Gold dust and poor businesspeople

[macfixer01]

I was originally going to reply this to the recent gold dust thread in the Where To Find Scrap section, but thought it fit better here.

I wonder if that's the same guy that just screwed me on some gold dust in an Ebay auction? I won 7 Grams of gold dust for what should have been less than half it's value if his description was accurate. He was supposedly re-weighing it before packing it up to ship (Why? he had already weighed it before the auction was listed and it was already sold?) then he says his dog's tail brushed it off the scale and into his carpet. So of course now he wants to cancel the auction after it's already over. Typical Ebay crap, a guy with low feedback and all of it from buying. He has never sold anything before. I'm almost thinking I'm better off on this one since his description may have been wishful thinking too. I'm not necessarily going to go away quietly though.

Just a couple weeks ago I had another guy (almost exactly the same, low feedback and all of it from buying) who requested to cancel the auction for a gold button after it ended. I'm sure the button sold cheaper than he liked since it had no bids until the end and I sniped it for the starting price. He claimed he had already sold the gold before the auction ended but he didn't know how to end the auction early. Gee, did he ever think of picking up a telephone and calling Ebay? That's what their toll free support number is for. Well anyway I wouldn't take it lying down and amazingly somehow he got the scrap in question back the next day and completed the sale after all.

macfixer01

 

[chrisp]

ive heard of it before, but what does "sniped" mean? sorry for the dumb question lol

 

[Palladium]

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Auction_sniping

 

[macfixer01]

ive heard of it before, but what does "sniped" mean? sorry for the dumb question lol

Hi,
I guess you already got the generic answer from Wiki. There is no incentive to bid ahead of time on Ebay and just continually run the price up. Also given enough time there is almost always someone willing to bid just a little bit more to take something away from you. We see time and again people paying more for scrap on Ebay than they can possibly recover from it. Some people just want to win at all costs.

Anyway I use a service called Esnipe.com and basically they charge 1% of the sale price to enter your bid for you, but if you don't win it costs you nothing. They of course have redundant computers and multiple ultra-fast connections to the internet, so your chances are maximized assuming you aren't overbid by another sniper. You can also get software to have your own computer do the last second bidding for you. Then you take the chance of a slow connection that day, power loss, computer crash, etc.

Some people like sniping because they don't get all excited in the last minute frenzy of a popular auction and end up bidding more than they wanted to. I use Esnipe most often only if I can't physically be at a computer when the auction is closing to enter the bid myself, or if more than one auction I'm interested in is closing at the same time. Some sellers just don't think about their most likely bidders, where they're located and if they'll probably be at work or asleep when the auction closes. Or they'll have several related auctions ending within seconds of each other, which in my opinion is just cutting their own throats.

macfixer01