Your thoughts are appreciated. My point regarding sniping was that it was an inherent flaw of the Internet auction environment. This is not possible at live auctions. As such, in contrast to your understanding, I believe it is disadvantageous to sellers, since the lower bidders do not have an opportunity to bid back. As for shills, I disapprove of them very highly and believe they are to the disadvantage of all honest people. IMHO what they do is akin to stealing and if the environment allows it through aliases, then I would disapprove of the environment as well.

Regarding where you prefer to shop or sell, I respect your choices. However, if you are selling in quantity and need to keep an eye on the bottom line, fees are an important fact of life. So is time management, since running auctions consume much time for the seller. Still, as I mentioned before, auctions have a place, but are not the only or best solution to your selling or buying needs. If that were so, the corner drugstore would be selling everything through auctions.