I find it musing, and a little sad, when you see a complete auction that has over 50 bids. It is usually one guy that keeps increasing his bid by $5 until he is high bidder than along comes a snipe at the end to defeat both of the early bidders.

For a seller, however, that's the golden land!

You're right.

It is just you.

What is the timing of the actual automatic snipe bid? 1 second left, 10 seconds? I would think that some of the failed automatic sniper bids would occur if several, or even just two auto bids occur at the same time. How closely does eBay drill down on bid timing?

I do do my own snipe bidding, but it's pretty rare these days that anything I really want on eBay makes it to the end of an auction at a price I like.

This could be because you have weak password:

"esniper is complaining about a CAPTCHA. What's that?

"It's a security measure to prevent 'bots (like esniper) from working. See here for more details.
When eBay asks to solve a captcha this might be related to a weak eBay password. Try to change your password."

http://esniper.sourceforge.net/

I snipe manually. Waiting till the last second keeps the price down. Bid early, and the price gets driven up. Pretty simple really.

I miss the old days when you could follow everyone and know what they bid, or check what a seller had bought it for 6 months earlier. It was fun to try and figure out what someone might bid based on previous auctions.

I won a guitar by following one guy who had lost 2 other auctions for the same guitar and I checked what else he was bidding on and could see how much he increased his max and figured that if he wanted it he would bid x amount. Got lucky and outbid him by $5. I'm sure he was ticked, but all I did was my homework.

John

This. By manually sniping this morning, I picked up a Chorus 9 speed 53/39 crankset for $22.02 plus 8.50 shipping. The under-bidder had bid $22.01, but what was showing was $19.99

There's just about nothing I like more than winning an auction by a penny.

I do the same thing, but those last few seconds can be hard on the old chest pump. And I often get nuked in the last second by an auto-snipe.
But I also win a few.

Right. But I never feel bad if I do get out-sniped, as my bid is always the most I'd want to pay.

Yeah. Me too. I don't get near as exercised as I used to over this stuff. Quite often I just put in a "hail Mary" bid and forget about it.
If I wake up the next morning and have won, all the better. If not? No big deal.

+1

Manual sniping is my approach...and, as said by jeirvine...if I get out sniped and/or out bid, well, my bid is the most I would pay...so...let it go then!

Oh...and I factor in the shipping! Many people just look at the price...and then complain about shipping...I take it as a whole price!

Yeah, I'm quite surprised how often people don't factor in shipping. Lots of times the odd number I use just gets shipping up to an even number.
I do the hail mary bid from time to time. I occasionally remember to do it via a sniper, but usually I just put the bid in. Then I find something I like even better that I want to put the hail mary bid on and sweat it out that I'm going to get both of those and spend more than I want (hasn't ever happen, almost never get either).

For esniper, the program I use, the timing is set by a command line switch:

-s Set the bidding time, specified as now, or seconds before
the end of an auction. If now is used, bids will be placed
immediately. The corresponding configuration option is
seconds, default value is 10 seconds. You should snipe
late enough in an auction to prevent a manual bidder to
update their bid, but before other snipes. In case two
bids are within one bid increment of each other, the first
bid placed wins.

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."

this.
if i win, good for me. if i lose, someone else gonna pay for more than i was willing to. bad for him/her, good for me.
whether bid-and-f***-it or snipe-w-a-bot, all are the parts of fun. no?

The notion that, "someone else is willing to pay that so it must be worth at least that amount".

This appears to be a strong notion, also appears to function when there is a small incremental bid and two or more have at it to be top dog, even days away from the auction end.
Ego is a powerful force.

Since this is posted in C&V, it is a different ballgame than just bidding on current parts. Most of us who have ridden and worked on bikes for a long time have seen how the cost of old used parts have gone up when they become C&V. There will always be another buyer who wants to build or buy something that he or she had or wanted when that person was young and now they can afford it.

And except for those truly rare and classic parts, most of the older high end stuff is really cheap compared to new current parts. Sure, the days of buyer $100 DA derailleurs for $10 are gone, but when comparing the cost and quality of new current parts they are pretty cheap.

I know that there are those who complain about prices being bumped up whether by have-to-have bidding or last minute sniping. Unfortunately we probably have no one to blame but ourselves. The professing of "classic and vintage" over "old and used" has gone a long way to enhance the value.

John

This scenario describes one of the main reasons I like sniping programs. Find one you like better, just cancel the other snipe. It's not like cancelling an Ebay bid, which is kind of a big deal and not so cool imho.

If you're like me, sometimes the one you like better is already in the parts bin. Oh gee, I forgot I had that.

Yeah, that too. I do the auction sniper as often as I remember, but I'm rarely on eBay these days (and when I am, it's usually for something buy it now), so I often forget I have an auctionsniper account. It is the way to go most of the time though.

If eBay prevents sniping, I would just about quit bidding on items. The only items I would buy through eBay would be "Buy It Now" listings.

Since I started using a sniper, I have been winning a much higher percentage of auctions that I bid on. If I don't win, the price was higher than I was willing to pay. I always place my bid through a sniper for the most I would be willing to pay or what the item is worth to me. Often I end up winning auctions for much less than my maximum bid could have been.

Before I started using a sniper, I was routinely getting outbid on auctions at the very last second. I had just about quit bidding on items because I always lost. This was particularly true for auctions that ended at times when I was unable to watch the auction and bid near the end. If eBay started banning snipers, it seems to me that it would ultimately hurt their business and bottom line. I for one would substantially cut back my shopping on eBay.

The advantage of a sniper is that you can set it to submit your bid near the end of an auction, such as 5 seconds before the end. That greatly increases you odds of winning. If you submit a bid 2, 3, 4 days before the end of an auction, in most cases someone will come along and top your bid -- unless it is ridiculously high. My winning percentage on auctions probably increased from 5% to 50-75% after I started using a sniper.

Yes. I can also make a list of items, each with its own price I'm willing to pay, and a quantity I need, and the snipe program will work through the list and bid on the items until I've won the number of items specified. E.g. if I'm looking for a saddle, and I find three listings I'm interested in bidding on, I create a simple file with the item numbers and prices I'm willing to pay, and feed it to my snipe program:

quantity=1
251243445560 15.99
160986626444 21.50
111026073739 25.50

The program works through the list, submits my bids as the auctions get close to ending, and exits once I've won one of the saddles.

I think ebay would prefer a buy it now model.
We will see what transpires, after ebay/paypal split. The true situation for day will surface, revenues would really be declining if not for the higher fees, and final value fee add on for shipping…
Ebay really wants to compete with Amazon.

Probably true, and in light of this verification issue, I will be more inclined to list items that way, at least items of any real financial consequence.

As much as I don't like winning an item because my bid was blocked, I would feel worse wondering if bids were blocked on an item I sold. And I would be pretty hot if a would-be buyer contacted me to let me know his/her bid was blocked. I wonder what the corporate response would be under that scenario.

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.