whatever the highest bid was from the legit bidder.

I'd rather have something closer to an in-person auction where the bidding isn't crammed at the end, as that's part of the thrill. But alas, shill-bidding has been enough of a problem in my experience that I bid at the end. Evidence can be found by looking at the bid-retractor's retraction history (Ebay will show how many retractions that buyer has done with that particular seller's auctions.)

Yahoo (an auction platform in Japan) gives the seller the option to have any bid result in extending the auction by a few minutes. This is akin to an in-person auction's "Going? Going? Gone!" I don't know what Yahoo's policy is on bid-retractions, I'd hope they don't allow it otherwise the going-going-gone approach wouldn't curtail shill-bidding.

I disagree with an earlier statement in this thread that a 7-day auction is useless since all the bidding happens at the end. It seems logical to me that a longer auction time would result in more potential buyers becoming aware of it. It's akin to an in-person auction posting advertisements days prior to the bids.
So, not useless from the seller's perspective, although not helpful from the perspective of a buyer looking to minimize competition.
 
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I usually go for buy it now items. Once every few months I may bid on a item. I'll bid early and if somebody goes past my bid I wait till the last 2 mins on the auction and bid again to test the waters and see if somebody is using a sniper or to test what a person's max bid is. If I happen to go past there max bid then I try to win if the price is reasonable. I lose the bid most of the time and that's fine.

One thing I do which people hate is I test +10$ on a bid till I get over a person's max bid. I'll leave my higher bid up for 5-10mins to see if the person comes back and bids higher. If 15-20mins passes and if I think my bid is out of my price range that I can actually budget for I'll go retract my bid with ebay's retract bid system which I always lie on. I then go back and do a bid so ebay's retract bid system doesn't flag me.

I only do this to see what a persons max bid is as I hate bidding on ebay as a whole. This lets me crunch numbers to see if I can budget for the item incase I go over a bidders max bid to win the item. They need to do away with it and only offer "buy it now" items or "make a offer" items but that's just me. I don't like fighting the max bid "bot program" ebay has which auto bids for the user if they are not there, aka ebays built in sniper. I also don't like fighting 3rd party sniper bots.

Sorry I felt I needed to explain why some people do this such as myself, most people assume its just to raise the price so the other bidder is forced to pay way more. For me that is not the case. I do it just to see if I can budget for the item if the other bidders max bid at that current time wasn't crazy high.
 
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