Nagel Family Website

I can’t stand auction sniping. Never liked it. My theory is that if someone comes in with 10 seconds left and places a bid, the auction should be extended. Not by 5 minutes, but maybe 15 or so. Base it on the bid history and the auction amount. If it’s the only bid, then there’s no need to extend it. But if there’s 5 bidders, maybe extend the auction an hour.

A few months ago, I lost an auction by $30 due to sniping. It was a week at Orange Lake: week 2 of the year. Since we own week 1, I thought it’d be nice to have week 2, too, so (later in life) Laura and I could get away for 2 weeks in a row.

After I lost that auction, I started looking for week 7. Our school district gives one week off for Easter “Spring Recess” and one week for President’s Day, which happens to always fall on week 7 of the year.

Recently, a timeshare for week 7 at Orange Lake came up, so I placed a bid. I was outbid, and decided I really wanted this. Since an auction I wanted earlier was sniped from my grasp, I decided it was time to get dirty and win this auction. I turned to AuctionStealer and within 2 minutes, my account was created and my bid placed.

I was working last night, but watching the clock. At 8:59, I turned to eBay and refreshed the Orange Lake auction and found I had won! AuctionStealer placed a bid with 20 seconds left and snagged the auction for me!

Now, 20 seconds was close, but not close enough for me. I thought it’d be 10 seconds… next time, I may upgrade to their paid service to ensure I win the auction.

This entry was posted on Monday, August 13th, 2007 at 8:05 am and is filed under Family, Technology, Travel. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.