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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

#111

Post by cm2187 »

JohnFen wrote: post #85
Fwirt wrote: post #76

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This was my belief for many years, but then I tried sniping (with the same prices I was putting as my maximum bid before!) and my success rate skyrocketed and the prices I was paying dropped. It seems that despite repeated reminders and explanations, there are three groups of people using eBay "incorrectly" that make the sniping strategy viable: 1) People who do not understand proxy bidding and think that they "need"…

> For some reason, auctions with more bidders seem to attract more bidders, whereas auctions with zero bids seem to go unnoticed. Huh. I'm a "buy it now" guy and filter out the auctions, but maybe I should start looking for zero bid auctions too.

Auctions are 90% bad deals because you often end up with someone getting over excited and bidding more than the next buy me now price for the same product. But 10% of the time you get lucky, particularly if auctions end at odd time of the day. So I find it's worth throwing some bids, knowing that you should almost always lose. Ebay is best when you are not in a hurry and happy to wait for the right bargain.

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

#112

Post by cm2187 »

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.

But if that someone isn't rational it is better to not give him the time to react to your highest bid.

Also some sellers seem to use some fake accounts to bid high on their own item, revealing your max bid, then cancel their bid, then bid right under your max bid to maximise their sell price. Happened to me twice, and now no longer setting my max bid in advance since.

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

#113

Post by neilfrndes »

cm2187 wrote: post #112
ryandrake wrote: post #37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

But if that someone isn't rational it is better to not give him the time to react to your highest bid. Also some sellers seem to use some fake accounts to bid high on their own item, revealing your max bid, then cancel their bid, then bid right under your max bid to maximise their sell price. Happened to me twice, and now no longer setting my max bid in advance since.

I thought eBay doesn't allow you to cancel a bid you placed.

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

#114

Post by cm2187 »

nutjob2 wrote: post #60
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.

Sniping is the only way to bid for two reasons: - bidding more than once and allowing time for others to counter bid drives up the price through competition for the item. Sniping also removes the temptation to counter bid, rather than to stick to your maximum bid. - not sniping allows the seller to do ghost bidding, letting them discover your maximum price (including counter bidding). Here someone always out bid you…

Or rather than not winning and not completing the sale, the ghost bidder retracts the bid and re-bids just under your max.

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

#115

Post by globular-toast »

cm2187 wrote: post #111
JohnFen wrote: post #85

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> For some reason, auctions with more bidders seem to attract more bidders, whereas auctions with zero bids seem to go unnoticed. Huh. I'm a "buy it now" guy and filter out the auctions, but maybe I should start looking for zero bid auctions too.

Auctions are 90% bad deals because you often end up with someone getting over excited and bidding more than the next buy me now price for the same product. But 10% of the time you get lucky, particularly if auctions end at odd time of the day. So I find it's worth throwing some bids, knowing that you should almost always lose. Ebay is best when you are not in a hurry and happy to wait for the right bargain.

I mean, an auction is something where you "win" by agreeing to pay more than anyone else. It's always going to be a bad deal for the buyer. The key with Ebay is to actually sell stuff on there too. If you're just a consumer you'll lose out on auctions in the long run.

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

#116

Post by TeMPOraL »

subroutine wrote: post #46
some_random wrote: post #39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"Hey ChatGPT I want to build my own personal cloud storage computer, buy all the hardware for me then walk me through building and configuring it. My budget is $600, try to get the best deals and make sure that all the parts are compatible. I'm fine with used parts as long as they're a good deal and are in working order."

You would really do this? You'd not even want to at least briefly review the cart before making a $600 purchase of used computer hardware?

I would. I would in particular like to review the cart in form of a table rendered in LLM interface, because all e-commerce sites have bullshit. user-hostile UI/UX and I'm tired of it.

Really, dealing with bullshit for you is by far the biggest promise of any agentic solutions today.

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

#117

Post by cm2187 »

neilfrndes wrote: post #113
cm2187 wrote: post #112

Earlier quoted context omitted.

But if that someone isn't rational it is better to not give him the time to react to your highest bid. Also some sellers seem to use some fake accounts to bid high on their own item, revealing your max bid, then cancel their bid, then bid right under your max bid to maximise their sell price. Happened to me twice, and now no longer setting my max bid in advance since.

I thought eBay doesn't allow you to cancel a bid you placed.

It does. You can argue you bid a wrong amount by mistake. It's necessary because mistakes do happen, and it even happened to me to retract a mistake once (was bidding on two items simultaneously in two tabs and mixed them up). But it gets abused.

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

#118

Post by TeMPOraL »

subroutine wrote: post #79
cucumber3732842 wrote: post #63

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 e…

But that also seems like a very inefficient way to accomplish this automation task from the drop shippers side too. What do you gain from the LLM that non LLM automation couldn't do more cost effectively?

More importantly, doing this will quickly get throttled on the provider side (if using chat UI) or costs will skyrocket (if using APIs).

The right way to use LLMs here is to have them write (and perhaps maintain) scraping scripts and run those.

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

#120

Post by catlikesshrimp »

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.

Do you usually pay for the higher price you are offering?
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