Auction Settings - Bid Sniping
What is Bid Sniping?
Auction sniping/Bid Snipping is the practice, in a timed online auction, of placing a bid likely to exceed the current highest bid (which may be hidden) as late as possible usually seconds before the end of the auction giving other bidders no time to outbid the sniper. This can be done either manually or by software on the bidder's computer, or by an online sniping service.
Kindly go through the initial paragraph of this article for more information.
How to prevent it?
Since the user who snipes at the last moment of the auction getting expired, our plugin provides a configuration to admin where at a certain time before the auction expires, the auction gets extended by a defined time interval specified by admin. What this does is that it then gives an opportunity to all the bidders to place their bids again if they want to.
To prevent Auction sniping / Bid Snipping in a timed online auction you need to make changes as below.
Plugin Settings
As an admin navigates to WP Dashboard → Auctions → Settings and selects the Auction tab as given in the below image.
Scroll down and you will find the Extra Settings section.
We provide two options under Extra Settings. The first option is Extend Auction in a recursive manner and the second is Extend Auction only once.
- Extend Auction in a recursive manner:
The first option will keep extending the auction if the bid placed to meet the timing. if you select this one then what will happen is that the auction will keep on getting extended when the timing condition is met. For example, if someone bids 5 minutes before then increase the time by 10 minutes.
Then whenever at last 5 minutes if anyone bids then the plugin will extend the auction by 10 minutes. If the auction was going to expire at 6 pm and if someone bids at 5:56 pm then the auction will extend to 6:10 pm. If someone will again bid at 6:06 pm then the auction will again extend to 6:20 pm and so on.
- Extend Auction only once:
The second option will extend the auction only once and will send an email to all bidders intimating the latest bid. if you select this option then what will happen is that when the condition meets for the very first time then it will extend only once for the time you mentioned. For example, if you have set that if someone bids 5 minutes before then increase the time by 10 minutes.
Then if the auction was going to expire at 6 pm and if someone bids at 5:56 pm then the auction will extend to 6:10 pm only once. If someone will again bid at 6:06 pm then the auction will not extend.
EXAMPLE
Let me now run through this article to show an example of how can we prevent Auction sniping / Bid Snipping in a timed online auction:
As an admin navigates to WP Dashboard → Auctions → Settings. Selects the Auction tab and you will find the Extra Settings section. Select how would you like the auction to behave by selecting one of the options.
- Set time & hours
Set the time as you like. here for simplicity of the example, as per the above image, we added 10 minutes. The time left for the Auction to close and Extend the Auction time by 1:20 (one hour and twenty minutes). if someone adds a bid within 10 minutes then the Auction time will be extended to 1 hour & 20 minutes.
