Which ebay sniping program do you use?

Thats one of the biggest problems I've encountered on ebay - idiots with too much money and a dumbass need to out do everyone else. I regularly see used tools go for only 40 less than retail. Lie Nielson and Bridge City tools are a good examples, I don't even watch them anymore. I regularly see idiots pay more than retail for planes such as the stanley 90 even though the picture shows it to be relatively new. Just goes to show ya in the "land of opportunity (USA)" even idiots can make enough money to waste.

There is another reason why unscrupulous sellers *hate* sniping: it renders their efforts at shilling mostly ineffective. :)

Jim

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Unless their are new sniping programs out there that I don't know about, these programs are easily defeated. They are designed to snipe on the cheap. I.e. they bid incrementally until they get the highest bid. The only advantage they have is they have near perfect reaction and timing, unless their connection suddenly becomes slow at that crucial moment. To beat them just bid $30, or more depending on the present bid, in the last

5 - 10 seconds. Sniping programs will try to incrementally out bid and most often run out of time. If you loose it's most likely because someone with the same technique has out bid you.

Or do it the old fashioned way. What ever you want to bid on do an advanced search for the completed auctions for that item. Then bid the appropriate winning bid, or more if you really want the item. If you loose don't worry there will be plenty more come down the pipe.

Funny, my experience is the opposite.

What seems to work best for me as a seller is when I get lots of little bids. The more bids, the more interest in the item and the higher the final value.

I hate it when the price shoots up in the first day or two of the auction because then it will usually just sit there for the rest of the week.

As a modest seller on eBay, I'd say that 30-plus% of the final selling price comes in the last hour of an auction. This number has been increasing. Last year I would have said that the number was closer to

20%. I think that means that more and more people are sniping.

On the topic of sniping: I will often have an item that goes from say $200 up to $1,000 in the last 20 seconds of the auction. I just love it when that happens.

George.

I can manually submit a bid with less than five seconds, actually as fast as it takes to hit the enter key, and anyone can do it... Just open up a second window with all the information entered with only the enter key left to press. You can watch and keep refreshing the first window while you adjust your bid in the second window for bidding. If you notice the refresh takes a couple of seconds you may want to pad your time when placing you bid. If your connection is real fast and your window refreshes almost instantaneously then you may be able to wait till the last 2 or 3 seconds. Pretty simple eh!

And if the net and eBay are that slow then so is your sniping program.

I suspect that there is a growing under ground of ebayers that bid on each others items to inflate the prices. Many sellers on ebay also have "dummy" acounts they use to drive up the price. I've seen far too many auctions that make little if any sense.

"Damned if i know" wrote

If you loose don't worry

One of the first things I learned about ebay: there will be another item just like it soon.

Steve

Well, things that go sky-high quickly don't work very well, but I've found that a moderate climb, especially in the first couple days, helps the bidding. I've never ad any luck with auctions that were dead for days. You need at least a little action early on.

I don't know if it's seasonal, but I recall getting a lot more sniping the last couple years. Most of the things I've sold recently peter out an hour or two before ending time. Maybe it's just my stuff.

Of course, then there's the sellers holy grail: Two or more newbies who decide they need to keep on top to win. Just sit back and watch the fun...

GTO(John)

"George" wrote

I sold an item for $4300 that the buyer told me he had put in a proxy for $6,000. This was a case where even the snipers lost.

Steve

Everyone snipes with or with out a program... This in itself nullifies sniping in any form regardless of what you think... It comes down to the highest bid. In the last 10 seconds of an auction there are at least 100 bids on a popular item. It's really quite funny how proud (in an obtuse sort of way) people get when they don't realise everyone else is doing the same thing they're doing.

I can honestly say I've never bid on anything with a third of 100 bids, or sold anything with more than half. Too much action for a good buying deal, and I've never sold any wedding dresses or router tables.

GTO(John)

HINT: auctions are put on and attended by humans. You expect too much. ;-)

Steve

I think it totally depends on the situation. There's a whole list of stuff I didn't see before and haven't seen after I've bought. Then there's another list of stuff that's gone the other way. This is one area I've had a hard time applying a science to.

GTO(John)

To let you know, that project has not released any files.

Maybe, and likely, but it's never messed up anything I've bought.

If anything, it was worse in the past before they tightened up bidding and feedback regulations. A few years back you could leave feedback for anything. Lots of folks back then had lots of "thanks buddy" posts to their name. Same thing with shills.

Actually, the only time I've been in an auction with a verified shill was on something _I_ was selling, and it was the buyer's shill. He used a second ID with all negative feedback to get out of a bid he couldn't pay for.

GTO(John)

If you consider (to use the example I referenced earlier) less than 50 bucks for something you know to be worth more than $150 to be "paying too much", then sure... I guess I am.

Personally, I call that "major score". And it's typical of my eBay activity.

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You don't see all of the bids. Ebay doesn't register a bid in the history if the bid is below an exhisting high bid. Try to bid on any item on ebay by placing a lower bid than the high bid - you can't. But when 100 bids arrive at the server within a couple of seconds only a few will qualify as legitimate higher bids and show up in the history with one the eventual winner. The price can change by hundreds in a millisecond, just a wee bit faster than it takes you to enter your bid and send it to ebay.

5 SECONDS dam that's slow! I'd smoke ya over 99% of the time, I never try to be slower than 3 seconds. I have been lost an auction that BOTH the winner and myself bid in the LAST second!

Some people like to bid with a few bids setup and ready to go on multiple windows and they will plug in one at say 10 seconds refresh and slam in another if needed but that is a bad way to bid better just to put in your max at as close to the END of the auction you can...

William.....