Ebay sniping and you...

So I am new to buying things off of ebay as well as a newb with razors...as most decent razors are out of my price range before bidding time, I have only bid on a couple things on the bay, (there was a razor I wanted to get for my brother for his birthday, the blade was etched "duke" which is his nickname) yet it seems that even if I am the highest bidder with 5 seconds left on the clock, I am still outbid.

And then I read about sniping. It could be that someone was watching the items as well as I was, and got in manual bids with only seconds to go. Yet it is the idea/prospect of bidding against a software program that frustrates me, when all as said and done, humans aren't as fast as software, and I believe it does put those who are bidding manually at a disadvantage.

If there is something that I want, is this the way that I am going to have to go in order to get it? Must I use a sniping program to win items off of the bay? I don't really want to, as I don't really want to have a distinct advantage over other bidders, but I will if I have to. I am not trying to critisize those who use them, so please don't take it personally, these are just some initial, honest frustrations from a newb. Be honest, am I misguided in my feelings on this, and making a mountian out of a molehill?

Sniping and manually using Ebay to bid basically comes down to the same thing. Place the bid for the maximum you are willing to pay for an item, then wait for the auction to end.

If you bid a max of $50 on an item with no bids, you bid will be the lowest price for that particular auction. It may start at $9.99. It will not start at $50.

If someone bids against you, with a bid of $12, Ebay automatically places a bid for you above the new bid, for $13.

If someone bids against you, with a bid of $51, you are now out bid. This is because your max was $50.

Sniping works the same way, except doesn't place the first bid until moments before the auction ends.

The trick is that ebay places emphasis on early bids. So if you put in a max bid of $50 and someone has a snipe set at $50 for the same item, you will win if you place your bid through the manual ebay bidding format, because you placed your bid potentially days earlier.

Hope this helps.

Since eBay auctions have a set ending time, there is no practical way to prevent sniping. The only solution I have found to combat snipers such as myself is to decide what I am willing to pay and then bid that amount. I have no desire to give you time to think about outbidding me. If you are basing your bids in a particular auction off of other people's bids in that same auction, then you must be prepared to accept the consequences of them catching on to what you are doing

I am an unapologetic sniper. I see no sense in driving the price of an item up early just so I have the dubious pleasure of seeing myself listed as the high bidder. I want to see that after the auction is ended and pay as little as possible.

Another advantage in sniping is that by manually sniping with 3 or 4 seconds to go I am not tempted to increase my bid as I might be if I had the time to put another bid in. I lose a lot of them because of that but I save money and I don't really need another razor anyway. Plus I get the adrenaline rush in the last few seconds. ;)

Similar to Jimmy, I find that sniping helps me both pay a lower price and, more significantly, keeps me from going outside my budget. If I set a snipe and then wait until after the auction ends I'm far less likely to say "well, I can pay $5 more".

I can say from experience that I own a few items that I won by raison d'etre on ebay manually, $5 at a time....that are worth WAY less than what I paid for them out of stubbornness. Usually when I lose something really cool (Anybody here see the amazing crystal-and-gilt Deo non fortuna seal a few years back?) I smart for a day or two, but am glad I didn't win it.

That said, sniping doesn't make my bid any higher, nor give me any competetive advantage against manual bidders other than that I am guaranteed never to get a razor that I really like but cannot afford at the price I paid.

Best of luck on the 'bay.

I am like a Somalia pirate when I bid.

I wait for just the right moment, then quickly move in, snipe and flee with my goods. Sometimes holding them up for ransom in the classifieds.

see rifleman in my sig line

I am also a countersniper

:gl:

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Originally Posted by gentlemanly

Yet it is the idea/prospect of bidding against a software program that frustrates me.

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This excite me! I like manually bidding! :D

Thanks for the responses guys, it is nice to get a different perspective on things. I can definitely see the advantage on a personal level (i.e. "far less likely to say "well, I can pay $5 more"") I can see that this actually would help to save money.....so, if one were to use a sniper...where would one go to set up something like that?

Gixen.com allows you several free snipes at any one time

+1 on gixen.com ; I've had great results from them.

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Originally Posted by hoglahoo

Gixen.com allows you several free snipes at any one time

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Thanks for the link! I enjoy the manual sniping method but have to put up a little note on the screen so I remember the max amount I'm willing to pay - easy to get caught up in a bidding war!

At the Gixen site it makes the following statement in the Features list:
Gixen is 99.5% reliable.

Huh?!?! Sure hope that doesn't mean that 0.5% of the time it adds another zero to your bid! That could get painful. But if this is a good service, if we ever get to coordinating our bidding here this may be a good tool for us!

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Originally Posted by AirColorado

Huh?!?! Sure hope that doesn't mean that 0.5% of the time it adds another zero to your bid! That could get painful. But if this is a good service, if we ever get to coordinating our bidding here this may be a good tool for us!

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lol

It means sometimes it doesn't put the bid in on time.

I used to manually snipe occasionally, but rarely anymore. Those auctions that end at 4 am are not worth staying up for if I can let someone else bid for me

Quote:

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Originally Posted by AirColorado

Thanks for the link! I enjoy the manual sniping method but have to put up a little note on the screen so I remember the max amount I'm willing to pay - easy to get caught up in a bidding war!

At the Gixen site it makes the following statement in the Features list:
Gixen is 99.5% reliable.

Huh?!?! Sure hope that doesn't mean that 0.5% of the time it adds another zero to your bid! That could get painful. But if this is a good service, if we ever get to coordinating our bidding here this may be a good tool for us!

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Once I was bidding on a rare bicycle head badge. I was willing to go like maybe fifty bucks and being in a hurry to get in my snipe I hit a comma instead of a period. :gaah: Needless to say I won the auction for more then twice what I was intending to pay. :shrug:

If you are using Firefox, I can't say enough good about myibay.com: Free eBay Bid Sniper and Auction Manager

It puts an icon on every auction. If you want to snipe, click it and it opens a pop-up where you put in the amount you want to bid. Then you reload your page and it shows your snipe right in the auction. You also can go to your Myibay page and monitor all the auctions you have set snipes on.

I love the flexibility it gives me.

I usually manually snipe with 5 seconds or so. That way I don't have time to rebid. Keeps me from paying more than I want.

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Originally Posted by JimmyHAD

I am an unapologetic sniper. I see no sense in driving the price of an item up early just so I have the dubious pleasure of seeing myself listed as the high bidder. I want to see that after the auction is ended and pay as little as possible.

Another advantage in sniping is that by manually sniping with 3 or 4 seconds to go I am not tempted to increase my bid as I might be if I had the time to put another bid in. I lose a lot of them because of that but I save money and I don't really need another razor anyway. Plus I get the adrenaline rush in the last few seconds. ;)

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+1 on this, brother. +1.

I'll give a perfect example of why sniping is the only way to bid. About 4 years ago I put in a bid on a neurobiology text. I think I bid about $65 at a point when the current bid was $10. Some moron then entered in twenty seven bids, each time raising his bid by $1.

When I entered my bid for $65, the current bid was $10 and I became the high bidder I think at $14. The moron then put in a bid for $15, then $16, then $17, then..., and finally 27 bids later--$41, and then he quit, so I got the book for $42.

Now, if I had put in a snipe at $65 in the last 5 seconds, the moron would not have had time to put in extra bids. Thus his first bid of $15 would have been the only bid he would have had time to put in, and I would have only had to pay $16. THAT was the last time that I put in a bid without a sniping program.

Gixen saved me a lot of money just by being able to cancel the snipe.

If you bid on the bay you cannot say.. "well I thought it over and maybe it wasn't such a great idea to buy another razor" you can only hope you will be outbid (and thus have someone else pay for your greed)

I've done this a couple of times.. if I want something.. I put in a snipe.. I sometimes adjust the max bid (something you cannot do with a manual bid. I just put in the maximum I'm willing to pay (that is the amount I don't feel bad if someone bid one dollar more and got the item)

And yes I've been outsniped a couple of times and that is just fine... it just means that someone was willing to pay more for the same object...

Maarten

There are a few major benefits to sniping for me:

1) I can change my mind and lower or cancel my snipe without p*ssing off ebay.

2) I can set up group bids, so I can place snipes on several roughly-equivalent items, and the sniping program will place bids on each item as it closes, until I win one of them, then it cancels the rest of the snipes in the batch.

3) Sniping is resistant to shill bidding.

I once won a razor for my max bid, but going through the history I saw that a bidder with no previous bids had come in and bid up to one bid past my max (revealing my max bid), then he canceled that last bid leaving me the winner at my max bid. Yes ebay would be mad at him, but with so few bids in its history this was clearly a throwaway account anyway. I tried to complain to ebay but their complaint form wouldn't allow me to file a complaint for two weeks after the auction "to allow for delivery of the item", which was amusing since I wasn't complaining about the item but about the cheating. The scales fell from my eyes and I signed up for esnipe the next day. By placing my bid with seconds to go there is very little time for the seller to play this shill game with my bid. I haven't placed a standard ebay bid since then.

Hidbid.com is another sniping service you may want to give a try.
Everyone has pretty much covered the benefits of sniping.
All buyers should be happy with sniping as even if you do not snipe, knowing that there will be snipers most likely bidding on the item that you want to bid on, you have to decide on your absolute maximum bid and either place your bid right away or schedule a snipe (or do it manually). That's it. You win or you lose, but no second-guessing. If you win, you got a good deal. If you lose, the winner paid too much.
There's a couple of things you have to watch out for when sniping - that you are qualified to bid on the item that you're interested in, and that there are no special noticess shown by eBay before the bid confirmation page is shown.
What you can do to check is just enter a bid and on the item and click the "Place bid" button. Your bid will not be placed immediately as you will have to confirm it on the next page by clicking a "confirm bid" button (which you will not do). If the next page shown is the bid confirmation page, all should be well. If you see a special notice, this adds an extra step to the bidding process and will prevent your snipe from being executed.
Actually, this could probably easily be worked through, however, with hidbid anyway, it is set up so that these now notices are not automatically bypassed as it is probably a good idea for you to read the notice to know any special information about the item, or similar items in general.
I know that when a toy is the auction item, a 'possible recall' notice will be shown before the bid confirmation page. Some sort of notice is shown before the bid confirmation page, when the auction item is a ticket or tickets to events.
Those are the notices that I am aware of.

You also need to be sure that you are qualified to bid on an item. Sellers can put restrictions on countries that they ship to, accepted payment methods (PayPal, which, is about the only payment method available on eBay nowadays anyway), can block bidders who have bid retractions in the last month or even the last year I think, and having a certain amount of feedback (not sure but I think that it can only be set to block bidders with an overall negative rating).
Checking for the bid confirmation page will not help in making sure that you are eligible, only actually clicking on the "confirm bid" button would let you know.
However, just look at the item listing page to see where the item ships (if you're in a different country than the seller) and/or contact the seller to see if there is a feedback rating or bid retraction restriction on the item.