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eBay explicitly bans AI "buy for me" agents in user agreement update

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Re: eBay explicitly bans AI "buy for me" agents in user agreement update

#61

Post by observationist »

subroutine wrote: post #42
observationist wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"Hey, ChatGPT/Grok/GeneriBot4000, please watch for a great deal on a 1982 stratocaster guitar - must be in good or better condition, $600 or less, and if you see it, go ahead and buy it without confirmation" Ongoing tasks, arbitrage for mispriced postings in ways that aren't currently exploited that LLMs make feasible - by banning auto-buy, maybe they're attempting to delineate between human seeming behavior and auto…

Yeah I guess that makes sense for some people. I'm just not in a financial position where I'd let an AI buy a $600 used guitar without me taking a look at it first.

An '82 stratocaster would normally go for around $2000, so someone offloading an estate, fat fingering a price entry, etc, could give you a chance to double your money or more. $600 would be a very low price - same for a Martin D18 in fair+ condition, no cracks, etc.

If I were going to automate something like this, I'd have a suite of products to watch for - common enough to be reasonably frequent but obscure enough to be mispriced, kinda the whole idea behind secondhand ocmmission / antique / estate sale shops.

I don't know how EBay is supposed to differentiate automation from real users in this scenario. To get around it, all you need is human intervention at the last act, so you could fire up your bot and have it forward the "buy now" link when all parameters are met? Maybe they just don't want AI companies to have an argument for some sort of revenue sharing or commissions.

Re: eBay explicitly bans AI "buy for me" agents in user agreement update

#62

Post by pwg »

pishpash wrote: post #26
jsheard wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What's the point of sniping bots when eBay has automatic bidding? Counter-sniping is essentially built-in, if your price ceiling is higher then a snipers then you're guaranteed to win even if they bid at the last millisecond.

Auto bid isn't the same as sniping. Sniping hides information about demand. Auto bid can't hide information as soon as there is another bidder.

Auto bid does not hide any information even with one bidder, as ebay indicates that "1 bid" has occurred.

The only way auto-bid could hide information is if eBay treated auto bid as "silent auction" style. Show "zero bids" all the way to the end, then once closed, see which 'auto-bid' came in highest and declare that bidder the winner.

Sniping is attempting to recreate 'silent auction' style bidding, with a bid system that is not 'silent'.

Re: eBay explicitly bans AI "buy for me" agents in user agreement update

#63

Post by cucumber3732842 »

subroutine wrote: post #20

What is the use case for LLM agent shoppers? I can't imagine delegating the purchase of a used item to an AI (I'd be okay with AI identifying the best deals for me to review). This must be something for people who are doing something at scale like flipping items on Ebay or drop shipping. I imagine this type of automation existed before LLM agents came along - what do they add? Is it just the ability to evaluate the p…

Drop shippers who arbitrage between major and minor ecommerce platforms need to maintain their listings, re-price things, etc. They don't care if the AI gets it wrong sometimes as long as they more than make back the cost of deploying it.

So now imagine ten thousand of these jerks telling their AI of choice "hey go scrape everything you can and re-list it for 10% more". That's a lot of load on the platforms at both ends for listings that are unlikely to generate many sales.

Re: eBay explicitly bans AI "buy for me" agents in user agreement update

#64

Post by young_rutabaga »

jsheard wrote: post #22
whyenot wrote: post #12

So scraping bots and “buy for me” bots are bad, but the incredibly annoying sniping bots are OK? That sure feels like a double standard.

What's the point of sniping bots when eBay has automatic bidding? Counter-sniping is essentially built-in, if your price ceiling is higher then a snipers then you're guaranteed to win even if they bid at the last millisecond.

Snipers essentially convert the ascending-bid proxy auction used in eBay into a Vickrey second-price sealed bid auction, allowing a buyer to not reveal their preferences to other participants. In theory, with rational participants, this shouldn't have any effect on revenue. In practice, buyers do not always understand auction mechanics and delay setting the highest price they're willing to pay until they are outbid. If they're outbid 3 seconds before the deadline, they lost.

Re: eBay explicitly bans AI "buy for me" agents in user agreement update

#65

Post by nutjob2 »

ryandrake wrote: post #37
dingaling wrote: post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Establishing the price ceiling is difficult, though. You might arbitrarily set it as $23, but be sniped at $23.30. The sniper bot only needs to bid that small increment over your arbitrary ceiling. Can you really say that $23 was your hard limit, or would you have paid $23.40? Unless you're buying something also available at retail, nobody can be that accurate in foresight. Sniping removes the 'contemplation window'…

Then just put your actual hard limit in as your bid, and sleep soundly, knowing that if someone pays $0.01 more, it's OK because you wouldn't have wanted to pay that anyway. I've never really been bothered by "sniping" in eBay. I always bid my absolute 100% maximum, and if someone bids more than me, then they can have it.

If you enter your maximum bid in ebay you're revealing it. With sniping no one can discover your maximum bid.

The 'nibblers' will invariably show up and bid small amounts until they exceed your maximum bid, while not revealing theirs.

Re: eBay explicitly bans AI "buy for me" agents in user agreement update

#66

Post by pwg »

gnopgnip wrote: post #54
whyenot wrote: post #12

So scraping bots and “buy for me” bots are bad, but the incredibly annoying sniping bots are OK? That sure feels like a double standard.

Buy for me bots results in more returns, cancellations, item not as described and other problems ebay and sellers have to deal with

This is most likely the reason. I could see a lot of "buy for me bot" users deciding that they really did not mean that color shirt (or some other reason) when they asked it to buy a "brand X shirt in size Y" and forgot to tell the bot what colors they would accept as options and did not realize the bot might buy an "electric purple" (or some other color they dislike) shirt because it was not constrained in color choice.

Re: eBay explicitly bans AI "buy for me" agents in user agreement update

#67

Post by [deleted] »

tkzed49 wrote: post #43
Retr0id wrote: post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I've bought hundreds of things on ebay over the years and I've never understood the issue with "sniping". Sure, I've been outbid at the last moment. Losing an auction is always a little frustrating. But if I was willing to pay that price I should have bid it myself. Feels fair enough?

why would you bid the highest price you can afford in an auction? the seller agreed to auction the thing; they could have just offered it for a set price.

[deleted]

Re: eBay explicitly bans AI "buy for me" agents in user agreement update

#68

Post by blitzar »

Retr0id wrote: post #40
whyenot wrote: post #12

So scraping bots and “buy for me” bots are bad, but the incredibly annoying sniping bots are OK? That sure feels like a double standard.

I've bought hundreds of things on ebay over the years and I've never understood the issue with "sniping". Sure, I've been outbid at the last moment. Losing an auction is always a little frustrating. But if I was willing to pay that price I should have bid it myself. Feels fair enough?

I run up the prices in less competitive auctions just for fun occasionally, especially if I think someone is getting too good a deal.

Re: eBay explicitly bans AI "buy for me" agents in user agreement update

#69

Post by BeetleB »

gpt5 wrote: post #41
BeetleB wrote: post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I never understood why eBay set things up to enable sniping. Many years ago, there was an auction site called uBid. They had the sane rule: Bidding is open as long as there have been bids in the past 5 minutes. So the end date could be January 24th, 3pm, but if someone bids at 2:58pm, the deadline is extended to 3:05pm. And it keeps going. You know, like how auctions in the real world work.

Guessing here - but they are probably relying on game theory / auction theory. They have a built in "sniping bot" - by allowing you to type your highest price, and it will auto-bid for you until that price. The fear of being sniped encourages you to bid your maximum value, and not just wait and see if you can sneak in a lower bid. This is what all auction sites want.

> They have a built in "sniping bot" - by allowing you to type your highest price, and it will auto-bid for you until that price.

With ubid, you also had the feature of letting it bid to your highest price. Yet they still extended the auction if someone outbid your highest price.

Re: eBay explicitly bans AI "buy for me" agents in user agreement update

#70

Post by Analemma_ »

blitzar wrote: post #68
Retr0id wrote: post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I've bought hundreds of things on ebay over the years and I've never understood the issue with "sniping". Sure, I've been outbid at the last moment. Losing an auction is always a little frustrating. But if I was willing to pay that price I should have bid it myself. Feels fair enough?

I run up the prices in less competitive auctions just for fun occasionally, especially if I think someone is getting too good a deal.

I mean, dick move, but that has nothing to do with sniping. You could do that at any point during the auction and it would have the same effect.
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