Bloody snipers!

[Moodykat]

I was merrily bidding on a Bugaboo and was nervously winning at £150. Watching the seconds count down with that certain eBay feeling! Got to 9 seconds and suddenly the price shot up to £225! How does this happen?! Bastards! Would've set my maximum if I'd known! That'll learn me!

[Tortoise]

I can wait until about 2-3 seconds if I bid on my phone. I love last second bidding.
Have also used sniper site when I knew I would be out. That would still only do my max bid.

[aswellasyou]

You could use a sniper yourself. Other last second bidders may not actually put in their highest bid if they think it's going cheap.

[fergoose]

I agree - I always bid when there are less than 10 seconds to go. Is a mistake to bid too early.

[Moodykat]

Oh man! What are these sniper sites?!

[PippiLongBottom]

Not telling.

[HeidiHole]

hammersnipe.com

[LunaticIsOnTheGrass]

I have a couple ready to go in a few minutes on goofbay.com

[Moodykat]

Maybe I need to change my technique then.

[TrillianAstra]

Sniping wouldn't be a problem if everyone actually put down "this is the most I am prepared to pay".

Then every item would just go to the person who was prepared to pay the most for it.

[tethersend]

yy to using sniper sites.

It's like poker... don't show your hand too early.

[TrillianAstra]

I snipe.

Of course.

Because people like you don't put in their actual top bid.

So I can get things that they would have paid £30 for if they had known I was going to bid £29, but they actually only put in £28 so I get it.

[SailorVie]

I use bidnapper for all my eBay auctions, haven't bid in the traditional way for years.
Basically you have a think about what the maximum you are prepared to pay, then place your bid on the bidnapper site, any time you wish before the end of the auction, often days in advance. Then you go away and forget about it.. Then if you have won the auction you get an email through telling you so.

It's brilliant, no nail-biting suspense, no over-bidding and getting carried away, and never that sinking feeling you've paid too much for something.

Use bidnapper, you get a few free 'snipes' for free to start with so that you can see what a brilliant site it is. It bids on your behalf 2 seconds before the end of the auction.

[Tortoise]

I use lotsnipe.

[Moodykat]

Ok, thanks! Have just set up my first snipe!

[maxybrown]

I don't use a sniper, just place bid at 10 seconds (the first part) then confirm it at 3 seconds.

[sarahtigh]

i mostly just snipe myself but do use sniper sites if out, there is no point in putting yuor max bid on ebay early as then people can slowly bid up to see what yuor max is, more likely to be beaten if you show your hand early

[breatheslowly]

I use gixen.com.

[lljkk]

I am pretty good at foiling snipers. Take great delight in it.
Because mostly they only increment their bids by set amounts, so I put in my true max in the last 15-25 seconds and the sniper can't catch up fast enough.

[maxybrown]

I thought snipers but the bids in at the very last second though? Like I said I bid my max at about 3 seconds to go.

[sarahtigh]

yuo can set up a snip with 2 seconds to go, a proper snip is your max at last minute snipers do not go up in increments they just place your max in last seconds, you can only foil a set up sniper by entering a larger suim of money however if 2 people bid exactly the same to the penny the earliest bid winsmuch better to bid 5.06 than 4.99, if your max is £11,23 you will still get for £8.51 if the others max was £8.01

the only exception is if something is really only worth £1 starts at 99p next bid is officially £1.04 so bid early at £1.05 will probably get it for you as next person has to bid £1.25 which is too much

[lljkk]

There must be different sorts of sniper, then. The ones I've encountered definitely do not put in the max right at the very end, I'm not sure how that would work with a busy auction or a dodgy connection. The snipers I encounter seem to monitor the price in the last few minutes & only bid incrementally on that to try to make sure that bidder still pays minimum price. After all, what happens if you have several snipers all watching the same item? Nobody wants to pay over the odds so they all try to be sneaky about it. You can see it all happening in the bid history.

Sometimes what I do is early put in a bid which is a few quid below my real maximum. If the auction has gone over that at less than a minute to go, I don't bother. But otherwise I put in my max at the last moment, and seems to nearly always work. You'd think I'd be often foiled if snipers were that efficient.

[lljkk]

This is the sort of thing that happens to me:
Item is about to finish, selling for 6 quid.
One minute to go, I bid my max (12 quid).
On auctions where the bid amount changes live (why do some auctions do that and not others? Any insights?!), I watch the bids do this:
Goes to 6.50 "You are the winning bidder" notice
goes to 7
goes to 7.5
goes to 8
goes to 8.5
time up, I win for 9 quid.

So I watched it increasing incrementally, I have always presumed that's snipers, because it's a very consistent increase, seems to always be a single bidder doing it. I don't think real human beings would bid like that within the last minute. Am I mistaken?

I try to hold my nerve & not bid until less than 20-30 seconds left, so I will end up paying less, but I see the same sort of increments no matter when I bid in the last 2 minutes. Am rarely outbid in the last 2 seconds, though, only if I make my last bid too early, really.

[sarahtigh]

if you look at bids you can click a button which shows auto bids( paler grey) they are not put in incremently but say you put in 8.50 the sniper auto bid goes 9.0 (whatever his maximum) then say Y comes along and puts in 9.76 as their max sniper will go straight to 10.26 you then place another maximum in of 13.45 sniper will then go to 13.95 Y then manually ups bid to 15.07 sniper wins at 15.37 as that was his max bid right from when he set it up 3 days ago; however, if your max entered with 2 seconds to go was 17.26 you will still get the item for 15.87