Will “bid groups” revive the auction format?

by Sue Bailey

This post was written in May 2007; specific information contained within it may be out of date.

If you already use third party sniping software, you’ll probably be familiar with the concept of “bid groups”. You can select a number of listings for the same type of item, set your maximum bid, and the software will try to win the first in the group. If it doesn’t, it will move on to the second, and the third, until you’ve either won an item, or discovered that your maximum bid really is too low.

Though eBay are generally dismissive of third-party sniping tools, it seems that they’re happy to adopt the idea of bid groups with Bid Assistant. This allows you to select up to ten listings and set maximum bids for each. The software will then bid for you on one auction at a time, stopping when you’ve won.

Bid Assistant isn’t a replacement for sniping software: from the Bid Assistant help pages, “You cannot schedule bids to be placed at a specific time”, and it appears that the first bid is placed immediately. “If you get outbid on an item, eBay will wait until that item closes before bidding on the next item in your group.” This should allow for other bidders who cancel their bids and leave you the high bidder again, or allow you to increase your high bid manually.

Though it’s not quite as sharp as some third-party tools, what Bid Assistant should cure are those buyers who bid on a dozen items when they only want one, and then either retract the bids or refuse to pay. That eBay have created the tool in the first place is a step forward: though they offer many listing and auction management features for sellers, comparable features for bidders have been non-existant until now.

eBay’s push towards reviving core listings has been all about sticks for sellers, so it’s nice to see a carrot being offered, and to buyers too. Personally I doubt that *anything* can revive the auction market for the low-cost repeatable items that I sell personally, but I can imagine that buyers of more expensive collectibles would like this. If active bidding replaces putting things on a watch list and forgetting about them, that has to be a good move. But sadly, like all the good stuff, this appears to be for the .com site only: I can’t find anything comparable on .co.uk.

Via Auctionbytes.

Tags for this post: ,
Author: Sue Bailey
Posted at: Monday, May 14th, 2007 at 3:04 pm
Filed Under Uncategorized
 

Comments

4 Responses to “Will “bid groups” revive the auction format?”

  1. Steve H on May 14th, 2007 4:55 pm

    Sounds like a great tool, with a bit of luck it willed be rolled out to the UK and other sites in due course.

  2. Steve H on May 25th, 2007 10:41 am

    Looks like this is now coming to the UK site very soon according to the latest announcement.

  3. Bid Assistant available in the UK : TameBay on May 25th, 2007 10:50 am

    [...] eBay’s new bidding tool, Bid Assistant is now available in the UK. As I wrote previously, this allows buyers to select a group of items, of which they want to win just one, and the software will bid successively on each until one is won. I think it’s a great idea, and I might just have to overcome my impatient preference for Buy It Now to try it out. [...]

  4. eBay India launches shopping cart : TameBay on July 13th, 2007 1:39 pm

    [...] The particularly nice thing about eBay India’s shopping cart implementation is that it doesn’t attempt to split the site like eBay Express does: it simply adds another incredibly useful layer of functionality. I’d actually like to see it extended to auction items too: especially teamed with Bid Assistant, a shopping cart could be a great way to keep buyers on eBay by making it easier to build a watch list or a bidding list. This is such a great development for both buyers and sellers, and I sincerely hope it’s implemented on the rest of eBay’s sites soon. [...]

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