seeker333

The ebay proxy bidding feature rewards shill bidders (the seller or a "helper" bidding on his own item to drive up price). Shill bidding is rampant on ebay, and ebay does next to nothing to prevent it, since they benefit from both a sell and a higher end price. An amazing number of people actually think these shills are sincere, legit bidders. Watch enough auctions and you will have the mildly entertaining experience of seeing the same "sold" widget coming right back to auction days or weeks later. I have seen some sellers "sell" the same item 2-3 times, claiming buyer backed out of deal (gets em out of paying ebay plus covers as&).

Some confused folks do get caught up in auctions, like its a fun little game - so this also makes the proxy bidding process not really helpful to buyers.

You can snipe bid manually within 5 secs to end, no problem, by just watching the clock. The main benefit to snipe programs is they can enter a bid in your absence. Also, some of these snipe programs lets the buyer watch auctions without the seller knowing you're watching (the std ebay watch list tells sellers how many folks are watching their auction, which may affect their shilling actions).

If you're an informed, careful, frugal shopper you will find most auctions reach an unacceptably high bid point in the end, ending your interest in the auction and rendering your snipe bid strategy moot.

My advice to buyers is wait till the last moment to bid, then enter a bid that represents the max you're willing to pay - then win or lose, you're happy.

Anyone who complains about "losing to a sniper" either a. simply and rightfully lost to a higher bidder or b. lost to a shill bidder, in which case they are doubly better off for not winning.

The majority of ebay sellers are fair, decent folks - however, just like riding in traffic, you'd be foolish to not treat the situation with due respect for known hazards.

This works and it's free (deluxe is trialware, basic freeware works fine).

https://www.auction-sentry.com/

vpiuva

I've had several instances where I've received a second chance offer immediately after the auction - almost assuredly the top bidder was a shill. You just have to never bid too high. In fact, I just like always bidding too low. Still buy stuff. Lose and go on to the next one. My pet peeve is with sellers pulling the listing when the bids haven't reached the level they want, eg. "error in the listing" or "item is no longer available for sale". Horse****. Still missing a few choice components cheap for my Gitane because of this practice.

Blue Order

Every day, new evidence about the intelligence of some of eBay's denizens...

Blue Order

+1

seeker333

Me too, ain't that a real hoot?. I never bid on these sellers' auctions again, as a matter of principle.

Lately ebay has started the anonymous "private bidder" bids listing, making it impossible to use search features to try and sniff out a shiller. Ebay claims it's a security feature - well it is, for ebay and their customers, the sellers. "Private bidder" adds a negligible amount of security for buyers. I'm probably 100 times more likely to be defrauded by shillers than an nigerian prince, or whatever the scam du jour is.

Blue Order

Let's not forget that eBay is fence central too. It just gets worse and worse and worse in the eBay "community."

Old Fat Guy

check out the bidders and bidding on the Panto SR Guerciotti, in the last hour now...
https://offer.ebay.com/ws/eBayISAPI.d...m=140085997641
view 'bidding details' to see what I mean.

OrangeOkie

I snagged this little beauty, by total luck, with one second left on an auction. I had been watching this bike for several days and had actually traveled over to the owner's house to check it out in person. I decided to snipe it manually. There was one other bidder who had made a bid about one day prior. I had done my homework and knew what I was willing to spend. When the time came to put my bid in my heart almost stopped beating when my browser froze up. With only seconds left to go, according to my wrist watch, I frantically opened another browser, signed in to ebay, clicked on the bike and typed in my bid as quickly as possible and hit submit and confirm. I was sure I had lost my chance to even bid on my rare dream bike. To my surprise I came up as high bidder and refreshed to see I had won the auction with one second to spare. The guys over on the Moto Guzzi V11 forum kept asking me how I had sniped that beauty with only one second to go. My answer? . . . skill, of course!

pharnabazos

I've used this for years and never had anyone outbid me in that ten-second window who wasn't also sniping with a max snipe more than I was willing to pay. The only one you're trying to fool is the newbie who keeps upping their max by $1 over and over until they're winning, driving the price beyond reason.

55/Rad

www.ezsniper.com/

Use it all the time, works beautifully.

Sammyboy

I always snipe manually - I use two tabs on Firefox, one with my bid entered and ready to go, the other, watching the clock. This way you can reliably hit the last 3-4 secs. I got outbid by a guy the other day, who had feedback of over 100, and I got an email from him saying "I'd been winning that all week, and then you had to try to steal it in the last seconds? You bloody idiot. Now I have to pay twice as much for it!". I was astonished. He still got a bargain.

Anyway, I didn't know there were sniping programmes that were free. Recently, I've missed out on several things because I couldn't be there at the end. That said, in the last two days, I've got cycling shoes for £2.20 and a bike for £11.50, even though I was out at the time.

mrmw

That's exactly the way I've been doing it. Trouble is, when I can't be around the screen at auction's end.

I now use the standalone Baygenie program. $15. Works great. Loads on my computer, so my passwords etc are secure. Good reliable reviews from Cnet.

When I was in college, I 'picked' antiques for wholesale resale to antique dealers. They taught me that when you go to an auction, you decide in advance what you will pay, if the bid goes higher, you let it go by.

That was good early training for eBay. No last second passions. Decide what you will bid, enter it into the sniping program, and go on with your life.

A very sane way to conduct business.

Two weeks ago I picked up a new Deore XT 8 spd cassette and a new HG70 8 spd cassette (both poorly described) for $20 US delivered. Yesterday I missed out on some Command shifters, which went for $9 more than my max last second bid.

If seized with a collector's frenzy, the sanity of this method quickly becomes irrelevant. Using a bidding program is a great tonic for this codependency.

wahoonc

I do both manual and use a couple of different sniping programs. I usually set my limits and let it go. I watch a lot of stuff mainly for reference. The most recent one that blew my mind was a 1963 Sturmey Archer FW hubset and shifter in two separate auctions that went for close to $200 too rich for my blood!

Aaron

nick burns

Beautiful bike!

lotek 

I do the same as Sammy (when I remember to watch what I'm bidding on).
Unless I REALLY need an item I'm usually content to bid my highest and let it go at
that, if I win fine, if not there will be another one listed tomorrow.

I don't think the Guerciotti auction is that unusual, and not a bad price for that bike.

The Bidder1. . .bidder2 thing is great for cutting down on fraudulent 2nd chance offers,
but it does hide shill bidders (on items over $100 ?).

Marty

reverborama

Unless it's a Buy-it-now, I just wait and bid during the last 30 seconds or so. Whenever I bid on something early, someone always comes along and bids a bunch of times and the price creeps up and up. I've never tried one of the services, but I might have to now.

Old Fat Guy

Bidder 4(who raised the bids about $200) in the Guerciotti auction had 100% activity with the seller. The bike was a damaged SL frame. The gruppo was the only thing worth serious cash, IMO. I bought a nicer Guerciotti for half that, albeit not pantographed.

Rabid Koala

I don't like the new system either. However, I think that above referenced percentage of activity is more likely that the bidder hasn't bid on anything else in the last 30 days. If they only bid on that one item, 100% of their activity would be with that seller.

I prefer the old system. I like to know who I am bidding against.

leftthread

+1. When you see a bidder with zero feedback who joined two days ago bidding a huge amount, well,
no thanks.

Sprint75

Yup, gotta snipe if you want to win the item. BUT... I like to do what I call a gentlemen's snipe, which is to make a low bid early showing interest in the item before sniping at the end. This way if someone else is interested in that item, they know they will have to outbid me for it. Then when I win it no one can complain that I sniped because I was there from the beginning. Started doing that because it really bothered me when it appeared that there was no interest in an item and suddenly in the last 2 minutes the bidding goes crazy and an item gets rudely stolen away by surprise. Play nice.

rnagaoka

I routinely offer second chance offers to the losers right after the auction ends. Remember that many sellers have exact duplicate items for sale. I figure it's a win-win situation since I don't have to pay insertion fees and the buyer gets the product at their max bid. But I can understand that some buyers would be wary at this practice.

vpiuva

Does that go for used items as well?

Sierra

This is exactly why I use a sniping service. My browser(dial up) has a bad habit of going to sleep on me. Lost too many auctions from that happening. No DSL available where I live and the high speed cable service is too expensive. Esnipe solved the problem.

Garandman

Personally, I bid what I'm willing to pay as early as possible. A last-minute only wins if they pay more than what I thought it was worth.

When I sell, it's too annoying to get all the bids in the last few seconds, so I often offer discounted or free shipping if the winning bid is placed more than 24 hours before auction end. That way, I bone the "snipers," which makes me happy, because such last minute bidders dishonor real snipers.

McDave

But in between your opening bid and a sniper's last second bid there are the type of bidder that plays like it's a real auction... bidding until he is high bidder or run out of funds. If he wins no sweat off your back. But if he eventually gives up and you win, you have just paid that much extra. Sniping doesn't give that type of bidder a chance to run up the price on you.

Ok, you boned the "bad" snipers, but you just cost yourself shipping fees and potentially higher bids from the _real_ snipers (same difference).

To sum up, you're buying high and selling low, and you probably sleep really good at night.