Imagine that you could group thirty items together, enter one price to snipe it at (including shipping costs!), and be done. What would normally take you up to half an hour could be done in seconds.

Currently, when creating a new group or editing an existing one, you have three fields: "Name", "Items to Win", and "Notes". Oftentimes (though not always), we use groups when bidding on identical items. In such cases it would be more expedient if users had a fourth field available to use if they so chose: "My Snipe (Shipped Cost)". This would allow you to enter in one snipe value for the whole group.

This snipe value would include your shipping costs, which is very helpful as very few sellers will have the same costs for shipping. All myibay has to do is take your "My Snipe (Shipped Cost)" snipe value, subtract the shipping cost, and then myibay bids the remainder.


Example:
I am watching three auctions for the same item. I only want to win one, but I don't want to pay more than $22.00 for the item including shipping costs. So I create a new group, set the Items to Win to 1, and set My Snipe (Shipped Cost) to $22.00.

The first auction has a shipping cost of $2.95.
The second one has a shipping cost of $4.95.
The third auction has a shipping cost of $3.75.

Since I put in $22.00 in the "My Snipe (Shipped Cost" field, myibay will bid $19.05 on the first item, since $22.00 - $2.95 S&H = $19.05. If I don't win that auction, myibay will then bid $17.05 on the second auction since $22.00 - $4.95 S&H = $17.05. Subsequently, if I don't win the second auction, myibay will then bid $18.25 on the third auction, since $22.00 - $3.75 S&H = $18.25.


I know that you're wary of implementing features that will appear more complicated to users, and I think that this perfect in that regard. Instead of making things more complicated or labor-intensive for the end user, it makes things simpler and faster.

You don't have to go through and put in three (or thirty!) different snipe values manually, and you don't have to do three (or thirty) calculations to figure out what your snipe should be so that shipping costs don't make you pay more for one than the other. In making the groups feature a much more powerful tool while simultaneously increasing the efficiency and ease of the process, I think that this feature could be a real breath of fresh air for the end user, and inspire them to use the groups feature more often.

What are your thoughts?

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Last edited on Wed Dec 15, 2010 06:16 PM.

I was discussing this feature and I think we can do it.
I'll add a field called "My Snipe" when you create a Group so all items added to that group will have your snipe amount by default.
I'll probably need to brainstorm it to make sure that users who don't need it will not be confused too much.

Btw, a very similar feature is implemented in Firefox and Google Chrome add-ons when you click "Snipe these" on the search results page.

Btw #2, you can do "quick-snipe" in the Windows application by highlighting My Snipe cell, pressing F2, entering your new value and pressing Enter to submit it.
No need to open Snipe window anymore.

Regarding the shipping:
The problem with shipping is that I can't guarantee that shipping price will be retrieved from eBay reliably (especially when shipping calculated dynamically or seller offers several shipping methods).
I don't want users to relay on shipping price because the actual shipping fee may be different.

Just a follow up:
Making shipping be able to configure manually will not solve the problem, because most users will trust to whatever is listed without any further verification.
You may want to adjust your snipes after adding using the "quick-snipe" feature I described above.

Is this feature will be added now or anytime soon?

(I am talking about adding ONE PRICE for the whole group) - I don't care much about shipping calculations....

Thanks

Editing in cell was added at least 2 years ago. Did you actually try it?

I have just started using your site and software and I don't see any cell to change the overall price of the group...

Do you still keep this feature in the software/website or did you discontinue it?

If you use the Web-based interface, you can do it using FireFox add-on or Google Chrome extension.
When you search for something, you should see "Snipe these" button on the search result page. Click on the button and you can put one snipe for all items.

Thank you for your help!