Xerox laser again, and bloody snipers.

[ffutures]

Update on this - delivery is about nine quid (which seems very cheap) but if I want delivery on Saturday I have to order it on Friday, which just seems bizarre. The details are here again if anyone wants to take another look.

http://www.misco.co.uk/HPSinfo/~76839~WW~/Xerox%206100DN.htm

The power consumption really us "up to 35w" in standby mode, presumably it's keeping four corona wires warm or something. There are others that use less - the HP I was looking at a while ago only draws 13w, for example, but it's lower resolution and isn't duplex. Noise in standby is also a little high, at up to 40 decibels. Presumably a cooling fan?

I'm tempted to get it on spec and see how it goes - if I can't live with the noise etc. sell it on eBay or something.

As I said on Friday, if anyone has any experience of this printer I'd love to hear from you. In a lot of ways it's what I want, but it's a bit of a monster in size etc. and I want to be careful.


Talking of eBay, I twice lost items at literally the last second thanks to sniper programs over the weekend - one was a balance I wanted for work, the other a zip drive which I'm not really too bothered about, both were going to me until the last second then sniped from under me. Another item suddenly jumped from 19 quid to 25 at the last second - fortunately I'd put in a bid a good deal higher (it was worth £100+) so I still got it.

Is there any way to counteract sniper programs, apart from putting in a really high bid?

Comments

[autopope.livejournal.com]

Is there any way to counteract sniper programs, apart from putting in a really high bid?

Yes.

Don't fall for the psychology of the auction and let yourself get suckered by last-minute excitement.

Work out the maximum you are willing to pay for the product under any circumstances, then set autobid to bid up to that level. Do not, under any circumstances, bid in the last 24 hours. Guaranteed -- either the item will go to you, or it will go for more than you were willing to pay.

Sniping is stupid. More to the point, the fastest sniping tool for eBay is eBay's own autobid mechanism.

[ffutures.livejournal.com]

That's what I did. I only bid once on each item, and in each case I thought I'd got them until the last second.

[orangemike.livejournal.com]

The mistake is in believing you've gotten anything, until the bidding is over.

[autopope.livejournal.com]

Unless you're selling ...

[original-aj.livejournal.com]

In which case you need to wait for payment to clear...:)

[ffutures.livejournal.com]

And if it's something that's going to be collected, pray that you don't get messed around (like I was) by someone who took two weeks to pay then would not arrange to collect the goods, then complained because I cancelled the transaction after another two weeks, refunded his money, and resold it for twice as much. Then phoned three weeks later and asked if it was still for sale...

[autopope.livejournal.com]

Sniping relies on a fallacy -- that human involvement counts. If you are willing to raise your bid for an item at T minus 15 seconds, why not bid to that amount prior to the last minute?

Most folks don't have a gut understanding for how eBay works, or how auctions work in general. eBay is effectively an iterated sealed-bid system, down to the wire. Your probability of winning rises the more you're willing to pay, and falls if more people want the same item.

I figure "always be willing to walk away" is an essential antidote to "a fool and his money are easily parted" when it comes to eBay.

[original-aj.livejournal.com]

I don't think it's entirely a fallacy - sniping works because some people don't actually put in the most they are prepared to pay - or they decide to bid more after they've lost due to excitement or stupidity or whatever. So putting your bid in as late as possible reduces the likelihood that your rivals will raise the ante if you get into a winning position.

If everyone involved was sensible enough to put in one, properly assessed maximum bid and leave it sniping wouldn't work. Sadly there are a lot of people out there who do not satisfy these criteria...

I'd prefer it (as a buyer) if it was a true sealed bid system with no knowledge of any other bids until the auction has closed. But if I was selling something I'd want to take advantage of people's inability to think clearly when thay get excited, and leave the system as it is.

I've never used an automated sniper myself, but I tend to leave it as late as possible to actually enter my bid. Usually this means I forget until the auction's closed so I save loads of money not buying things I don't really need. If I definately want something I'll bid when I see it, and take my chances. I'v never been disappointed, in as much as the things I've been outbid on always sold for more than I could have been tempted to if I'd gone back to it.

[maviscruet.livejournal.com]

Another possible use of a sniper program is an unoffical 'minimum bid'... you want to set your offical minimum bid low to draw people in. But actually you don't want it to go for anywhere near that. Wait until the last minute and insert a bid to push that minimum up. Sure you might end up with the item but you've not lost that much......

[ffutures.livejournal.com]

Except that this is against eBay rules (and I think may actually be illegal) if you're bidding on your own stuff under another identity or something. See the eBay rules on shills.

[maviscruet.livejournal.com]

Well yes. But when did that stop somebody......?

I never said it was ethical....

[heliograph.livejournal.com]

And when you have a documented case of someone violating the rules, what does eBay do? Nothing. Not a damn thing. I've caught two different vendors at it (one did it twice in a week), I sent the info in and not a damn thing happened beyond an automated "gee thanks" letter from eBay. When I caught the guy the second time he had even put in a bid retraction which was against the written rules (documentation!), but eBay didn't do anything about it, and that vendor's still working the system with the same sock puppets.

If you want to make money selling something on eBay you need a second account to bid up the item. It happens -all the time-. That's why putting in the most you're willing to pay up front doesn't benefit you in the least: it just lets the seller's secondary account bid up the item.

When I closed an eBay account I got much more feedback from eBay than when I was pointing out flagrant abuse. The system's broken, but until more people wise up they'll never do anything about it. Why should they? They make more money if an item sells for more, and now that they own PayPal they can double-dip.

On those rare occassions I still use eBay I put in low bid amounts and never up-bid them, and there are some folks that I never, ever bid on. Many times you can find things for sale from internet retailers for less than what they're selling for on eBay.

[ffutures.livejournal.com]

I'm trying to avoid bidding as much as possible.

Most of my eBay purchases these days tend to be things such as cables that are cheaper there than anywhere else and can be found at a fixed price. Apart from that I'm buying occasional books, stuff like job lots of stop watches for work, and every now and then a weird laboratory gizmo that is being marketed so ineptly that you wouldn't know what it was if you didn't know. For example, last year I got a deflected beam galvanometer (list £300+) for £24, on Sunday I got a flexible teaching camera (video and USB outputs, and has an adaptor to let you use it on a microscope) which is normally £199 for just over £30 inc. P&P. My guess is that the other people who bid on it thought it was just a webcam.

But more and more often if bidding is unavoidable (as in the case of balances) the bloody snipers are the problem. I don't think I'm seeing much shilling.

[sbisson.livejournal.com]

Phasers use wax - they're not lasers - and the consumables are *not* cheap.

[sbisson.livejournal.com]

We had one of those on review the year before last (just in time to do the wedding invites). It was definitely a wax machine...

[ffutures.livejournal.com]

I know that the original phasers were, but these aren't - if you read the spec and look at the consumables it's obvious it's a colour laser, not a wax printer.

And if it somehow arrives and turns out not to be a laser, I will be complaining bloody fast!

[sbisson.livejournal.com]

I checked the xerox site - it is a laser.

However, the consumables are still very expensive indeed...

http://www.office.xerox.com/perl-bin/product.pl?product=6100&page=supl

[ffutures.livejournal.com]

The prices from Misco don't seem to be much more than any other colour laser, and remanufactured cartridges are available from several sources. Remember also that I'm not particularly looking to print large volumes - if I do it'll be 99% black text.

Ebuyer

[nojay.livejournal.com]

Ebuyer are selling the Xerox 6100 printer for 199.98 inc. VAT but I don't know how much delivery would cost.

We used a HP 2550N colour laser in the office; the consumables were not cheap and there were no third-party cartridges available as they were all chipped. The cartridges supplied with the printer were half-capacity or rather "double-capacity" cartridges were available as replacements ho ho ho. We also had to cough up for extra memory in order to do full-page graphics and it was a non-standard HP-only SIMM with no cheap generic source. It was OK as a printer though.

I'm glad Carly is gone from HP but it is probably too late -- the bean counters and MBAs are entrenched now and the old HP ethos of engineering excellence (if at a price) is dead.

Re: Ebuyer

[ffutures.livejournal.com]

If I remember right ebuyer are quite expensive on delivery - plus you can't talk to the buggers, they don't even have a phone number, whereas I was able to speak to the sales and technical department at Misco today with less than a minute on hold.