Thread: In need of enlightenment about sniping

Originally Posted by Hawkeye5

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But here is the kicker for me. Take these two Grim Reapers that recently were sold on eBay. If you bid on one with a high max bid, and a nicer one shows up before the first auction is over, you may end up doing what the high bidder on the first auction did and withdraw your $500+ bid, crashing the price to $200 something and go bid on the second. With a sniping program all you have to do is cancel the snipe. No harm, no foul, no mistakes, and no mess such as was created with the Reapers.

I was under the impression that a bid could not be retracted except for certain circumstances, not just because someone changes their mind about a bid.

That is the biggest advantage of the Sniper you actually haven't bid until seconds before the end.. so yes you can cancel most of them up until the last 6 minutes... The program has to "Load" so most of them have a lock out between 10-5 minutes before the end of the auction, you can cancel up until that lock occurs with that program....

IMHO if used correctly they do save you money....but you have to be able to set the sniper and walk away I never check them again until after the auctions end, I never increase a sniper set either...

Originally Posted by paco

I was under the impression that a bid could not be retracted except for certain circumstances, not just because someone changes their mind about a bid.

That is the way it is supposed to be but people cancel their bids on occasion and ebay doesn't seem to enforce the rule.

There is a whole thread in this forum on the subject.

Originally Posted by Hawkeye5

Putting your maximum bid out with days left just makes no sense to me. I want to avoid what I call "nibblers", the bidder that works in $5 increments probing to find your max and just driving up the price you pay.

I just bid the max I am willing to pay for any ebay item and walk away. If I win it, fine... If I lose it by one dollar, then someone wanted the item a dollar worse than I did.

Of course, I've lost a bunch of nice razors when I had a snipe at 3x what they sold, just because my snipe didn't go through. But I've still managed to get more than enough razors even without these.