Sneaky last second bidders

philb120

Another snipe website is https://www.justsnipe.com

Hintza

If you want to do it the old fashioned way here are my top tips:-


1. Have a second screen open with your top bid in place ready to confirm (refresh the other page)

2. Set your bid at your maximum plus your lucky number (I reckon greater than 25p)

3. If you are unsure of price think of the physcological barriers and bid a shade above eg £102.11 or whatever. Most folk will probably stop at the £100 mark and you will need to be £2 over that for next bid.

4. Don't try and be too cute or you will lose

motorguy

Moneyfornothing wrote:

The snipers are good if you REALLY want an item.
It takes a lot of the enjoyment out of winning an item through 'manual' bidding though.

i've never seen the point of sniping. personally i decide what the absolute max i want to bid is and put the bid on and then just leave it and see what happens. sitting watching and bidding at the last few seconds only increases the possibility of paying more than you really want for an item.

donstermonster

I USE WWW.AUCTIONSNIPER.COM ,

Why are snipes so good - beacuse they prevent the price from artificially being bid up ,

PGILC1 says i bid the max an dwait and see - YES but that encourages people to bid more - its a bit lik eplaying cards you wouldnt show your hand until you had to so why bother with an auction when it is your money

SECOND REASON - it prevents you from paying more than you wanted - if you manually bid you may be tempted to bid more than you really want to if you are outbid
and there is no need - with millions of items being added every day what you want is going to come up for sale again anyway

Best of luck snopers !!!!

tparkin

I use Buyer Tools Reminder, which is a freeware application available from https://www.buyertools.com. This software has some great features, including the ability to import watched items from My eBay and to set up bidding groups, where you can set up to potentially automatically bid on several items but all other bids are cancelled if you win one of the items - I am not on commission by the way!

I tend to use sniping, as donstermonster suggests, to avoid getting carried away at the last moment and bidding more than I really intended. It is also useful for auctions that end during the day or at times when you will not be around.

The bidding group feature is particularly useful if you want a specific type of item and have a maximum price in mind that you are prepared to pay. Say for example that you are after a particular type of mobile phone and that there are 5 for sale on eBay when you do a search. If you set up all 5 in Buyer Tools Reminder with a maximum bid of, say, £77, you can leave the software to do its work. It will bid as each auction comes to a close and, if you win one of the phones your other auto bids will be cancelled - clever.

This does take some of the excitement out of buying on eBay but in my book is better than being outbid by a £1 or two at the last moment.

rdwarr

An auction is a bit like a competition. You may have rival bidders so anything you do to alert them to your position will be to your disadvantage. Decide your absolute maximum and bid it as late as possible.
If you still do get sniped it simply means that somebody was willing to pay more than you. You'll be luckier next time.
Oh, be wary of automatic sniping programs. A few of them are insecure and have your eBay password. You risk account theft.

calibrax

Sniping is definitely the best way to win without paying more than you have to.

In my opinion, what eBay should do is when there is a bid in the last 2 minutes of an auction, then the auction is extended for 5 minutes. That would prevent sniping, and good would reach their true price based on demand. Which is what an auction is supposed to be about!

soolin

calibrax wrote:

Sniping is definitely the best way to win without paying more than you have to.

In my opinion, what eBay should do is when there is a bid in the last 2 minutes of an auction, then the auction is extended for 5 minutes. That would prevent sniping, and good would reach their true price based on demand. Which is what an auction is supposed to be about!

Moving the end time of an auction is a bad idea, as a seller I set my auctions to finish when I want them to finish not when ebay decide bidding has finished.

Sniping doesn't matter anyway if everyone just sets their maximum proxy bid. you can only lose an auction if it sells for more than you want to pay, so I can't see the problem.

Soo

nightswimmer

Ooops.. didn't mean to hit that thanks button (not that I didn't appreciate your post soolin )

soolin wrote:

Moving the end time of an auction is a bad idea, as a seller I set my auctions to finish when I want them to finish not when ebay decide bidding has finished.

That's definitely an advantage

Sniping doesn't matter anyway if everyone just sets their maximum proxy bid. you can only lose an auction if it sells for more than you want to pay, so I can't see the problem.

I think the thing is, as in a real auction room, some people's maximums can increase if they really want an item and are tempted by the fact that all they would need to do to get it, is bid another couple quid.

nightswimmer

Whilst I use auctionsniper, I would be a bit wary of setting the time at 6 secs. If there are any server problems along the way, this might not be enough time for your bid to go through. I've lost auctions in the past because of this. I tend to set mine to 20 secs, but as always YMMV.