EBay

I am the last person in the Western Hemisphere to start eBaying, I know. And I probably wouldn't have started if I didn't need a cheap version of the ethics textbook so badly. It's not available on half.com OR amazon.com, but there *was* one on eBay. So I marked the auction and kept an eye on it for the next few days. I already have a username and account because I sell my old textbooks on half.com, so all I really had to do was set up a Paypal account, which I did, and read the sections on how to bid.

There were two bidders on the book who were bidding each other up in increments of $1 or so. I figured I'd try to "snipe" the auction and spent well over an hour checking the auction and trying to figure out the best strategy. I decided to put in a bid in the last minute or so at $10 higher than the current-at-that-time bid, hoping that would put me ahead of any maximum bid by proxy. Alas, I was too cheap. Another bidder bid $30 more and walked away with a copy of the textbook for less than $50. I was totally bummed out.

Today, I learned through a message board I occasionally read and post to that "sniping" is considered by some to be unethical. This makes no sense to me. If you are at a real world auction, there is nothing to stop you from bidding in the last minutes, is there? I don't see how sniping is any different. In fact, sounds like sour grapes to me. I really wanted that textbook and I'm disappointed that I didn't get it, but someone bid more than I did and that's that. I'll be keeping my eyes out for another auction, and if one should be posted, I'll bid on that one, too. Otherwise, I'll head to the bookstore and pay full price for the new text. There's no constitutional right to win an eBay auction, after all.