That's just the way eBay works. You'll win anyway if your bid is higher than the other person's snipe. eBay auto-bids only whatever it takes to beat you, so one increment higher. You'll notice that if you bid $1000 on something with a $10 opening bid, eBay displays this as a bid of $10, and the time runs out with no other bids, you pay $10. And if someone else bids $20, they lose to your new automatically placed bid of $21. I don't think there's any advantage to not sniping, since bidding calls attention to a thing and does encourage people to bid it up even if your top snipe bid would beat them. But this is just basically how the eBay game is played. I used to snipe by hand, now I usually let a bot do it. It bids in the last couple of seconds, so it can look just like what you describe. Sniping wouldn't work if auctions didn't have a hard end time, but since they do, that's how it works and they state it all quite clearly. Maybe sometime something shady happens though I've yet to see any convincing evidence of it myself (only people claiming it happens all the time, all the time), but sniping is not itself shady. -Paul

On Tue, 1 May 2018, Hagstrom, Paul via cctalk wrote: This. I use a program called esniper - sometimes I win, sometimes I lose, but when I lose thats OK, because the item sold for more than I was willing to pay. Recently however I was unable to use esniper (ebay changed something that broke it) so put in my max. bid the old fashioned way. I was winning for a day or so. Then something very odd happened: very close to the end of the auction a brand new bidder came in and bid 100x the going rate - that immediately maxed out my bid - however the seller more or less immediately cancelled their bid. They waited 10 minutes then did it again, and again the seller cancelled their bid. My guess is that they wanted to see if I'd upped my bid. Then a sniper came in and bid more than me at the last minute. I did feel cheated there though and will never bid on items from that seller again because I felt they somehow had a hand in this bidding but I can't prove it, but then again, it's a sellers market and ebay don't care because they get money from the sale anyway. Due to the speed the bid was cancelled I'm more or less convinced it was the seller doing this and not the winning bidder, however it did let the winner see my max. bid so may have influenced them. Who knows. So snipe, "by hand" or with a program and if everyone does it, then it becomes the same as blind auction then it becomes fair again. Until the seller withdraws the auction 5 minutes before the end because "the listing was incorrect", and re-lists it, trying to get more.

When you say you snipe with a bot, do you mean you use eBay's highest-bid functionality to do it? Or do you use third-party software? I've never been clear on how the built-in highest-bid functionality works. I often see things where the same person has several consecutive bids, which doesn't make any sense to me in the absence of other people's bids in between them.

cctalk at classiccmp.org> wrote: highest-bid works. bids in ?. If the successive bids are at a constant ratio (is it still 5%?) that is eBay making public higher and higher portions of the not-to-exceed (but still private) value that person originally entered. The other possibility is that the original bidder, on being outbid, lets their competitive instincts get the better of them and enters a higher not-to-exceed bid ? and then a higher one ? if the successive bids have a minute or two between them, or a non-constant ratio, that is likely what is happening, and it?s a *great* reason shills exist in the first place. I think the original intent of the eBay system, and my recommendation, is that folks dispassionately, calmly, decide what their true ceiling is, enter that value the first time, and then walk away. eBay doesn?t promote that behavior now, though. The ?you?ve been outbid! But there?s still a chance!? email they send seems pretty calculated to stampede you into competitive behavior. I suspect that leads to regrets.

Although eBay in the past has tried to kill off sniping because it reduces the number of visits an individual might pay to their site, I think they've given up with trying to kill the sniping system.

On May 2, 2018, at 9:34 AM, Al Kossow via cctalk <cctalk at classiccmp.org> wrote: Ain't gonna happen. Other sites tried it, and failed because auctions would literally drag on for hours with penny bids.

One thing that many eBay subscribers overlook is the "Make offer" feature of some auctions. In my opinion, that's where the real gold can be.

To put it bluntly, I list high and expect reasonable offers, which rarely happen.

On May 2, 2018, at 8:58 AM, Cory Heisterkamp via cctalk <cctalk at classiccmp.org> wrote: On Wed, May 2, 2018 at 10:22 AM, Chuck Guzis via cctalk < cctalk at classiccmp.org> wrote: Chuck makes a good point about the Make-Offer feature, and it should be noted that sellers have this option available to them within the eBay messenger system even if the button isn't present in the auction, so if you have your eye on something and feel the price is too high (or your search of completed auctions shows the item has been relisted several times with no takers), there's no harm in sending the seller a message with a dollar amount in mind. -C

[snip] >> Chuck makes a good point about the Make-Offer feature, and it should be >> noted that sellers have this option available to them within the eBay >> messenger system even if the button isn't present in the auction, so if you >> have your eye on something and feel the price is too high (or your search >> of completed auctions shows the item has been relisted several times with >> no takers), there's no harm in sending the seller a message with a dollar >> amount in mind. -C > YMMV. There is a type of system that I am interested in adding to my collection. An eBay seller has a bunch in a number of BIN/Make Offer auctions over months. I asked an expert on the systems his opinion on the auctions, including what he would offer. I offer 50% more, but it was still 2/3rd the BIN price. They countered by taking a bit over 10% off. I countered by splitting the difference but they didn?t go for it. The auction closed and I looked at the auction history. I saw that the systems had previously been offered at a price less than my split-the-difference offer. When they came back up for auction again, I offered the split-the-difference price and noted that the lower price in a previous ?no-takers? auction run. They countered with a higher price than their counter to my initial offer. They went unsold again and I waited for the next auction run. I offered the split-the-difference price again and they countered even higher. I got the message and have stopped bidding. That was a couple months ago and they still have sold any of those systems.

I?ve also found that if a seller has a number of the same item for sale, I?ll offer to take the entire lot at a significant discount. A number of the sellers will go for that (e.g. they can unload all of the items in one transaction).

TTFN - Guy

And that is a matter of opinion.

On 05/02/2018 01:01 PM, Bill Gunshannon via cctalk wrote: I've been subscribed to eBay since 1998, when the best I could do for a net connection was a somewhat iffy 9600 bps. At that speed and high latency, there was no way to engage in a last-minute bidding war against those with T1 hookups. So now I have a machine act in my place with its own high-speed service. Be grateful for small things--eSnipe normally submits bids 6 seconds before auction close, so those with Wall-Street type hookups have thousands of milliseconds to sneak in a last bid. If you want to do away with sniping, suggest a way to equalize the odds, such as a 5 built-in 5 minute delay in bidding--or going with a single sealed bid option. Then get eBay to adopt it.