Going on a Snipe Hunt

The other day, as I was casually strolling down the path of eBay’s gi-normous market place, I experienced a most singular event. eBay… Yes, I, just as probably three-quarters of the semi-savvy online people in these United States of America, have long found amusement and a sense of “I’m da man!” when bidding on and winning various items from this worldwide online hybrid of Odd Lots / Flea Market / Antique Store / Neighborhood Garage Sale.

In the years I’ve been bidding on and buying things, I have been successful in procuring such useful things like new computer components and unopened professional software packages for my obsolete computers at a fraction of the original retail price to ancient roman coins to collectable smurf and star wars figures.

I had been trying to win a bid for over a week on something I desperately needed (as much as I need another hole in my head according to my wife)… a mini-portable hard drive for my laptop to use for backup purposes (yeah, like you’ll ever do that…). A plethora of these hard drives have been showing up for auction the past couple weeks. These were new, never opened hard drives that retailed for like $150.00. And the average selling price, shipping included was just slightly over 50% of retail.

Well, I had gotten outbid on yet another auction for one by people who obviously needed it more than me, and there was a mere 25 minutes left in the auction. So, feeling particularly spiteful at yet another couple of people who outbid me, I felt the need to make them pay for it. You know the story line about people crazy in love with someone who decide “If I can’t have you, nobody can!” The same thing kind of happens on e-Bay… “If I can’t have it for the cheap price I want to pay, no outbidder is gonna get it for a song either!” So, I made another bid that was a couple dollars higher than the current leading bidder.

Here was the problem: my spiteful bid was only for like four dollars more than my bid that had been beaten. The highest value on my bid turned out to be the new leading bid, which had not been my intention! And the stupid thing was is that it was only one measly dollar more than the previous leading bidder’s highest bid. Okay, 22 minutes left… surely they are going to come back and outbid me… they want this, yes? I am feeling buyer’s remorse before the auction is even over, wondering how the heck I’m going to explain this to the wife.

As the minutes dragged on to the inevitable winning of something I had only half-heartedly wanted to win, particularly not at this price (yes, I’m a cheapskate and was hoping to get it for like fifty bucks, which would have been 1/3 of retail), I started to think maybe this wouldn’t be such a bad thing after all. Most of the other auctions were going for around this, and the shipping charge was a little cheaper.

One minute left, and by this time I have gotten the wife over by me at the laptop, explaining the “good news” to her and telling her of the benefits of having this particular hard drive. I am refreshing the auction screen every ten seconds to make sure I am still winning, in the odd event the other bidder does come back and outbid me. Twenty seconds left in the auction rolls by, and I refresh. Nothing. I’m confident that this is over. This is now a matter for the history books.

I refresh one last time and find that the auction is over. And as expected, I find I lost the auction… WHAT?! HOW THE…?! WHO?!

A new bidder sniped me.

Three seconds before the auction ended.

I was outbid at three lousy seconds!

Now that it sank in, I began to laugh. I’ve been sniped before, but never this close to the end of an auction. This bidder was absolutely classic! I told my wife, this was a brilliant piece of bidding strategy. Obviously this person really needed the hard drive and had a higher threshold for price pain than those of us who had been bidding over the past 24 hours.

I said, I should send this person an e-mail via e-Bay congratulating them on their bit of brilliance and tip my hat to them… The man who had tried to raise the price just to make it hurt for those who had outbid him ended up being a snipe, only to get sniped with three (not two and not four) seconds left!

When I went to check the individual’s profile to send the message, I noticed that it said they were from France.

Yes. France.

I started laughing even harder. Stupid Frenchie! It doesn’t look like you were using the brain the good Lord gave you… yes, you may have won the auction, but dude, the ten bucks shipping shown was for U.S. deliveries. You just spent seventy some odd dollars for a portable harddrive that is going to cost you probably twenty five to fifty dollars to ship overseas and put through customs. I no longer felt the need to congratulate the winner bidder on their brilliance.

And, five minutes later, I went and purchased the exact same thing as I lost in this auction on a Buy It Now sale for a nickel cheaper than what it would have cost me had I won the lost auction.