My snipe failed even though it was higher than the winning bid!

[ChristinedePizanne]

Did I do something stupidly wrong? It's ages since I used a sniper but I put in a max bid on Gixen because I was going to be out when the auction ended, came home and the item has been won for a lower price than my max bid.

Now I've just bid for something similar using ebay direct which I presume will carry on bidding for me up to my max.

Where did I go wrong? Is there really any benefit to using a sniping tool other than not showing your hand too early by actually placing a bid?

Hi it could be that your bid wasn't a whole increment higher than the lower bid? The increment depends on the starting price. I always snipe and rarely lose- I wouldn't do it any other way. Remember- bid once, bid late, bid your maximum

Aha! That would explain it cat

That's very good advice - I haven't done it with the second thing - I've bid to get it in and it's a lot lower than the max I'm prepared to pay. Oh well, I'm learning!

Oops caz, not cat

Sometimes snipers just don't work.

I prefer to just watch stuff, if it's something high value which I really want then I make sure I'm in and do the sniping in person. I usually pick a non-round number, like £X.73, and go a few pence or a pound or so (for a high value item) higher than my absolute maximum, just because if I was prepared to pay up to say £50 and it went for £51 I'd be annoyed! Whereas if I was prepared to pay up to £50 and won it for £53 I'd be happy. And if it went for more than that I'd look at it as being a fair bit more than I was prepared to pay anyway.

On things like children's clothes which tend to be a bit less intense, I just keep things on my watch list and place bids somewhere in the last 12 hours or so of a listing.

Oh damn that's a really good point Bertie. Oh well, there are a couple of different ones listed at the mo so if I don't get the one I want, it's not the end of the world.