Thread: Sniping

I used to bid with seconds to spare, but lost too many that way. I like sniping programmes, but i know how frustrating it is when some devious bugger out snipes my snipe. The CADS!

When i opened the link, I thought $200 odd for that set was pretty good though.

If I want something I enter it into Gixen with the highest price I am willing to pay. After that I forget about the item and wait for the email that my bid is the winning one. That's the only way for me to keep prices I pay reasonable.

Originally Posted by IanS

Maybe I just long for the traditional auction where everyone is there to witness it and the winner is REALLY the guy who is willing to pay the most.

That's exactly how it is, except that there is also a hard deadline for placing bids, so you can't change your mind anymore after that.
As far as I understand in live auctions that deadline is flexible, and if there's too much activity the bids will be kept going until everybody has had given amount of time to make sure they are certain that's their max bid.

If I want something I will bid to win it, meaning I'm willing to pay significantly more than what most of you will consider a 'good deal'. And since the ebay rules are for me to obey not change, I'd rather play by the rules and not let others know about my bid too early. Many people seem to be clueless and bid based on other people's opinion, not their own. So I'm not interested in sharing my opinion with them just to have them start bidding against me.
I've gotten stuff at my max bid plenty of times, and I've lost by less than the minimum increment plenty of times too.
But fortunately for me there are not all that many razors anymore that I want that much as to go all in.

Yes, but the big distinction is that there is no hard deadline. As long as someone is willing to keep raising the bid by the minimum increment, the bidding goes on. Sniping doesn't exist in a situation where everyone see's your bid and then gets to decide if they will go higher.

Personally, I hate sniping. Why be sneaky about it? I hate it when my max bit is quite a bit over the last one (proxy bidding) & I have to go to work an hour or so before the end, only to find out that someone "sniped" me.

Is there really an actual computer program designed for this? I guess that I am even further behind times than I originally thought...

Sniping programs just enter the bid you indicated a few seconds before bidding ends. Ebay processes it according to their specifications. I don't think the outcome is really much different from personally doing a last second bid. This has nothing to do with being sneaky. If you enter your highest bid a couple of hours before bidding ends other people who actually watch the bidding may enter higher bids time after time till they outbid you which amounts to a last second bidding war which I feel can be prevented by snipe bids.

Perhaps live bidding near the end is doable for people in the US, but most auctions started in the US end past midnight in Europe.

I used to do live bidding as well, but a couple of times I placed a bid, only to have someone outbid me while I was asleep. And just placing your highest bid immediately because there is always some guy who will outbid you, based on the fact that if you bid X, they bid X+2.

With sniping, he has no such advantage and if he cannot judge the value of something, either he will get it wrong, or won't bid, or place a bid that is too high. 2 out of 3, that works in my favor.

Where do you obtain such a program...thinking being "sneaky" may be the wrong term, I'm just whining...I just don't have the time to sit around and wait for an auction's last few seconds...this could help to level the playing field ;-)

I only bid with eSnipe.

I pick the max I am willing to pay and that's it. No bidding wars. If someone is willing to pay more than my max, so be it. If my max is $2 higher than yours, well that's life. When I put in a bid it is truly my max. I always *hope* I get it for less. eSnipe has a feature that checks your max against the current bid 90 minutes before the ending time and alerts you if someone has already outbid you. I have *never* adjusted my bid based on that. Like I said, my max is my max.

One of the things you can do with eSnipe: Delete (or lower) your bid. Upon reflection, study, etc. perhaps you will realize you really didn't want the item, or at least not at your original bid. Try *that* without a sniping program. The ability to do this makes it easy to slap down a bid then reflect on things at your leisure and adjust.

eSnipe has another feature that you might find useful. You can group items together so that a win on one will cancel the bids on the others. This is good if you really only want one of something but there are several up for bids. You put your max on all of them but never get (nor pay for) more than one.

Bidding wars are bad for the buyers. By using eSnipe I don't contribute to that.

eSnipe does for you what you should do for yourself if you had the discipline to do so in the heat of the battle.

I'll look into it, thanks. Sounds like there are several options there that would be helpful.