Chop!

Gnash! Gnash! & treble Gnash! A few weeks ago I wanted an inflatable kayak to tow behind my folders, i was winning until 5 seconds from the end, then lost it. Gnash!
Last week I was bidding on that Graziella folding tandem, I was winning until 8 seconds from the end, then lost that! Gnash!
Yesterday I was bidding on a Skoot folder, no bids except the starting bid of £80, I bid £150 late in the bidding, then seconds from the end, yep, you've guessed it! I lost it when it went for £155
I guess I'll have to download a sniping programme and join the snipers.
It makes my blood boil!

If you are out in Brighton today, watch out for a Mad Welshman with a nasty case of cycle rage!!!!!!!

TrekJapan

Yep. I'm gonna bid on a bike component in a few days that I absolutely have to win. I'm sniping as well.

John

ogeluv

snipers have cost me numerous hundreds of dollars and lost auctions in the last seconds. they are the lowest forms of life on ebay. get a life and keep it fair. i dont feel as bad when a prior bidder wins late but when your only bid is during the last minute it real shows that you need to get a life. i hate em.

TrekJapan

One bid. Make it count. Keeps the cost down. Love it, hate it. That's how the game is played.

John

Gotte

How does it work? Does it put in a bid right at the end, or does it block your bid?

HGR3inOK

Hmmm! If you bid the maximum you are willing to pay for an item using eBay's Automatic Bidding, then you will only be outbid by a buyer who is willing to pay more than you are for an item. If you don't bid your maximum, don't complain about sniping. It's an auction!

EvilV

The answer is to be realistic about the price. If you put in a low maximum bid, the item will go to someone else unless no one else is interested. Think what the item is worth to you; think about the market value of the item and enter a little above that as your highest bid. If you have realistically appraised the market value of the item, you will probably win.

I buy lots on ebay and when I lose out, it is because someone wanted to pay more than me. That's the whole fun and point of an auction.

rhm

Hey Chop!, and ogeluv, what can I say? If there's no buy-it-now, I snipe. I look the item over, do my research, and decide how much I'm willing to pay for it. Then I then go to esnipe and place my bid. After that, I try very hard not to go back to the auction site; doing so will (1) show other people I'm interested, and (2) show me other people are interested. Either one will cost me money.

While I'm doing something else, esnipe places my bid, usually 7 seconds before the auction closes. Then it sends me an email telling me what happened.

I don't do bidding wars. Bidding wars, in my opinion, are what drives the prices up.

juan162

All's fair in love, war, and ebay bidding. It is common knowledge among ebay veterans that the 'real' bidding is done in the last minute of the auction. If you can't take the heat, get out of the kitchen. You can either stop using ebay, start with your highest bid price, or do what everyone else does and use an ebay bidding program that allows you to bid at the last possible second. The latter won't guarantee a win, but it will give you a chance against the guy bidding $.50 more than your highest bid.

Chop!

Yeah! Right! Believe it or not, I'd worked that out. I'm a veteran biker, not a veteran ebayer.

social suicide

I see stuff go on eBay for more than retail. Either these people are living in the sticks and can't get the item or they're getting caught up in the bidding. Case in point: My son sold a used ipod for about $25 more on eBay than a reconditioned one from the apple store that came with a warranty, box, etc. Go figure.

rhm

No kidding! Check this out.

I got a GPS by using up a bunch of otherwise useless points on my credit card. I got it and found I hated it. An ebay search told me I could sell it for about $70. So I bought a better one on ebay (buy it now, $80) and put mine up with a buy-it-now price of $78 to cover my purchase, and promised free shipping if someone bought it with buy-it-now. The problem is the 'buy it now' option disappears when someone bids, and someone did.

It sold for $126, plus $8 shipping.

I like the new GPS much better, by the way.

ShinyBiker

I've bought and sold on ebay and I've found that very rarely will a auction item ever go for higher than an identical item using buy it now. So, if you're a winning bidder in an auction, you probably got a good deal.

EvilV

It is unbelievable but true. One of my sons knows a character who buys fancy trainers in retail outlets and then resells them at a profit on ebay. He makes a significant amount of money doing this. Considering that they pay postage on top there must be some real fools around. The same guy owns two houses. Since he is only 26, earns about average income and came from humble origins, he obviously has an entrepreneurial streak.

puppypilgrim

If you see an item you really really want, you need to use an electronic ebay sniping program which will submit bids for you up to your maximum price. That is the only reliable way to win the item.

If you use the sniper program, the only way someone will beat you is if they have set a higher price than your maximum.

This is why one previous advice was to bid the highest you are prepared to pay and let the ebay escalating program do the rest. It will automatically escalate your bids until you reach your max. or are able to buy the item.

Let me emphasize that sitting at your computer and manually entering a bid as the last few minutes wind down is not enough.

jur

I do manual sniping. I love the excitement, heart thudding in throat, and go into an aero tuck the last half a minute.

4cmd3

You have to determine the maximum price you are willing to pay beforehand. The reason NOT to plug this into eBay's escalating bid system - and the reason to snipe is that there is always some FOOL who will have his bid beaten and then go "Oh just $1 more", "Oh just $1 more", ... until he beats you. i.e. you're being rational, and he's not. eBay newbies are among this crowd - they get emotional about it - watching their auction with anticipation until the last second, paying more than they really should be willing to pay if they had thought about it.

The reason to put in any sort bid beforehand in my opinion is just to deter some people looking for a screaming bargain. i.e. bid enough to show that someone is interested and they won't get it for $1 ... hopefully they'll move on. Then snipe what you really want to pay? Lots of theories and strategies.

LittlePixel

I do manual sniping too. I have two tabs open - one so I can check the time left, the other with my final amount already entered and ready to 'send'. (I've lost auctions on slow connections waiting for the 'your bid amount' screen to load). Then I bid in the last few seconds. Works well, and is - I think - totally fair. All it means is you get in at the end with a fair bid that's hard to be outbidden in the final few nanoseconds.

I never bid twice - I only ever bid the amount I'm prepared to pay. If I snipe, but still get out-bid then to be honest - I'm usually happy as yes - I've lost the auction, but have not paid silly money.

Spasticteapot

Suck it up.

I've been sniping on eBay since I was twelve years old. No software, no tricks - just an egg timer and a fast internet connection. If you were willing to pay more than the amount the item sold for, why didn't you just bid that in the first place?

EvilV

I was struggling to see how a sniping programme would give you and edge since it can only bid your maximum bid, just like the ebay bid manager wotsit. I suppose it would avoid runaway emotion getting hold of the other party so he lost his wits and started to bid silly money. To be honest, most of the things I buy on ebay are in plentiful supply so losing one isn't much of a blow.

I once got frustrated in the last half minute of an auction when I discovered that I had been logged out and the browser started asking me to log in again. You all know what had happened by the time I managed to submit the bid. At least I still have the money. By now the thing I was trying to buy would have been lying at the back of the garage covered in grot.

Squeazel

If there's something I really want, I won't bid until the last minute or so (keeps the price low and entices the snipers to bid too low), then enter an auto-bid max of the highest I'm willing to go. Never had it fail- never been sniped. Once, the sniper program bid it up to the same amount as my auto-bid, but ran out of time, so I won anyway, but mostly I will get the item for less than my max. A couple of times, someone with a higher autobid took the item, and that's OK- they were just willing to pay more for it than I was. Bid once- that's the secret to keeping Ebay real.

rhm

Yes, that's just it. If you see someone else bid $41.50 for something you were willing to bid $41.00 for, it's easy to say what-the-hey, it's just another dollar, I'll bid $42.00. Ah, but the other guy has already bid $42.50... well, this item is worth more than I thought, so I'll bid $45... and it all goes downhill from there. Best just place your maximum bid and go ride your bike!

vik 

Good advice - I've gotten carried away on Ebay once or twice!...

The Smokester

I use Bidnapper. Another tactic: Don't use even dollar amounts. Put in a maximum bid of something like $55.56...That way, if someone also puts in $55 then you win by paying an extra few cents.

PDR

I use different strategies depending upon what the item is.
For example If I find something worth around £100 to me and there are no bids on it, I will put a bid of something like £60 - £70 on it to hopefully show others that I am keen and then come back near the end with 2 tabs/pages open and then bid up to £100 - £110. I try not to get carried away with auction fever.

If it is a common/plentiful item I’ll just put a bid on and wait until I get an e-mail on my BlackBerry to say if I have won or not. I have never tried sniping tools.

A few years ago I was trying to get a tube of molycoate grease for my Dad (to use on his airguns)..... there was a seller who had about 20 tubes for sale... I was out-bid by the same guy on the first 2 or 3 tubes until I realised that his max bid was always the same (£10)..... I out-bid him on the next tube and then proceeded to place a bid of £9.99 every time he bid on a tube... I made him pay for pi**ing me off.