Automated Scripts Overrun eBay Holiday Contest

turnkeylinux writes "TechCrunch is reporting that eBay is under fire from users because of a holiday giveaway contest gone awry. On Tuesday Nov. 25, eBay announced its $1 Holiday Doorbusters deals promotion, giving away 100 gifts on a daily basis, all for a $1 fixed price. The gifts ranged from jewelry, clothing, digital cameras, and GPS devices to a brand-new Chevrolet Corvette. The only catch is that there's no announcement on when these items are released or in which category they will be. But cheaters came up with a clever way of winning deals on an automated basis by continuously running scripts to bid on items for $1."

Comments

eBay

[olddotter]

eBay needs help. They have alienated there sellers, gone to supporting "stores" more than hobby/small-time sellers, and they take almost 10% of sells.

Now they show they can't think through the obvious implications of a badly designed promotion (scam).

Really ebay would do much better to cut their fees and support the mom and pops in this economic environment. I think the time is ripe for competition in the on-line auction market. http://poorbenjamin.blogspot.com/2008/08/for-jerry-yang-to-ponder.html

Re:eBay

[cwAllenPoole]

s/eBay/Microsoft/ The basic problem though is monopoly. Once an organization reaches critical mass, it has the ability to simply dwarf the competition. Look at how long it has taken to get Firefox to reach its current position, and alternate OS's still haven't managed to even dent the mega-corps. Fortunately things are never quite that bad on the internet, but the fundamental issues are the same.

Re:eBay

[timholman]

eBay needs help. They have alienated there sellers, gone to supporting "stores" more than hobby/small-time sellers, and they take almost 10% of sells.

The problem is that eBay quit being an auction site a long time ago, and now has become the world's biggest flea market. There's nothing necessarily wrong with that; I often will buy some inexpensive item from a "Buy It Now" power seller, but I gave up on actually bidding for items a long time ago. Between the scammers and the snipers, it's not worth the hassle. The power sellers are now eBay's true customer base, and that's who they cater to.

Nowadays I find that Craigslist typically provides a better selection of high-end merchandise, plus you deal with local sellers and buyers without the overhead. The real problem, I think, is that the online auction business model is slowly becoming obsolete - otherwise, you'd see legitimate competitors taking over the market segment that eBay has turned its back on.

Cheaters?

[forand]

I don't see how making a script of this sort is cheating. If they don't want to allow scripting that is their problem to try and stop but anyone with the knowhow will realize that spending 30 min writing a script is much better then spending 24 hrs/day hitting refresh on the same search.

Re:Time to offload some crap

[theaveng]

You read my mind. I have a few items left-over from last Christmas that didn't sell even when marked down to 0.01 so maybe they'll sell now this year to one of these script-kiddies.

DRAWBACK: A lot of these script-kiddies are probably deadbeat non-payers as well. Surely they are not going to buy 10,000 items that they won last week for a dollar each. Instead they'll just refuse to pay and leave sellers to eat the losses in Ebay fees.

Re:The internet is full of assholes...

[Archangel Michael]

World is full of Assholes ... And Assholes use the law to continue to be assholes.

Everyone knows an asshole. You know, the guy/gal who sits on the fence of the law, skirting around the edges, being an asshole and taking every advantage to be one.

We all know we want to punch the asshole in the face, because they definitely deserve it, but we also know that the Asshole will sue and so we don't.

We're in the age of the "legal asshole", the asshole that never breaks any law, but abuses the gray areas simply because they can.

Re:The internet is full of assholes...

[kiwimate]

How is this ripping off eBay? They were going to sell this item at $1 anyway. If anyone's being ripped off, it's the other eBay users who now realistically have zero chance (as opposed to a miniscule chance) of getting lucky and scoring a nice holiday bonus.

Re:The internet is full of assholes...

[coopaq]

Buyers have no incentive to pay anymore, but you always pay to list the item.

Feedback has been removed so shill bidding is easy.