#13 Pre-Bid Function

[Anonymous]

Hi,

to deal with smart sellers such as the one from auction
number 5220690885 who close the auction a couple of
minutes before the hammer falls if nobody has bid yet I
suggest to implement a pre-bid feature. esniper would
bid the minimum amount

a) if the user has activated that feature
b) a user-defined time before the auction closes
c) if no other bids have been made

I suggest to set the prefs for all of esniper in
.esniper in the following manner.

prebid_min={0 to disable (default)| -1 to bid
immediately for example to prevent "buy it now"
snatchers|x to bid the minimum amount x minutes before
auction close if there have been no other bids yet}

I think esniper should not prebid in private auctions
where the necessary information cannot be gatehered. I
believe setting this pref per auction would complicate
the matter unnecessarily and thus suggest to do it
esniper-wide in .esniper.

Regards

Rolf

[Rolf]

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Sorry, I was unaware I was not signed in.

I hope my explanation for the pref setting was sufficient.
The setting can either be

0 -> disable (default)
-1 -> bid immediately the mimimum amount
x -> pre-bid x minutes before-hand

[Anonymous]

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user_id=441678

The problem with this is that esniper looks at the bid
history page to get details on the auction, and it doesn't
show what the minimum bid is if no bids have been made.
esniper could parse the auction info page, but there are
difficulties with that (format changes more frequently,
there are different format for different types of auctions,
etc).

A workaround would be to use two auction files -- one for
pre-bid (with bidtime set to a couple of hours) and another
for actual bids. Not great for general use though.

But even with these modifications, you could still be beat
by a seller that didn't want to sell. The seller can cancel
any current bids and the auction at any time before the end,
and even if the auction completed you can't force them to go
through with the sale.

Anyway, a good suggestion, I'll try to think more about it.

[Nobody/Anonymous]

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How about bidding increasing amounts, starting at 1? Another
option, if this feature is activated esniper could interpret
a line of

$auction_no 11.00 2.00

as signifying: Bid on $auction_no 11 (if you happen to live
in Europe ;-)) with a pre-bid of 2.

I did not know that a seller could cancel an auction if
there have been bids made without getting into trouble with
ebay. At least it will be a bigger hurdle, I think.

[Rolf]

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user_id=1159152

Can esniper tell auctions where the buy-it now option is
still available? Then I suggest esniper should by default
bid the minimum amount right away (if the pre-bid feature is
activated which should be disabled by default) so nobody
snatches the item.

[Andrew]

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I like the idea of this feature. Def something worth working up IMHO

Since we (the user) know what the minimum amount is for a given auction, wouldn't it be just as easy for us to add this amount as another field in the auction line ?

[Anonymous]

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I suppose it could be a third and fourth field in an auction file, call it BIN-smasher amount and time:

92873498923 105.35 10 1d

(snipe the auction for 105.35, but if there are n bids with 1 day left put in a bid of 10)

Would also be useful so that if you BIN-smashed manually esniper will know that this is just your BIN-smash, and it shouldn't concentrate on watching this auction just because you BIN-smashed.

I want to rewrite esniper so that it handles auction watching in a queue, so that every auction gets updated regularly. That's different from the current setup where esniper watches one auction at a time, and some auctions can go many days without esniper looking for an update.

[Andrew]

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what do you mean by "BIN-smasher" ?

[Anonymous]

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Buy-It-Now (BIN) smash. Knock off BIN with a bid.