[OUTBID?] Here's How to Win on eBay!

I can see using a sniping service if you're ebaying for profit. But for my use, I decide how much I'm willing to pay for something, place the bid, and go on with my life. The "outbid SeymourButts37 by $0.05, get outbid, bid again, PRN" is just a waste of time and energy. And likely you won't get it for less than if you just put in your max bid and relax.

Sniping services just automate the outbid, get outbid, bid again process, which is what ebay's proxy bidding does anyway.

I've used eSnipe over 10 years and am fairly happy with them. I prefer eSnipe over others because I'm not tied down to a monthly subscription. Esnipe is pay as you go starting at $5 minimum and you can cancel out up to 5 minutes before sale end. The money given is not consumed by fees if not used for bids indefinitely; acts as a continuous account.

I have lost a few bids over the years with eSnipe bid fails or once in a while their servers will get wonky and want my undivided attention ginning up passwords proving I'm who I say I am which can be a PIA. Email return response is slow on questions not answered in FAQ.

As others have posted if your bid limit isn't as high as someone else's on items sniping won't get it for you other than suggesting 6 seconds before end you didn't bid high enough.

I use snipe software a lot. Have been on Ebay since 2004 and both buy and sell there. In response to SSpiffy, I would have to disagree with this statement "Sniping services just automate the outbid, get outbid, bid again process, which is what ebay's proxy bidding does anyway." For example if you have bid on an item for $50 and starting bid is $20 the bid amount would say $20, but if I bid lets say $25, I'm outbid and it goes to $26. I bid $30, it goes to $31 etc etc until I have outbid your $50. You are then notified you have been outbid and if you bid again because your thinking this is well worth $100 so I'll bid a little more. What happens is bids attract bids and more people will see the item in their search and may bid as well and I may eventually win but will pay more for it. ....Now the other scenario is same as original, you have bid $50, it is sitting at $20 and if nobody else bids on it and I snipe it at the last second, I win it for $21 not Whatever it had been previously bid up to either manually or if I had put in my max bid of $100.87 early on and you kept bidding against it, again I or you would end up paying much more for the item.

I have been using https://auctionsniper.com/ for years. It works very well and is inexpensive.

@SSpiffy : How dare you steal my lines?

Spot on, Spiffy!

Is Ed correct?
If I bid 50, and I'm winning with the price at 20, can someone snipe it at the last second for 21?
If that's true, because there's no time for the automatic Ebay bidding to kick in, then maybe my sniping service won't have time to kick in either?

If enough people use sniping services there must already be times when several people interested in the same item are using them. What, then, determines which of them comes up victorious? It can't usually depend on who had the highest bid because whichever sniper crosses the finish line *last* should prevent all others from getting their bids in, even other snipers who might have placed higher maximum bids. Could the determining factor be the speed of the winner's connection with their ISP, or the lower number of Internet "hops" their location has to communicate through to reach eBay's servers? And what does the final "bid history" look like when an auction was fought over in this way?

In answer to Hill, If your max bid is $50 and it is at $20 and you're winning nobody else can snipe it unless their max bid is over your max of $50. So if someone else snipes it at lest say $45 in the last second, you are still the high bidder only then it would go to $46 to beat the other bidder because your max is higher. Now if he sniped at $50.87, he would win because he beat your max bid and you wouldn't have time to come back and bid again. But, no, nobody could snipe and win at $21 because they would be way less than your max bid. If someone did bid $21, you would win it at $22 or just enough to beat their bid. Hope I'm not confusing the issue to much by being to "wordy" which I have a habit of being :)

In answer to Kevin. The one that is victorious is the one that has the highest bid in the allotted time before the items ends. What you describe does happen a lot and I have sniped on something that has had a high bid of say $50 all day on the last day of the listing with maybe 20 people bidding (it's a hot item) and I'm thinking this is worth $200 and I want to get it for maybe $100, I probably won't get it because big buyers almost always wait until the last few seconds to snipe and you may have one at 10 seconds before the end, who bids $190 and then it says the high bid is $52.50 and I'm thinking I got this for $101.87 or so and I try to snipe at 5 seconds before the end, it immediately tells me I've been outbid and it is now $104.37 and I don't have time to bid again so I lose but then after my bid somebody else snipes at $201 literally "ONE SECOND" before it ends and the guy that sniped at $190 is outbid and the person who sniped $201 wins it for $192.50 Did I make it as clear as MUD? Hope not :)

Thanks. Ed. It's clear. But imagine what it will be like once almost everyone is using sniping software. It's going to get that way if all normal (non-sniper) users begin to realize they don't stand a chance to win anything good. After losing out enough times, most will decide "If you can't beat 'em, join 'em". As a result, every single auction (including those seeming to have only one initial bidder) will see a flurry of many competing sniper bids in the last seconds. In fact, each person's software will likely be designed to snipe with the same tiny interval of time remaining. As a result, two (or more) who chose the same secret maximum bid could theoretically end up in a virtual tie.

To avoid that, I'm guessing that eBay's servers internally parse out the actual time of bid arrival down to the nanosecond (though, of course, it does not display such precision in the times viewable by the users). So competing snipers who appear to be equal, in both bid amount and submission time, are never really equal after all. In fact, in those situations, the winner may be the one whose Internet path (connection time) to eBay turned out to be better able to deliver a bid precisely on-time.

If they haven't already, I'll bet sniping software will evolve algorithms to very accurately identify the amount of their Internet delay around the time that an auction is about to end. They could test this timing by submiting low failing bids on unrelated auctions they don't care about and then clocking when those bids got posted, To be extra sure, the software could automatically precede its bid for the item the sniper does want with a "pre-snipe" (decoy) bid on the same item. If that's done right, any competing snipers (or their software) will go for the bait once - and then not have enough time to respond again when the first person outbids them at what will be the truly last instant.

I've used https://www.auctionsniper.com/ for over a decade/ It's cheap and you only pay if you win an auction. There is no limit on the length of time you take to spend your advance payment.

You have missed the iggest advantage of sniping.

At the very start you decide how much you want to pay for an item and then forget about it.There is no chance of auction fever where you increase bids just to win and it cuts out the endemic problem of shill bidding. Buyer's remorse hardly exists.

If your bid isn't high enough the item costs more than you are prepared to pay you can also end up paying a lot less and getting a pleasant surprise.

You also avoid the ebay sytem's inbuilt problem and that is the buyer who is in a bidding frenzy but just increasing by one bid at a time - with ebay their bid is matched up to your maximum at the time they place it - this allows frenzied bidders to see and increase bids - shill bidders are often the one extra bid operators.

I bid for a friend who does not trust himself on auctions (maybe a more accurate description is that his wife does not trust him......) and many times he has wanted to increase a bid only to get the same item at a lower price from another auction.

The only thing I miss is the excitement of an auction end but the financial advantage greatly outweighs it.

N.B. Prices on ebay are not always cheap - I just bought a brand new camera with free gift and extended warrantee from a business website cheaper than the exact same item 'opened box never used' without free gift or any warrantee on ebay. Amazon is often cheaper and (if you can wait) don't forget AliExpress where prices are sometimes a tenth of Amazon or ebay.

As for myself, I can't think of anything that I wanted so badly that I was willing to use software to gain an advantage in bidding for it. If I really want something on eBay and the buy it now option is available, that's how I will make an offer.

The auto auction site "Bring a Trailer" has a much fairer (for the seller) method. Any bid extends the auction for 3 minutes. Eliminates sniping.

I tend to buy stuff for my model railroad on ebay. I have a good idea of what it's worth to ME, and how much I'll pay. I'll track the auction until the last day when, if there's no action, I'll put in a bid at what I think is a reasonable price; I'll monitor the auction, and, if it reaches the maximum I'm prepared to pay, and I'm not top bid, then forget it. I won't normally overbid on MY maximum. If it's had no action, then I'll keep an eye on it until it becomes close, then stick in a reasonable bid. Nothing - or almost nothing - is worth overbidding, so if I don't win, so what? There'll be another one along one day.