How do I bid on ebay when I'm not there?

Florrie_3

Surely there a lot of security implications to entering your ebay username and ebay password into these online automatic bidding websites.

Theft of ebay usernames is rife and can cost individuals a lot of money. If you use paypal for instance, you will probably entered your ebay username and password so that it can automatically access your auction wins and make your payments.

Doesn't that worry anyone?

I subscribe to the maximum theory myself. Decide what your maximum is and stick to it. Whether you bid manually in the last few seconds (which i prefer to do coz it's more fun) or you place a long term bid - your max is your max and that's that. if you don't win then the item must have sold for more than you were willing to pay ie: more than your max

wibblywobbly_3

cafenervosa wrote:

There is 1 simple way, bid your maximum bid that you want to pay. If someone outbids you, you won't care because it went for more than you can pay. Forget sniping, MAXIMUM is the answer.

People are not always rational which is where this simple maximium upfront breaks down - a bit like in "real" auctions, the excitement can take over.

1. Seeing an item with bids present well before auction ends may make an item seem more attractive (people teetering on the edge of bidding are reassured by seeing other bids, helps confirm the idea it is a worthwhile item) and encourage others to bid causing final cost to be higher than if they had not bid.

2. A lot of people are flexible on their maximum. Say you placed bid and have used max bid facility in eBay. Another person bids, your max just outbids their max...This person goes away and thinks, I have only been outbid by 50p (or whatever increment depending on auction price) - I am not going to be beaten I am prepared to bid a quid more (or whatever increment) and thus they outbid you by exceeding their original max budget. If you snipe near the end there is little time for competing bidders to re-evaluate their maximum and less chance of you being outbid.

3. Fraud. If someone shows interest in an auction early, some dubious sellers may get other users to place bids (these may be "fake" users they have created and use for such a purpose or genuine users that tehy happen to know and may indeed help in a similar style) - the point of these purely to try to get you to up your bid.

You know your maximum but, due to reasons above, it makes sense to deploy it as late as possible to increase your winning chance.

This may be of interest.
http://www.usatoday.com/tech/science/columnist/2006-06-25-physics-of-ebay_x.htm

wibblywobbly_3

movingcloud wrote:

You may like to use Prospector - http://www.moxieproxy.com/. It has the added advantage of setting a bid group for you, so you can find several different listings of the same thing - put them into a bid group and Prospector will bid in the last seconds of each auction until you win an item, and then it will cancel all the rest of the items you had scheduled after it.

Earlier in the thread jbidwatcher was mentioned - this also includes this "group" feature which works very well.
It also has a nice feature where there is option to take p&p into account when calculating "snipe" bids.
You can define your own timing for when snipe is placed too (whereas with online services you are restricted to their limits) - so if you really want to gamble you can snipe just e.g. 5s from auction end.

I went through a hard learning curve on eBay - only statred regularly getting items when I began sniping - when i used to bid early and upfront just forever outbid by a few tens of pence by competitors in win at all costs / auction fever mode! I should add all my maximum bids are carefully calculated as I only buy in certain specialist areas where I have a good grasp of "worth" and so my high winning when sniping is not down to larger max set but just down to late bidding.

GabbaGabbaHey

tightgitttt wrote:

I also searched for free sniping tools and found one at this site called j bid watcher.

JBidWatcher has its own web site at http://www.jbidwatcher.com. As well as very good functionality (e.g., multisnipes), the biggest advantage to me over all the other sniping tools is that you never need to give your eBay password to anybody.

chris0241

I personally use Bid Bullet. After sampling many other sites, including Auction Stealer, I found Bid Bullet to be the most reliable.

It's also UK based and the company is contactable by email or telephone if I ever need help - a big plus point for me!

I think they give a free trial for all new sign ups and then they charge a flat rate of 25p (ish) per win; other American based sites I looked at charge a % which didn't seem fair.

Anyway guys and gals, make up your on mind - http://www.bidbullet.co.uk

Chris

PS: Did anyone read the recent article of a jug bought on eBay for £100 being resold for £46,000??? :j

Aidan_Smith

Block bid to your maximum at the last opportunity or yes it can be done on WAP.

fluffybunny_2

I used to use the maximum method until a seller used a second id to shill bid to get the price up!

I reported him and both ids were suspended.

I find that if you bid early that only gives another ebayer an opportunity to bid against you.

I've used auctionstealer for about 4 years and its brilliant.

I put my maximum bid into auctionstealer so I'm getting the best of both worlds. Also, if I later see an item say, for example, even cheaper on a buy it now, the beauty of auctionstealer is that I can go in and cancel an item I've set up.

If I'd already bid on another item, ebay does not allow you to retract bids.

Aidan_Smith

fluffybunny wrote:

I used to use the maximum method until a seller used a second id to shill bid to get the price up!

Its very easy to do too - I'm suprised ebay doesnt do more about it, very obvious though - the new bidder normally hasnt any feedback.