OT - bid sniping on eBay

[par38lamp]

eSnipe

I have used eSnipe with good sucess. It works fine. I have lost bids, but that is because my max was lower than the proxy price.

Sniping allows me to set my personal max price I want to spend, then walk away from the auction until it's over. If I don't get it, well, too bad for me. I can also remove my snipe at anytime if I get 'bidder's remorse' and not hoping someone outbids me becuase I bid more than I wanted.

I have nabbed some good bargains sniping. Best to date would be a JL Audio 10w3 Powerwedge (factoy enclosed subwoofer) for $80 in perfect shape.

I have been sniped by other bidders as well. I set eSnipe for 7 seconds, and he set his sniping for 5 seconds.

Some mentioned it is software. While I can't speak for other sniping companies, eSnipe is a website that handles your snipes, and uses their servers to communicate with eBay, not my unreliable computer and sometimes very latent "high-speed" cable modem.

 

[Finnbear]

It trumps the ebay proxy bids for some reason. I have won every auction I have ever used a sniper on. That's all I know about that.

Gary

It won't trump a proxy bid unless it is higher$. The trouble with an early high proxy bid is that it is really easy for anyone else bidding to push the price up to the proxy bid amount often times without being the high bidder. People who have no intention of buying can run the bid up to the proxy amount. Lots of bids also shows tire kickers there is lots of interest in an item which causes even more tire kickers to pay attention to the item. With a snipeware bid you will only win if the snipe bid is the HIGH bid but you may not have to pay your max bid since you don't reveal your hand until the last seconds of the auction.
Finnbear

 

[Dan Forsh]

Something else that comes to mind that no one else has mentioned up to now.

Shill bidding.

A lot of times you may think that someone is fishing your bid up, but it is actually the seller using another account or one of his friends.

They bid little increments until they just out bid you then stop.

Or they massively out bid you then retract the bid with some chitty excuse like "I entered the wrong amount." One real bugbear about this little scenario is that ebay remove the foul bid, but still leave you at your maximum bid, rather than where the bid was at when the other guy placed the bogus bid.

 

[eyolf]

<i>.ebay remove the foul bid, but still leave you at your maximum bid,...</i>

This happened to me a while back. Luckily I checked in and retracted the bid, AND notified Ebay. The seller must have checked out bogus as there was no negative consequences for my bid retract, and the seller dissappeared. It pays to be very careful...even though my bid was only around $40 for this item, I would have been pretty crabby about getting taken advantage of...

there was a scenario right here on AS a few years ago...a seller had a Jonsered 111 that was gathering no bids as we all waited it out...nobody wanted to bid and get the price up too high. So one enterprising soul emailed the seller and offered him or her a fixed, but low, price if they agreed to sell it right there and then and go around ebay. The buyer posted pics of the saw and gloated while we were jealous...

And the rest of us missed out...as well as the seller forfeiting a couple hundred bucks, more or less. I consider that a lesson learned; somebody (like me) should have placed a reasonable bid to keep the seller motivated (or beat the shady dealer to the punch with my own email....)

 

[smokechase II]

counter sniping

I like to snipe myself. No real hunter hires a software program to kill the big buck. Where is the satisfaction in a computer making the kill?

But when you're the seller snipers are the bad guys and you have to supplement bidding to augment them sniper guys.

When selling, I like to have proxy snipping going on with one or two other accounts. These snipping bids on my sale are based on an algorithm that predicts a max that other snipers will go for in the last 20 seconds or so.

The key to this is identifying the potential snipers. If they haven't bid earlier my math program can't identify them and all my preset programs aren't worth much. (The best snipers never bid the thing up at all. They just do that one bid at the finish line, jerks).

This is like card counting. I haven't got to the level where I have software continuously monitoring sales of like items for the prior few months. Instinct still plays a roll even at these electronic auctions.

To avoid getting caught I certainly don't apply these methods to more than 20% of my sales. One must have a governor on their individual augmenting software where if the price reaches a pre-set minimum at day 3 or day 4 etc, no snipping up later is necessary.

When you get stuck paying for an item, accept that is just the cost of doing business. Just write off the supposed mailing and packaging of those items you bought of your own and that keeps things even.

I just made this all up. But it is probably true for somebody.
The real story is my wife said look at the bank account stupid and I'm on hold for any more eBaying over 10 or 15 bucks.

 

[Lakeside53]

You had me until the end!!!! I'm reading this thinking "is this guy for real", and "he just called ME a jerk", then.....

 

[Ranchero50]

As smokechase said. I've had that feeling that someone was watching the auction and pushing the price for the seller. I always watch the auction go down to 30 seconds and then bid what I want. I also watch the page hit count to see how many lurkers are out there as I watch it come down. Especially for saws and valuable parts. I watched a blower setup for a ranger go from $750 to $2400 in the last minute with my brother. It was sick, the thing sat at $550 for a week and finally climbed during the last hour. I've also done a WTH bid with a couple days to go on some OEM emblems for my '71 F250 and won them (probally from lack of interest more than anything)

Jamie

 

[MNTAINGAL23]

I was wondering how I got outbid around Christmas time. I was trying to get a bigger saw for the hubby and kept losing. I did notice the same people pretty much took it. Thanks for the info.
I have had good luck with all the stuff I have bought. Just got my sweetie an 064 for a really good price from ebay.

 

[buzz sawyer]

As smokechase said. I've had that feeling that someone was watching the auction and pushing the price for the seller. I always watch the auction go down to 30 seconds and then bid what I want. I also watch the page hit count to see how many lurkers are out there as I watch it come down. Especially for saws and valuable parts. I watched a blower setup for a ranger go from $750 to $2400 in the last minute with my brother. It was sick, the thing sat at $550 for a week and finally climbed during the last hour. I've also done a WTH bid with a couple days to go on some OEM emblems for my '71 F250 and won them (probally from lack of interest more than anything)

Jamie

Ditto - or would that be Tritto? In light of several posts so far, guess I was a little surprised to see all the sniping software for sale on Ebay.

 

[adkranger]

Nothing at all unethical 'bout sniping. I like to pull my own trigger too.... I just do it from long range with a time delay is all. Besides it's not "game", it's just eBay junk and I've got better things to do with my time other than sit around watchin' the Bay. Click it and forget it is my motto........ If I get for what I'm willing to pay great, if not who cares. I don't get wrapped up in it. Much harder in a real, live auction though. Where you see and feel the item.