Certainly such a feature is great for sellers. As I am almost exclusively a buyer, I would dislike it as it limits the chances of acquiring bargains by sniping. Of course as one of the foremost victims of sniping on ebay, maybe it would do me some good! Morally or philosophically, I suppose it's a good idea because who wins an auction shouldn't depend on who has the fastest modem, but it will take a lot of the excitement out of the process. It will also generally encourage a higher level of prices for vintage bike goods, and everyone will get to bid as high as they really want, not as high as they can cram in a bid in the final 20 seconds. Is that good or bad?
Tom (Sniper Bait) Adams, Kansas City.
PS. Paid my entry fee for this Saturday's Eight Bridges metric over lunch, and did a 30 mile ride tonight to train. I can't feel my legs, but I can sure feel my tush. What have I done?! Come out and watch me suffer!
I know a lot of us buy and sell vintage stuff on ebay. I was looking around on Amazon's auction site - they had something I wanted - and found this interesting bit of copy.
From
http://www.amazon.com/
> We know that bidding can get hot and heavy near the end of many auctions. Our Going, Going, Gone feature ensures that you always have an opportunity to challenge last-second bids.
>
> Here's how it works: Whenever a bid is cast in the last 10 minutes of an auction, the auction is automatically extended for an additional 10 minutes from the time of the latest bid. This ensures that an auction can't close until 10 minutes have passed with no further bids.
>
> The bottom line? If you're attentive at the end of an auction, you'll always have the opportunity to challenge a new bidder.
Would the group here consider such a policy a benefit or a detriment to seller and buyers, and would we, perhaps as a group, like to suggest such a policy to ebay? I don't do ebay much as either buyer or seller so I don't feel I have enough experience upon which to base an informed opinion. To me, the casual user, it sounds like Amazon's policy is better, but I wouldn't want to suggest it if it would hurt others.
-S-