| Author | Message | ||
     Lake_bueller |
Does anybody here use a sniper service for ebay? I'm really sick of getting beat out at the last possible second. How do you know these services are "safe"? I've already had my ebay account "stolen" once before. It was a real pain in the rear to fix the problem. | ||
| Ft_bstrd |
The ONLY way to eBay is as a sniper. Culls out the weak and infirm and keeps the prices "reasonable". | ||
| Phat_j |
i dont use a service, but i can count... if it is something i really want, i wait till the countdown gets low, and shoot my bid.... | ||
| Jackbequick |
I've been using it for 8 years, couldn't live without it: http://www.snipeware.com/ It costs $22 a year now, will pay for itself with a few purchases, and you can get a refund (less PayPal fee) in first 30 days if you don't like it. Jack (jacker at midmaine dot com for questions) | ||
| Essthreetee |
I use www.bidnips.com, it has worked every time. If you sign up you get 5 free (try it, you'll like it), and if you use my name I will get 5 free too. (jason welch 13 at s b c global dot net...no spaces) It works, in fact I just won a set of Disney Cars for my son's birthday yesterday...gotta love the snipe!!! I usually use it to buy knives...has saved me quite a bit of money. Jason | ||
| Slaughter |
I just do my own sniping. It's part of the "sport" I typically keep 2 or 3 windows open with bids, one other that I just keep hitting "reload" and then in the last 5 or 10 seconds, shoot one then the other window. Doesn't always work but often it does. Sniper service is no better but you don't have to be in attendance... but you miss taking the shot yourself! | ||
| Ryker77 |
I use e-snipe. But be carefull you end up getting packages in the mail and not even remembering what you bought... But hey it was a "good deal" lol | ||
| Toona |
I minimize(not close) my window where the auction is and double click on the clock in the bottom right corner. That brings up a bigger clock with a sweeping second hand. About 2 minutes to go in the auction, I click on the refresh button and figure at what second the auction ends. I usually watch/refresh the auction up to 15 seconds left, enter my bid and click "confirm bid" with 1 or 2 seconds left in the auction. It isn't fool proof, I've been outbid a time or two, but I enter my bid with the max I want to pay. With proxy bidding, my bid is only bumped to what it is challenged to, not my max bid-unless challenged to max. The only time eBay will bump your bid without a challenge is if you bid over the reserve amount. Ebay will take your bid, challenged or not to the reserve amount. That way Ebay gets a "completed" auction, even though technically no one challenged your bid to the reserve amount. They figure you bid over the reserve amount, so why not "adjust" your bid accordingly. I don't get caught up in a "bidding war" this way. If I do get outbid, obviously it's too late to re-bid, so I just watch for another duplicate item. | ||
| Just_ziptab |
I make a minimum bid as soon as I see something I want. I keep bidding the minimum until I am the high bidder. This gives me a "history" to lurkers that I am too timid to bid something up in huge amounts. I leave it at that for the duration till neart the end. At that point, I open up a new window and get a bid ready for the maximum that I want to go with. Refresh the old window and get the timing down and also check the number of times it's been viewed. At 10 seconds to go, I submit my bid from the other window, regardless of whether I am the high bidder at that point or not. This leaves the other last second bidders in the dust (with no time to rebid) if they try and shoot their first bid at the end that is less than mine and also nabs a sniper or two if they don't have a max bid higher than mine. If I didn't win,I didn't want it bad enuf to pay "extra"....there will be more like items sooner or later in most cases. Odd ball NOS restoration parts are easy this way. Popular stuff is harder to win with snipers in the game....but at least I cost them a few bucks now and again....as well as the last second bidders costing me a few bucks once in a while. Every auction has it's own personality and experience will give you hints as to what is going to happen at the end. I "watch" a lot of stuff that I don't bid on just to get more experience. Entertaining and fun. | ||
| Firemanjim |
I used to do all that stuff now I just use Bidnapper and make a reasonable bid. Works good.I hated losing an item when I was at work and got a call as the auction ended.---Onthat note, I got that S-1 on eBay with Bidnapper. | ||
| Jackbequick |
I use SnipeWare a lot for things I would bid on if the price was still down low at closing. I put in a bid for an that is more than the opening bid but something I'm willing to pay, set the timing to bid three seconds before closing, and forget it. If my pending bid amount is exceeded before auction closing, I get an email warning and can re-evaluate (and change if I want) my bid amount. If I do nothing, that's the end of it and I don't win. If I win the item, I get emails from SnipeWare and also the normal eBay emails. What I like most is being able to see an item, set up a bid, and just forget the whole thing. I really hated it when I forgot to go back to bid manually (as some describe above) and then later found an item went away cheap or without bids. Never bid an amount you are not willing to spend, especially with a Reserve Auction because of the automatic spool up to the reserve thing Toona describes. That is a rip off, eBay should never spool a bid up with counter bidding. If the reserve is not met, you and the seller can haggle out the details if the reserve was set too high. SnipeWare has never, not once, failed to submit a bid for me or missed a closing time. eBay has made changes that kept SnipeWare from working, I get a warning email when that happens, and SnipWare has always been able to counter eBay's attempts to nullify snipe bidding withing a few hours or less. eBay hates snipe bids, it costs them a lot of money. They are the greediest bastards in the world! Every rule and rule change they have made there since day one goes to doing something that increases their profits. So use snipe bids to reduce their profits, it is the only revenge we have. Jack (an eBay member since 1987 and the idiot that could have bought eBay stock and did not) | ||
| Scott_in_nh |
If you snipe yourself, there is NO point in making any bid until the very end. Why let other bidders even know you are there? I'd rather they be comfortable with their high bidder status until I come in with 1 bid at the ABSOLUTELY HIGHEST amount I want to pay with no chance for new bids by anybody. I will check a few hours before and if it has already gone past what I will pay - no need to go back. If I still lose, I haven't lost - the price was too high.... Also, never get upset because you missed something that sold cheap. If it was an experienced bidder he or she surely had a higher bid ready to go. So don't think that you could have won it for a dollar more than they paid, just isn't true. Besides, sometimes it is you or me that won it cheap! That is what sniping is all about - not being the person willing to pay the most for it but being the person with the best strategy to win it cheap! (Message edited by scott_in_nh on August 05, 2007) | ||
| Phatkidwit1eye |
One bullet one kill....I just sniped an auction this morning. It's was funny watching the last minute of the auction. It went from 5 bidders to 10 in under 30 seconds. I waited until the very end and put in my bid. By the time the other people refreshed, the auction was over. I don't snipe very often, though. I'm normally at work when most auctions end. I'll put in a bid I feel fair on the last day of auction. If I win great, if not I'm not too worried about it. Just be warned, good deals on E-bay are far and few between anymore. I buy a lot of tools from e-bay. Nothing makes me laugh more than the fools who end up paying over retail. You will see it happen a lot on auctions for truck brand tools. I did score a 400 dollar tool set for only 1 dollar. I'm not too sure why no one bid on it. I did end up paying almost 40 in shipping, though. But the tool set weighed in close to 40 pounds, so I wasn't too upset. Either way it was a sweet deal. | ||
| Marksm |
I learned quickly that sniping was the only way to actually get anything for a reasonable price. I don't understand the folks that start bidding right away and keep driving the price up. I have seen items sell higher than the exact same item at a buy it now price and I think that's just stupidity. | ||
| Badlionsfan |
i just put in my max bid and let it ride. if i didn't do it that way i'd get caught up in bidding wars and over pay. like someone else said if i don't get the item i didn't lose, i just don't have to over pay. | ||
| Mr_grumpy |
I've been beat a few times too & it tees me off, but what happens when more than one sniper service is locked onto the same item? | ||
| Jackbequick |
"..what happens when more than one sniper..." The highest bid submitted before closing prevails. If there is a tie the earliest bid prevails. SnipeWare (the one I use) knows my eBay username and password. It is a script that bids the value I've told it to bid at the amount of time before closing I choose. It is not interactive with other bidders, it only submits a single bid at the time of your choosing. It is as if I am submitting the bid from their server. The advantage to me is that it never has to sleep, eat, or go places. And it never makes mistakes, hits the wrong key, etc., etc. When the bid from SnipeWare arrives, if the auction already has a higher bid my bid is not entered. If the bid increments are $5.00, and my bid is only $3.00 over an already accepted high bid, it will be rejected too. Anything that applies to me as a live bidder applies to my snipe bid from SnipeWare. If there is a proxy bid pending from another bidder, it will run the bid up if I have bid one bid increment or more higher. If my bid is higher than the proxy, there is an instantaneous and unseen bid and counter bid sequence and I become high bidder. If I have not bid higher than the proxy bid, which was entered earlier than my bid, the proxy bidder will outbid my snipe bid. I once won an auction by one cent against another sniper. I set up a snipe bid for $5.51 against a item with no bids and a $4.99 opening bid. I had it submitted three seconds before closing and it was accepted. At two seconds before closing another sniper entered a bid for $5.50. It accepted his bid (the bid increment was 50 cents) and then countered with my $5.51 bid and I prevailed for two cents. It did that because my bid was submitted earlier. It will bid less than a full bid increment to use up the bid that was submitted earliest. If you snipe for more than the opening bid amount and your bid is accepted, it bids just the opening amount and you become a proxy bidder for the remainder of your bid amount. If no one bids against you, you get it for the opening bid. But if it is a Reserve Price auction, it will bid your proxy in an attempt to meet the reserve even though no other bids are submitted (a ripoff IMHO). If your bid does not meet the reserve, the auction will close with the reserve not met and the item unsold. I subtract the shipping cost from the the amount I'm willing to pay, maybe add an odd penny or two, and set up a snipe bid for that amount. And I don't agonize over it if someone places a higher value on it. Especially if two or three bidders ran it up over the retail price and then had to add the shipping cost. Live bidding with multiple bidders is a wonderful thing for sellers. When I was selling on eBay regularly (used high tech electronics and test equipment mostly) I saw items go up incredible amounts in the last five minute or so from live bidders bidding reactively against each other. The live bidders would often lose to a sniper in the last seconds. When that happened the winner would be a bidder with only a single bid submitted and the bid would be one bid increment over the last live bid. Very entertaining to watch... Jack | ||
| Captainxb |
I've been using Bidnapper ever since I got up at 3am one morning only to be outbid on the auction! Now I just set and forget, let the software do the bidding, and you won't get caught up in a bidding frenzy. But whether you use sniping or not; it still comes down to setting your maximum price and sticking to it - don't get burnt! | ||
| Thunderheart |
This blows my mind... I've been an ebay member for over 5 years, and never once have I needed a service to do my work for me on bidding. Needing to pay money per year or whatever so you don't get caught up in a bid frenzy means you most likely have a self control problem. Furthermore, not being able to bid at the last minute isn't a problem.. just set the amount you are willing to pay for the damn item and be done with it. This, to me is a blatant sign of laziness. That's my opinion and I'm sticking to it. | ||
| Reepicheep |
I was depending on the snipers last week, and they failed me miserably. As a result I am going to pick up a KLR-250 tomorrow  A good problem to have, I know. I'll pay less for it then I did for groceries this month. Never a sniper around when you need one... I just bid about $100 less then I thought it was worth two days early and ignored the auction. | ||
| Jackbequick |
Thunderheart, You must have missed the point of it all as far as the reasons most of us are using those services. It (1) eliminates the need to remember that you want to go back and bid, and, (2), keeps closing prices down by eliminating any reactive bidding by other bidders. I certainly don't have it because I have a self control problem. And no flame or insult is intended in this reply, it is just polite discussion. :>) Jack | ||
| Jackbequick |
Reep, So you had a proxy bid pending against the required opening bid and no one bid again? If not, and the opening bid was lower than the "$100 less then I thought it was worth" value, you should saved some money, right? Otherwise, if you opened with a bid that was $100 short of what is was worth, you may have scared off any more bidders because there was not much room left for a "good deal" price. Geographic locations and shipping costs are big factor on buying on eBay Motors. Jack |
