I am constantly getting out bid on ebay at the last second. I have heard that some people have software which shows them what the highest bid is and they simply outbid it at the last moment. Is this true?
I doubt it. They just set it up early with a high… high bid. And punch it in at the last minute. The bid will only go high enough to win no matter how high his high bid was.
What you are referrring to is sniping software, of which there are several programs. You enter the ebay item number, and the software will place your bid, literally at the last second. The most widely used is http://www.esnipe.com, but if you search Google for ebay snipe software, you should find several more.
The use of sniping software is a matter for some debate. If you know what the maximum you are willing to spend is, you don’t need it. eBay use a proxy bidding system, so that even if you bid way above the current bid, eBay will only bid what is necessary to beat the next highest bid. For instance, if the current bid is $10, but you are willing to spend up to $50, you can enter the $50. eBay will only bid 10.50, in the minimum increment of .50. Now, if the previous bidder also enter a high proxy bid, say, $30, your bid will be entered as $30.50, just enough to beat the previous proxy.
So all you have to do is decide what the maximum you are willing to spend is, and ebay will only bid the amount necessary to win the auction. You should bid your absolute maximum, so that if you lose by $.50, you can live with it.
On the flip side, some people swear by sniping, claiming that early bidding wars drives up the price. In my opinion, the price will go up at the last minute anyway, so little is gained. But a sniper also runs the risk of bidding too low to beat a high proxy, so there are no guarantees.
Good luck in the bidding!
There’s little reason to bid on an item prior to the last few seconds of the auction. Some people seem to enjoy outbidding others just out of spite. I don’t do that, but I do snipe, opening two browsers and using a stopwatch. E-snipe is a popular software program that will allow your bid to be placed automatically in the last few seconds of the auction, sure, but the real benefit is that you don’t need to be around to do it, handy for those late night or early morning endings.
I suspect what will happen eventually, since eBay derives a portion of their revenue depending on the ending price is that if an item garners a flurry of bids at the “end” of the auction, then the auction time will be extended by say, 5 minutes. This would make sniping as currently practiced impossible. Remember, a “real” auction will last until bidding stops. This would be great for sellers, and eBay, but not so hot for us looking for bargains.
Wouldn’t it make more sense for E-Bay to simply switch around the time on their servers periodically?
That is, they could have it go ahead by a minute or two every fifteen minutes and then revert back to “real” time for a couple more and then, possibly, go back a few minutes ten minutes later?
Having a program on their end change around the server time would eliminate the effectiveness of any kind of program you’re using on your end that’s dependent upon a set ‘time’- it’s always fluid, in a sense.
Right?
To me, that’s a more effective way to counter that kinda thing. The idea that E-Bay is going to extend an auction simply because there is more activity at the end of the auction seems to me to be defeating the whole point of an auction, don’t you think?
The truth is, I wouldn’t be surprised if they already had a thing like this in place- it keeps the image and context of a auction intact, yet it defeats some of the more nefarious means people use to win certain auctions.
And what point would that be? As Tedster pointed out, real life auctions don’t have a time limit; they continue until the bidding stops, and it seems to have worked pretty well for hundreds of years. Why should eBay operate differently? As a seller, I would welcome a change like that, but it should be seller-selectable, for those who want a fixed end time on their auctions.
I would be very surprised; I have an auction tracking program that periodically synchronizes my computer clock with the eBay server, and I have never observed any time shifting. I suspect such a scheme would create far more problems than it solved. Sniping isn’t really nefarious, eBay is quite aware that it occurs, and has taken no steps to block it, or instituted any changes in their terms of service to restrict it.
I’ve never used esnipe myself, but from what I’ve heard, the closest snipe seems to be around 10 seconds - if you want it any closer, you have to pay for their services.
If you want to win auctions, your best bet is to figure out what your highest proxy is and bid as late as you feel is comfortable. I only ever bid early to kill a Buy It Now. If you choose to snipe, it can help minimise things such as bid stalking, shill bidding and bidding wars.
I have used Auction prime and it works great. It really helps when those damm westcoasters set their auction late at night. I set my max price and go to sleep - no worries. THen I find out in the morning. Usually it bids w/ 8 seconds remaining. which is fine really unless you hit the reload button a the 7 second mark you won’t see the bid and you still have no idea of my max price.
I’m not intrested in a bidding war anyway - I have my price and choose not to reveal it till the last second. THe 1st time I ebayed I need a tool for work, really bad and got into a bidding war the trippled the price then it was snipped from us at the 15 second mark. Then the item came back (another seller) the 1st guy placed a early bid, I stayed out, set an alarm for the last 15 minutes, got up and sniuped it with 30 seconds remaining - paid $80 less then the other guy who got the 1st item.
I have bid early to kill a buy it now.
Bid early - bid late - ski high noon!
So, let me get this straight… If you don’t use sniping software, then you set your maximum price, and if it’s higher than the maximum price anyone else has set, you get the item. If you do use sniping software, then you set your maximum price, and if it’s higher than the maximum price anyone else has set, you get the item. Is that correct?
Yep. The only thing sniping software/services will do for you is submit a bid at the last second.
The thing is, most veteran eBay buyers won’t put down their maximum bid before the end of the auction – that simply drives the price higher, and the whole point (or at least one of the most popular) of buying from eBay is to get things for less. For example, if you want to buy the X-Men DVD for $10 and put down a $10 maximum bid, then someone else may come along two hours later and put down a $12 bid. So you either pay more to win the auction, or lose it. With sniping, however, you can swoop in ten seconds before the end of the auction, put down your $10 bid, and hope that nobody else comes in with a higher bid in the brief time remaining.
I’m personally mixed on sniping myself; fundamentally, it seems to me like a sneaky way of trying to win an item for a low price. On the other hand, that is the point of eBay, and they explicitly condone the practice, so many times I will have to use sniping just to hve a halfway decent chance of winning anything at all.
You have to realize that this is all psychological. It appears that many ebay bidders either don’t understand the proxy bidding system or are just plain stupid. I’ve seen many auctions where a bidder will increase his or her bid $1 or $2 at a time until they’re the high bidder. If you’re sniping an auction where the top bidder has done that, there’s a good chance you’re going to win.
Personally, I snipe with most auctions I’m bidding on; I don’t use software to do it, just a couple of open Opera windows and a fast cable modem. One does what one has to do.
No, you have to hope that nobody else came in with a higher bid at any time in the auction. Maybe the guy who’s listed at $10 set his max price at twenty, in which case, as soon as you put in your snipe bid, the software will automatically raise his to beat you. On the other hand, if nobody in the history of the auction had a price higher than you want to pay, then it wouldn’t have mattered when you put your bid in, because you’d still win.
Think of it this way: Absolutely nothing happens until the auction closes. Then, the ebay software looks at all the people who submitted bids at any time in the auction, without looking at the time they were submitted. The item goes to whoever had the highest price, for an amount just over the second-highest bid. A snipe bid of $10 is exactly as likely to win as an opening bid of $10, and if it does win, the winner will pay exactly the same price.
If you look carefully, now when you search you can see a new button at the top of the results page ‘Buy iT Now’ look at those auctions, you can buy them right away…
Some people do a bid on a BIN page just to get rid of that BIN, they are called Bin Stompers 
grrrrrrrrr!
But as RwS mentioned, what often happens is that people don’t use the proxy system properly, and will set their max at the opening bid. If you bid your $50 immediately, they’ll come back and keep nibbling at your proxy until they beat it. Not only does a high number of bids draw more attention to the auction, potentially attracting more bidders, but you end up paying more than you would have had you sniped it.
I don’t follow ebay auctions much but I thought they had a procedure in place which greatly diminishes the effectivness of sniping.
Basically, if a bid comes in at the last minute to override your high bid, you’ll get an email notifying you of the bid and extending the auction about 15 minutes to give you a chance to up your bid. With this feature, sniping is almost useless.
My wife and have a different word for snipeing, we call it swooping. Cause someone swoopes in at the last minute to win the auction.
I’ve discussed this snipe/swoop issue with some friends at work that use e-bay even more than I do and we have reached this conclusion. E-bayer’s are stupid.
Ebay Joe puts an item up for bid. Someone bids on it, Ebay Joe can’t see what the maximum bid amount is due to Ebay’s Proxy bidding. Ebay Joe uses an alter-ego Ebay ID and bids up the price on his OWN auction till he is the high bidder, or he has a friend do it. Then the original bidder sees that he is not winning anymore and bids again. This goes on till either the auction ends or the original bidder gets fed up, or Ebay Joe is happy with the price.
We feel the above behavior has led to snipeing/swooping as early bidding only drives up the price.
If we see something we like, we put in a minimum increment bid to add the item to our watch list, or we could just add the item to the watch list. Then, with 20 seconds or so to go, we look at the price and enter in the max amount we want to pay. If we get it, fine, if not, there’s plenty more Pentium II 400’s out there or whatever it was that you were bidding on.
The way YOU can make money on this deal is to sell stuff in such a way that all the acutions end on Sunday night at 8:00 or so. That way you can have the maximum amount of people who want your item poised at the keyboard waiting to swoop each other and drive the price up!
If you want to snipe/swoop and don’t have a fast internet connection, then I could see using a service, but is it really worth it to get that beany baby?
Good Luck,
-Sandwriter
oops I forgot to add that you can get software through educational discounts cheaper than on ebay. I’m taking one class at the local junior college that work is paying for and I qualified for educational discounts at…
…Good luck,
-Sandwriter
uBid has this feature – an auction ends only after the designated end time has passed and there are no more bids submitted in the last 10-20 minutes. If people keep sniping, the auction keeps going.