Subject: Re: eBay being sued over patent infringement

From: [email-masked]
Date: Thu Apr 24 02:30:00 2003

The suit is over the process of running the auction which another person 
patented in the early 90s. It is an interesting suit. At one time in 2000 or 
so eBay offered to pay licensing fees, then opted to fight it.

Actually, as a seller, I think the eBay process sucks. It is the second best 
bidder that really sets the price. The advantage really is to the bidder.

Another very successful Internet auction run by LabX is a much preferred 
model for me. It is where the sale is extended by a minute or two when each 
bid comes in at the end of the auction.  WWW.labx.com  

I do much better for lab equipment here than on eBay. Auctions are much more 
like real auctions. LabX is a totally different, more real auction model. 
Very successful also.

I did an interesting experiment with some identical Olympus microscope tubes 
(parts). They did sell for much more on eBay than LabX (av $75 vs. $20). On 
the other hand an IBM HPLC did much better on LabX than eBay ($400 vs $35) 
and saw a lot of action at the end.

To keep this on topic I do find classic computers on the LabX auction site 
that were primarily used as lab controllers. They often go cheap.

Paxton
Astoria, OR

---

From: Mail List <[email-masked]>
Date: Thu Apr 24 09:54:01 2003

Hi Paxton,

 > Actually, as a seller, I think the eBay process sucks.

Scan the DNF message board. A lot of other sellers share that same sentiment.

 > The advantage really is to the bidder.

And if eBay can capture the bidders, the sellers have little choice but to 
follow.

That's why, having both sold and bought on eBay, I find eBay is great for 
buying,
but for selling, not quite as good. Still has some good points from a 
selling perspective,
i.e. huge exposure, etc. but there are some characteristics that are not so 
good for
the seller.

 > a much preferred model for me. It is where the sale is extended by a 
minute or two
 > when each bid comes in at the end of the auction.

Yes, that one feature takes the teeth out of sniping. That model is what 
the GSA
auctions uses. And they are selling their own ( all of our's actually ) 
stuff and want
to do the best they can on it.

 > On  the other hand an IBM HPLC did much better on LabX than eBay ($400 
vs $35)
 > and saw a lot of action at the end.

Big difference, and I'm sure you were well able to find a good use for it.

---

From: "Mike" <[email-masked]>
Date: Thu Apr 24 10:14:01 2003

>  > when each bid comes in at the end of the auction.

This hurts the seller and should make no difference to the bidder.

NO ONE should ever bid more than they are willing to pay.  But with
sniping, people often bid a little higher just to protect their bid.  If
there is an extention bids will still not rise higher than anyone is
willing to bid.

I have seen auctions go for $400 on items that normally wouldn't sell for
$300.  One bidder contacted me because two people bid that $400 and he
said, "I guess I got stuck.  I was just trying to protect my bid."  He
paid the auction but clearly bid more than he ever expected or wanted to
pay.

The people that whine the most about sniping, NEVER win auctions, unless
they are the first to see a "low" buy-it-now, on popular items.  They just
NEVER bid high enough and would lose anyway.

---

From: Jeffrey Sharp <[email-masked]>
Date: Thu Apr 24 10:45:22 2003

On Thursday, April 24, 2003, [email-masked] wrote:
> Actually, as a seller, I think the eBay process sucks. It is the second
> best bidder that really sets the price. The advantage really is to the
> bidder.

I feel that the advantage quite frequently tilts to the seller.  When two or
more bidders are competing in the final moments of an auction, they get
caught in the excitement of battle, and those psychological forces induce
them to place bids higher then they would have normally placed.  I have
experienced it both as a seller and as a bidder.

> model for me. It is where the sale is extended by a minute or two when
> each bid comes in at the end of the auction.  WWW.labx.com  

My favorite idea is simply to have sealed bids.  That is, you don't know the
high bid until the auction closes.  Doing it that way prevents last-minute
psychology from causing bad decisions.

-- 
Jeffrey Sharp

---

From: "J.C.Wren" <[email-masked]>
Date: Thu Apr 24 11:09:01 2003

Out of curiosity, why is it in my best interest as a seller to prevent
people from making rash decisions?  Unless you're a very strange seller,
most sellers are out to get the maximum amount they can for the item in
question.  It's not my moral or social responsibility to keep others from
making stupid decisions.  If you're old enough to bid/sell on eBay (and RL
auctions), you're old enough to decide if you're spending too much or not
(and I'm not talking about mispresented products).

	This is very much NOT like preying on old people for home repairs.  eBay
may turn into an addiction for some, but no one MAKES you press the 'bid'
button.

	--John

> -----Original Message-----
> From: [email-masked]
> [mailto:[email-masked]]On
> Behalf Of Jeffrey Sharp
> Sent: Thursday, April 24, 2003 11:49
> To: [email-masked]
> Subject: Re: eBay being sued over patent infringement
>
>

---

From: "Mike" <[email-masked]>
Date: Thu Apr 24 11:10:01 2003

> psychology from causing bad decisions.

Why would a seller ever buy into this system?  The only thing the seller
cares about is getting the best price.  Further, that is all that eBay
cares about.

NO SYSTEM that make it easy to get a steal, will ever be adopted.  The
only systems that will ever win out are the ones that offer sellers high
returns.  The seller will simply choose the medium that will offer the
greater return.

You say the bidders will just go where there are lower prices.  But the
problem is there won't be anything to buy.  Collectible type items have a
fixed number available and there will always be someone who is willing to
pay a higher price.  So, the sellers have all the cards in this game.

---

From: Mail List <[email-masked]>
Date: Thu Apr 24 11:18:00 2003

Hello Mike,

 > But with sniping, people often bid a little higher just to protect their 
bid.

That might be the case some of the time, but with extensions, a bidder
has the opportunity to re-evaluate their decision, and go higher if they
want to. With the snipe, you calculate what you think might do it, enter
the bid, and then see how it ends ( for the seasoned bidder anyway ).

 > "I guess I got stuck.  I was just trying to protect my bid."

That "protecting the bid" strategy can backfire on the bidder just as you
saw.

 > The people that whine the most about sniping, NEVER win auctions

I hope you don't interpret my discussion as whining about sniping. I
always snipe and usually win whenever I really want to.

 > The people that whine the most about sniping, NEVER win auctions, ...
 > they just NEVER bid high enough and would lose anyway.

You're generally right. Most buyers that might whine about sniping are just
expressing their disappointment that they couldn't buy the item as 
inexpensively
as they had wished to. But from the sellers perspective, the exact ending time
and the sniping would sometimes prevent their from being able to reach their
best potential selling price.

---

From: Mail List <[email-masked]>
Date: Thu Apr 24 11:30:01 2003

Jeffrey,

 > When two or more bidders are competing in the final moments of an 
auction, they
 > get caught in the excitement of battle, and those psychological forces 
induce them
 > to place bids higher then they would have normally placed.  I have 
experienced it both
 > as a seller and as a bidder.

This happens sometimes. I've been there. Sometimes my best way to keep from 
getting
caught up in it is to enter my bid ( that hopefully only purely rational 
thought has gone into
making that decision, leaving emotion out of it ) into a bid sniping 
service, and then walking
away from it. Come back after it's all over and then see if the item was 
won or not.

 > My favorite idea is simply to have sealed bids.

A sealed bid sale is effectively where every bid is the same as the snipe 
bid. I'd bid at a few
sealed bid sales. I generally liked them, but again, you don't have the 
chance to change your
mind and increase your bid if you're not the high bidder.

---

From: "Mike" <[email-masked]>
Date: Thu Apr 24 11:38:00 2003

> may turn into an addiction for some, but no one MAKES you press the 'bid'

It's clearly not.  But as I mentioned before, the only one whining about
this are the ones that used to find "steals" and are not complaining
because they can't get these "steals."  I have heard very many new people
on eBay saying they "don't care" about the high prices that others
"perceive."  They know that is their only opportunity to get those items.

The only ones being hurt by the eBay model are the ones that still want
"bargains".

---

From: Marvin Johnston <[email-masked]>
Date: Thu Apr 24 11:47:01 2003

> Scan the DNF message board. A lot of other sellers share that same sentiment.

That feeling is, at least from what I have seen, not a universal one.
What seems to be far more reaching is the feeling that the ebay
management is incompetent from the standpoint of running auctions. They
are incredibly inept at making decisions that will help the sellers, and
incredibly arrogant at forcing their ideas on the ebay community. The
DNF Board (Discuss Newest Features Board for those who don't know) has a
number of people who are *very* familiar with the workings of ebay and
help out where they can.

<commercial>
The DNF Board has a tradition of people seeing how many multiple posts
they can make at 22:22:22 Ebay (Pacific Coast) time. The current record
is 17 in the single second. This is done manually and is actually a lot
of fun. Take a look at:
http://www.rain.org/~marvin/tuz.htm
for more information. I wrote this after I became (briefly) the reigning
champion with 8 or so posts. The DNF Board is at:
http://chatboards.ebay.com/chat.jsp?forum=1&thread=2
</commercial>

> > minute or two when each bid comes in at the end of the auction.
> Yes, that one feature takes the teeth out of sniping.

Sniping is a requirement unless the bidder doesn't mind being the bid
price going up. I made a suggestion to ebay years ago that sealed bids
should be allowed that would only become known after the auction had
ended. That would encourage bidders to make a realistic bid of what they
are willing to pay, and make the sniping issue irrelevant. Of course,
since that would benefit the sellers, it was ignored.

---

From: Doc Shipley <[email-masked]>
Date: Thu Apr 24 12:32:01 2003

> bidder that really sets the price. The advantage really is to the 

   I'll grant that eBay is heavily slanted to the buyer, and that it's 
far from perfect.  My point was that eBay isn't breaking any anti-trust 
laws by being the "Goliath" of online auctions.  I also still maintain 
that if the exposure didn't offset the difficulty, sellers would be 
flocking elsewhere in droves.

> each

   I think we've discussed that feature - the "last-bid extension" - on 
CCmp before.  I firmly believe that eBay, not only the auction house 
and sellers, but eBay buyers as well, would benefit from that feature.

   In truth, I don't do much selling on eBay.  I do have several 
acquaintances who make their living at it, but I don't handle enough 
volume to require it often.  I just let the folks I know know it's 
there, and somebody almost always wants it.

   Wow.  I just got off the phone with my boss, and a guy we used to 
race karts against/with is a plaintiff in the infringement suit.  A 
little closer to home....

	Doc

---

From: Vintage Computer Festival <[email-masked]>
Date: Thu Apr 24 22:15:01 2003

> there is an extention bids will still not rise higher than anyone is

But it will prevent sniping, which is the root cause of a lot of gripes
one hears about eBay (both from buyers and sellers).

> paid the auction but clearly bid more than he ever expected or wanted to

Which is a clear example of how eBay pricing gets artificially inflated.
I'm not saying it happens all the time, but it probably happens enough
(and this is clearly obvious from some of the prices that some auctions
end at) that the end result is artificial price inflation.

-- 

Sellam Ismail                                        Vintage Computer Festival
------------------------------------------------------------------------------
International Man of Intrigue and Danger                http://www.vintage.org

 * Old computing resources for business and academia at www.VintageTech.com *

---

From: Vintage Computer Festival <[email-masked]>
Date: Thu Apr 24 22:19:01 2003

> returns.  The seller will simply choose the medium that will offer the

That's not true.  That assumes that the seller is only interested in the
money aspect.  There is also value in a great many other things, such as
customer loyalty, customer service, treating the customer right, etc.

> pay a higher price.  So, the sellers have all the cards in this game.

Bidders might want to go where the prices are fair.

--

---

From: "J.C.Wren" <[email-masked]>
Date: Thu Apr 24 22:31:01 2003

> end at) that the end result is artificial price inflation.

Nonsense.  This is how *all* auctions work.  It has nothing to do with
sniping, it has to do with emotional bidding.  If you starting letting the
"I gotta have it" emotions run over the "I'll pay only this much" logic,
you're not bidding wisely.

	--John

---

From: Vintage Computer Festival <[email-masked]>
Date: Fri Apr 25 02:46:00 2003

> you're not bidding wisely.

Nonsense.  What I was replying to was the practice of setting a price
higher than you would want to pay because you were trying to "protect your
bid".  You then get sniped in the end and the price gets pushed up to past
your intended maximum.  It's a specific case.

And like I said, it suerly doesn't happen all the time, but it certainly
can contribute to some auctions ending with a ridiculous price.

--

---

From: Jeffrey Sharp <[email-masked]>
Date: Fri Apr 25 09:58:00 2003

On Thursday, April 24, 2003, J.C.Wren wrote:
> > My favorite idea is simply to have sealed bids.  That is, you don't know
> > the high bid until the auction closes.  Doing it that way prevents
> > last-minute psychology from causing bad decisions.
>
> people from making rash decisions?

As a seller, there are two advantages that I can identify.  First, it
promotes customer satisfaction, which leads to a more profitable long-term
relationship with the customer.  Second, people who make rash decisions are
less likely to pay, and nonpaying bidders are a real pain.  It may be worth
it to reduce the probability of experiencing that pain.

As both a seller and a bidder, eBay is a great tool for discovering the
approximate values of things.  Last-minute auction psychology, IMHO,
artificially inflates these prices (though generally not by much).  A
sealed-bid system, by decreasing the last-minute effect, would make eBay's
market values for things more accurately reflect the market values outside
of eBay.  Thus, eBay would become a better value estimation tool.

As a bidder, it's currently inconvenient. The way eBay works (and I'm not
really a big eBay basher; I have lots of fun with it), if you really want to
be competitive, you have to snipe.  You have to be paying attention when the
auction ends (I wouldn't trust a sniping service IMHO).  That's difficult to
do for a great many people and depends on work, weather, and a virtually
infinite number of other factors.  A sealed-bid system would enable people
to bid -- competitively -- at their convenience and then go on about their
lives.

> It's not my moral or social responsibility to keep others from making
> stupid decisions.

I do not have the following view, but some may say that it is unethical to
take advantage of people by exploiting their psychology.

-- 
Jeffrey Sharp

---

From: Jeffrey Sharp <[email-masked]>
Date: Fri Apr 25 10:03:00 2003

On Thursday, April 24, 2003, Mike wrote:
> But as I mentioned before, the only one whining about this are the ones
> that used to find "steals" and are not complaining because they can't get
> these "steals."

I'm not really complaining as much as I am saying "What if?".  I still enjoy
eBay a great deal and buy something from it every week or so.  I usually
browse every day.

> The only ones being hurt by the eBay model are the ones that still want

Bargains still happen on eBay.

-- 
Jeffrey Sharp

---

From: Mail List <[email-masked]>
Date: Fri Apr 25 10:39:01 2003

Jeffrey,

 > (I wouldn't trust a sniping service IMHO)

The sniping service has missed getting a bid in on a couple of occasions
due to delays caused by high network traffic loads

 > You have to be paying attention when the auction ends

This one gets me sometimes. There have been some items I had meant
to bid on, but ended up getting too busy, and then when I got to checking
the auction, found I had let the time get away from me, and it was already
over and done.

There are some advantages to getting one's bid entered early also.

---

From: steve <[email-masked]>
Date: Fri Apr 25 12:28:00 2003

--- Jeffrey Sharp <[email-masked]> wrote:
  You have to be
> paying attention when the
> auction ends (I wouldn't trust a sniping service
> IMHO).  

I use esnipe, and only once did it miss a bid, and
that was two years ago when both ebay and esnipe were
buggy, since then its always place the bid within a
few seconds of my target time. I can't ever imagine
going back to the old manual method
because of the difficulties you listed below. 

That's difficult to
> infinite number of other factors.  

I think you just need to use esnipe a few times to
build your confidence
The New Yahoo! Search - Faster. Easier. Bingo
http://search.yahoo.com

---

From: Jeffrey Sharp <[email-masked]>
Date: Fri Apr 25 13:50:01 2003

On Friday, April 25, 2003, steve wrote:
> > You have to be paying attention when the auction ends (I wouldn't trust
> > a sniping service IMHO).  
> 
> I think you just need to use esnipe a few times to build your confidence

So what happens when you and I both use the same sniping service on the same
auction for the same bid?

-- 
Jeffrey Sharp

---

From: Vintage Computer Festival <[email-masked]>
Date: Fri Apr 25 14:05:00 2003

> auction for the same bid?

The universe implodes and we start all over again in about 15 billion
years.

--

---

From: steve <[email-masked]>
Date: Fri Apr 25 14:14:00 2003

> auction for the same bid?

The bid placed earlist would win (well, assuming no
other higher bids were placed). You tell esnipe
exactly when to bid (its accurate to a few seconds).

No two ebay bids occur at exactly the same time, even
with a sniping service.  So even if we both tell
esnipe to bid 5 seconds before the auction ends. One
may be placed 5.01 seconds and the other perhaps 4.99
seconds before the auction ends. Depends how the
server ques us up...
The New Yahoo! Search - Faster. Easier. Bingo
http://search.yahoo.com

---

From: Vintage Computer Festival <[email-masked]>
Date: Fri Apr 25 15:27:25 2003

> exactly when to bid (its accurate to a few seconds).

I use StealthBid.  It's accurate to the second.  The only time I lose an
auction with StealthBid is either when I didn't bid enough or someone
outsnipes me in the last second (StealthBid gets it's bid in within the
last 3-4 seconds of an auction).

http://www.stealthbid.com

(free credits for new users so you can trial the service)

--

---

From: James Rice <[email-masked]>
Date: Fri Apr 25 15:40:01 2003

I bid on a NeXT cube  in 2001.  I had exactly the same bid as the 
winning bidder and the item display had the same bid time down to the 
second.  I questioned ebay about it.  They gave me the bid time down to 
.01 second.  I missed the bid by .01 second.

James

---

From: Mail List <[email-masked]>
Date: Fri Apr 25 22:04:01 2003

Hi Marvin,

One thing I forgot to add ...

         Bite Me, eBay

Best Regards

---

From: Jeffrey Sharp <[email-masked]>
Date: Sun Apr 27 14:28:01 2003

On Thursday, April 24, 2003, Doc Shipley wrote:
> I do have several acquaintances who make their living at it [eBay]

I tried that out of financial necessity for a while.  It wasn't fun, and I
don't believe I was ever in the black WRT living expenses.  I can't really
recommend it to anyone.

-- 
Jeffrey Sharp

---

From: Doc Shipley <[email-masked]>
Date: Sun Apr 27 16:42:31 2003

> don't believe I was ever in the black WRT living expenses.  I can't 

   There are three companies here that I deal with doing it.  As far as 
I can tell, a warehouse is the first requirement, and a fair amount of 
seed cash is the second.  It takes a lot of volume.
   DSI enterprises keeps about 8 people in the Austin office alone, just 
running eBay auctions.

   But I agree; it's not a career that appeals to me.

	Doc

---

From: "Nick Miller" <[email-masked]>
Date: Mon Apr 28 01:59:12 2003

Sniping is simply a bidders maximum bid entered at the latest possible
moment, no more, no less.

Nick Miller