The bidding system on online auction sites like ebay has always been a joke.<p>If an auction ends at a precise date and time, then the only thing bidding early accomplishes is driving up the price.<p>If someone wants to get the item for cheap, they should NEVER bid until the last second.<p>The whole concept is flawed compared to auctions in real life, which start with a bid price, and then drive up the price with additional bids. The auctioneer simply ends the auction when people stop bidding.<p>The only way to fix the sniping problem is to fix this fundamental issue with online auctions. They need to make it so that auctions can dynamically end at any point in time (for example, if the item hasn&#x27;t been bid on for a set time window, or if the seller is simply tired of waiting).<p>Imagine if you wanted to sell an iPhone or something with this type of auction model. People would place bids up front, and they would have a fast-paced bidding war (driving up the price), followed by a slower bidding war, as they started to reach the limits of what they were willing to pay. If nobody topped the current bid during the following 24 hours, the auction automatically ends, and the highest bidder wins it. Placing a bid automatically resets the 24 hour delay (or maybe it resets it to an exponentially smaller time window to keep people from postposing an auction indefinitely).<p>I&#x27;m imagining a scenario where the person who creates the auction can set the auction automatic no-bid termination time window, and they could also set a true deadline (which perhaps only they would be privy to) when the auction would automatically end.<p>That is the only way bidding makes sense to me on online auctions. With the current system that ebay uses, sniping is the only type of auction bidding that makes sense.