Originally Posted by
spinnaker
This is a very dangerous method for bidding anyway. It causes you to spend more than you planned. Set a max amount, remember to include cents and forget about it.
Not really. If you sent the bid amount on the snipe to same amount you would have in the first place ($40 in the OP's case) then it comes out the the same. Sniping brings down the price since it does not encourage you or others to out bid one another since, essentially, there's only one shot.
There are lots of websites that will do ebay snipping but they charge. There's
jbidwatcher that a free desktop application that works okay.