Auction snipers suck!

[CRcold]

I spent over 5 hours waiting for this auction for a PERFECT piece of land for me and my friends, 8000M2 for only 4,100 i bidded and waited all night till 5am in the morning, from what was on my screen it was 30seconds to go and i was still the only bidder. Then my Internet froze and when it came back, I lost by 4 minutes.

 

The page is suppose to auto refresh i'd assume and it isn't fair that this guy got it for 10 more L than i bidded.

You shouldn't allow land to be auctioned like that, it should have an Auctual commision for people to get ontop of, like the next bid has to be atleast 1-10% Higher than the first bid.

 

So 4,100 would have become 4,510. if it were 1%. This is so unfair >-<

[jjws888]

But that's how auctions work.

[SpiritSparrow Skydancer]

---

CRcold wrote:

I spent over 5 hours waiting for this auction for a PERFECT piece of land for me and my friends, 8000M2 for only 4,100 i bidded and waited all night till 5am in the morning, from what was on my screen it was 30seconds to go and i was still the only bidder. Then my Internet froze and when it came back, I lost by 4 minutes.

 

The page is suppose to auto refresh i'd assume and it isn't fair that this guy got it for 10 more L than i bidded.

 

You shouldn't allow land to be auctioned like that, it should have an Auctual commision for people to get ontop of, like the next bid has to be atleast 1-10% Higher than the first bid.

 

So 4,100 would have become 4,510. if it were 1%. This is so unfair >-<

---

 thats how auctions work.... stop whining and enter the max amount you are willing to pay and hope for the best,and get a better consistant net connection...

 

[Amethyst Jetaime]

You have no real complaint, until an auction closes, someone can come in and bid even 1L higher and win it.  It's the nature of auctions. You really don't have to wait all night either.  You could have just checked a few minutes before it ended and put in a higher bid if your wasn't the highest, then watched to be sure no one else did the same.

Pages on the net don't necessarily refresh themselves either.  So I wouldn't assume that.   i would refresh it myself to be sure if that was important to me.

[CRcold]

I was refreshing all night and the bid was Not there 4 minutes to the close, I refreshed it atleast 6 times in the last 5 minutes alone.

 

But to just Wait until the last minute is just a sore way of winning an auction isn't it? I mean look at auctions IRL you don't see people waiting till the last second, its all done in real time and their bids arn't the lowest amount Above the last

[Marigold Devin]

I'm afraid you do see this happen on internet auction websites. There are even 3rd party websites that will do the bidding on a person's behalf for a commission (not for Second Life though as far as I know).

While it may be seen as bad sportsmanship to usurp someone bidding on an auction like this, it happens often.  Sod's law that you should lose your internet connection so close to the end.

Maybe it wasn't really the PERFECT parcel of land for you and your friends. Have you looked around the mainland at all the yellow shaded parcels there are of different shapes and sizes?  Some are selling for as little as .3L$ per sq.m. 

[CRcold]

yeah, i've found another place after some research and i've decided not to buy in the same area as that place incase of the unforseen D:

Just waiting on the land to be "Given" to me now..

[Marigold Devin]

Great stuff, CRcold.  Fate works in mysterious ways :matte-motes-wink:

It is frustrating and soul destroying when you've devoted several hours to something though, be it auction bidding, building sandcastles, or nurturing plants in a garden.

What doesn't kill us makes us stronger.

[Abigail Longmeadow]

The way Linden Mainland autctions worked when I bought land a few years ago was you make a limit bid. You enter the maximum amount you would pay, and it automatically bids just enough over anyone else's bid to win (up to the maximum you set). For someone else to win, they have to top your maximum, but they can't see your maximum, so they don't know what it is and they would have to guess. If they bid more, but still less than your maximum, you still win, but you pay more. At least that is how it worked a few years ago.

[Phil Deakins]

I think it still works in the same way.

 

@the OP

The auctions are run in perfectly fair way. They are done the same as RL auction rooms; i.e. people can leave their maximum bid with the auctioneer who will bid on their behalf up to that maximum. The difference between those RL auctions and online ones is that things can happen so fast at the end that they can't be followed. If a piece of land is a must have, as it was in this case, you ought to have used the provided system and set your maximum bid. That way, you would have got it, probably at much less than your max, unless someone else was willing to pay more, in which case you wouldn't have wanted it.

It was unfortunate that your connection froze at the wrong time but, even if it hadn't, things could have moved so quickly that you'd have missed the land anyway. If the other person put a maximum in, you wouldn't have got the land. Even without the other person putting a maximum in, his/her bid may have been so late that you wouldn't have had time to bid again.

If you're going to bid on auction land, and you really want a particular piece, you must enter a maximum bid or there's a very good chance you won't get it. There's a reasonable chance that your maximum won't get it either but you wouldn't want to pay more than your maximum, so that would be ok.

Incidentally, last second bidding ("auction sniping", as you puit it) is a very valid and sensible way of bidding, because it can work very well, as you found out. It may "suck" when you're on the wrong end of it but the practise doesn't suck at all. It's the losing feeling/frustration that actually sucks.

[Chronometria]

If they were done the same as a real life auction room, then the time would be extended when a new bid comes in, to allow the current high bidder to respond.

 

That way would have allowed the OP to up their bid and would be of benefit to the "seller" as it would raise the price.

[Pussycat Catnap]

In online auctions - the offset to such conduct is meant to be that you don't bid what you will pay, but what you are willing to pay should it go that high.

- So that when someone bids up, if its still within your limit you still have the winning bid.

 

Its been the nature of online auctions since eBay launched that most bids come in in the last 60 seconds...

If you really want to find an ideal spot of land - safer to hunt for it inworld. And if any spot of land seems to good in price on the auctions, it is. Expect it to rise up to often more than what you'll pay by finding it inworld.

Set you map to show land for sale, and explore mainland by jumping between yellow colored spots on the map. Make sure its not an estate that you are on, but mainland - or you will end up renting. Fine to do that, but not fine to do it unless you know you are doing it.