Originally Posted by
JohnDThompson
Yes,
as noted: "Most eBay bids are proxy bids. If everybody understood that, figured out how much they wanted to pay, and bid their maximum, sniping would not be useful. However, many bidders have no idea how much they want to pay, so they bid in small increments until they beat your proxy. If you bid your maximum at the end of the auction, you greatly reduce the chances of being bid up by such a bidder."
I have bought hundreds of things via. Ebay auctions. Almost everthing cycling related has been through Ebay.
I rarely make a bid prior to a minute before auction close. I almost always swoop in with 5 seconds left. Why would I want to want to compete against clueless low-feedback bidders, or tit-for-tat revenge bidders, or worst: shill bidders? There is no point to making an advance proxy bid.
If I were to put in a proxy bid on a big ticket item, there is nothing to prevent some shill from picking away with $1 increment bids until my high bid was disclosed. So I've won the auction, but been forced to pay the absolute highest amount I was prepared to pay. Every time; no deals.
If Ebay were to change the rules such that the end time of an auction was no longer fixed, there would be far more shill bid activity, and I would stop using Ebay.