What do you think of sniping on eBay?

[sockeyed]

Check out http://www.stealthbid.com

It's one of many. You prepay for credits, and it charges you 1% of the final purchase price in exchange for firing in a bid (up to your maximum) at the last second. It can also help you bid on auctions if you know you won't be around the computer when it closes.

 

[Doug]

Oh, ok! Thanks, thought a "stealth bid" might be a hidden bid or something... So it's another sniping service.

 

[furcafe]

I agree entirely.

Yes, there is, and not everyone knows it, but here it is: In case of a tie, the earlier bid gets the item. And with proxy bidding, the time you first started your proxy counts as the time you placed your bid, no matter how many times it gets upped later.

Suppose you see something you want right at the start of an auction, and you decide the most you're willing to pay is $117. So you enter the minimum bid, and eBay's proxy bidding keeps it up to date for you. If nobody else bids more than, say, $30, you'll win the item with a bid of $31.

But suppose there's some sniper watching the auction, and he jumps in at the last second with a $117 bid. You'll win, he'll lose -- because your bid was placed first. Yes, I've won items this way.


Another fallacy about sniping: People will say, "I should have sniped because somebody topped me at the last minute, so I could still have won the item if I had been prepared to go $1 higher." Well, you don't KNOW you could have won that way -- you have no way of knowing how high the other person was prepared to go. He might have entered a maximum bid of $10 more, $100 more, or $1000 more than the final price. The only way to find out what his top bid was would be to top it -- which might turn out to be a LOT more than you want to spend!

Let's suppose that Bill Gates decided he wanted to be even more of a jerk than he already is, by winning everything on auction on eBay on a given day. He could log on and enter a maximum bid of one million dollars on every newly-listed item, then go off to sharpen his pitchfork or get a pedicure on his cloven hooves or something, leaving proxy bidding to work for him.

Now, suppose you watched one of these items and hoped to get it by a last-second snipe. Maybe it hasn't attracted a lot of interest, and bidding is up to $17 (with the winning bidder being Bill, of course.) So you go in and bid $18, and then he goes up to $19 and the auction closes.

Does this mean, "I could have gotten it if I had gone to $20"? Of course not. You'd have had to bid a million and one dollars to win this item -- you just don't know it, so of course you're frustrated and think you were "soooo close..." when in fact you were never in the ballpark.

Sniping can be fun (if you think of eBay as a contest rather than simply as a way to buy and sell things) but it also can lead to "auction fever" -- i.e., paying more than you really intended because you get fixated on "winning" rather than simply on buying.

The easy way to deal on eBay is to decide up front "What's the absolute most I'd be willing to pay for this?", enter that as your maximum bid, then walk away and let proxy bidding do your work. You'll get a lot of items for less than your maximum bid, you'll get some for your maximum bid, and you'll beat out a few snipers who matched your top bid but didn't get in as early. And if you don't get the item, at least you'll know you didn't pay too much. Boring, I know, but fiscal prudence usually is.

 

[kiev4a]

There are a lot of eBay bidders who make multiple bids in fairly quick succession. I emailed one of these after he'd "won" the auction to ask why he did this. The answer was to "feel" for the reserve amount or try to discover what someone else had bid. I figure this is for those who treat this as a game to win... eBay surely loves them and wishes we all would likewise "play" to "win," where ego gets in the way of fiscal common sense.

So I always make one bid only, a late one to keep the gamers from getting their egos ruffled with time to do something about it! Most often I decline to bid as the price rises past what I'd be willing to pay. I try to stay well down below prices on B&H or KEH, considering their lower risk, return priviledges, and direct payment by credit card.

There is a thrill in being the high bidder, especially at the end, but it's tempered by the thought that I was simply the one who expressed a willingness to pay more than anyone else!

There are other reason for bidding multiple times even if you already are the leading bidder. Maybe the extra bids are only 50 cents each. But it may give some competitors pause to believe that you are determined to win the item and are "backing you bet" The ploy seldom works on a veteran but sometimes will scare off an inexperienced bidder. Is that playing a game? Probably. But I actually enjoy trying to psychologically outmaneuver and opponent. That's part of the fun.

 

[Honu-Hugger]

There are other reason for bidding multiple times even if you already are the leading bidder. Maybe the extra bids are only 50 cents each. But it may give some competitors pause to believe that you are determined to win the item and are "backing you bet" The ploy seldom works on a veteran but sometimes will scare off an inexperienced bidder. Is that playing a game? Probably. But I actually enjoy trying to psychologically outmaneuver and opponent. That's part of the fun.

It worked for me not too long ago; put five bids in succession before anyone else did and only one person "tested the water," ended up with the book for a buck or something over the opening price. But I doubt that it will work everytime.

 

[nikon_sam]

I actually took out a calculator yesterday, figured in the high shipping charges of an item, expected repair, sale of a lens in the kit, bid and lost by $20. I feel good though because I know that I bid the right amount for me, and that other opportunities will come up.

Rover,

I haven't used a calculator just simply math in my head...But I also consider all the factors in the auction and if the math just doesn't come out in my favor, I know that there will be another auction that will.
Last year I was looking for a Nikon F2A Black body and almost gave in and bid on a Chrome body but I waited.
I found the F2A I wanted and am proud to be it's primary caregiver.

 

[ABarGrill]

An amusing case of sniping for no apparent reason: Yesterday, I bid $12.50 on Ebay for a technical book that now sells for $15.00. It was about the price I could have gotten the book on Amazon. Not exactly big business. With 7 seconds left, a winning bidder emerged with a bid of $13.25. Go figure.

Alan