I have to concede that I never used other auction sites and didn't think of real world auctions 😀
Then lets say, the ebay auction thing doesn't work anymore 😀

How do other online auctions handle it? and would it have made a difference for the OP when his next access time was thirteen minutes after auction end?

After having been outbidded a few times, I've learned that you MUST use auto-bidding if you want to win anything.

There are sites like the auctionsniper.com mentioned that put only one bid at the last second, making it absolutely impossible to react in time for a normal human.

The only way to win over auctionsniper.com is to use Ebay's Autobidding. Ebay's automatic system will ALWAYS win over anyone (assuming that your maximum is higher than your opponent's maximum, of course), be it a human or a software program.

Really, there's no other way. Use Auto-Bidding or lose. You decide.

If you think about it, eBay is set up such that sniping is the only way to get anything popular at a reasonable price. It's a matter of being the last person with the highest bid, and there's no point in bidding early since someone will always be willing to pay a penny more than you.

I haven't used eBay in years, but at one point I bought MIDI synths and old console games and accessories (NES and Atari 2600 mostly). I just waited until the last 30-60 seconds and then bid the highest amount I'd actually be willing to pay, and if someone else beat me then so be it - that's just the nature of the "game".

I really get a lot of pleasure out of beating the other bastards who are trying to out snipe me.

I think you guys are over thinking it. Snipers are not out there to ruin your day, or beat you for the sake of it. They want the item, just like you, so all you have to do is pay more than them. Decide what the thing is worth to you, put in your max bid, and hope for the best.

Getting a bargain on eBay is a matter of luck, not skill.

myibidder.com

free (or donate if you want) works great for me.

Long time eBay bidder. Snipers suck but unless you want to snipe your self, which I don't because it's a pussy way of doing things, just bid your number and take it... I loose a lot of bids in the last few seconds but who's to say they aren't bidding *way* over what I would have bid?

It's a learning process - the sting of a loss tells you if you should have gone higher, sniper or not. Bidding on eBay is just something you have to get used to or walk away... Personally I enjoy the game.

This is an auction I won earlier today http://cgi.ebay.com.au/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?ViewI … 5#ht_500wt_1414

About 8 hours before the auction was due to end I placed a bid of $13(plus $5 post), perhaps a little suprised no-one else bid and the won auction for $1!($6 including post), The system works!

I don't consider myself a sniper. If I'm bidding on an item with a reputable seller (read the feedback, all of them,) I'll place my maximum bid on an item and then just let it go. Win or lose. If I'm not completely comfortable with the seller, I will tend to snipe a bit. Again, I'm just bidding my max bid. If the price has already gone over that amount, then it's no longer in my watch list anyways. I don't do this to upset anyone, or to try and "sneak" in an easy win of some sort. I've learned to do this because of what several sellers have done to me (or at least, I strongly suspect they did to me.) I now have 5 sellers on my ignore list (I will never buy from them no matter what.) Here is the sequence of events in all 5 cases (complaints filed with eBay with no actions taken.)

Item goes up for bid ($0.99)
I place my max bid - say $50 ($0.99)
7ish days pass with no activity
10 minutes (or so) before end of auction, 51 bids all come in within a few moments of each other each $1 more than the previous ($51 I'm no longer winning.)
The final "bid" is withdrawn with the seller's consent.
I now win the item at $50
All 51 bids were from a single user, with little or no feedback.
All 51 bids (and the withdrawal) take place in an extremely short period of time.
Conclusion: The seller used a shill account to raise the bid to my max then one step beyond, so that I would be forced to pay my max amount even though nobody else was interested in the item. eBay claims that this is not allowed, but I've never seen them do anything about it. So, I gave up. Now, I research a seller, and when in doubt, don't give them the time to pull that on me again.

FYI - You used to be able to pull up a detailed bidding history that actually listed the bidder's handle and the amount of each bid (you cannot do that any more.) When I'm at $0.99 at 10 minutes to go, then at end time I'm at my exact max bid, I got a little suspicious and looked into it. AFAIK, the sellers are still up and selling and my negative feedback have all faded from visibility.

yeah i've seen that too.

as to last-minute sniping, i don't think there's any sensible way round it. wow [ok this is not real money or goods...] used to have the sort that added x minutes if there was a last minute bid. i thought that was even more frustrating. the uncertain end time approach is better for buyers ie "ends in less than 30 minutes" but sellers may prefer bidding wars i guess.

however what really annoys me is bidders prepared to pay insane amounts for stuff that i wanted cheap. 🤣

I'm a sniper myself for other, more personal reasons:
I cannot control myself when bidding. If someone bids a few cents more, I'll usually match it, even if the price is too high. I dislike having to regret that I paid for something more then I really wanted to, so I just place my maximum bid (the absolute 'pain-limit') - in the last 15 seconds. If I get the item, I get it; if not, I'm not sorry at all and there are no regrets (since I usually dont have the time to place another bid). Sometimes you win, sometimes you lose - such is life.

@FeedingDragon

Even in your case (I do believe there are sellers that do that), you should still be satisfied that you got the item you wanted, even at the highest possible price you were willing to pay for it.

The biggest problem with bidding early is that your bid is out in the open long enough for everyone to see it, and there is always going to be someone is always willing to pay just a little more than you (unless you get lucky and bid on something that nobody else ends up wanting/finding).

Putting in the maximum you're willing to pay as a snipe bid is the only way to go. It's not the users' fault, it's just the natural dynamic resulting from how eBay decided to do things.

Even though I don't snipe I agree it is best to bid late. Sometimes I "manually" snipe in the last minute or two if I feel there may be people hovering over the item.

FeedingDragon wrote:

I've learned to do this because of what several sellers have done to me (or at least, I strongly suspect they did to me.) I now […]
Show full quote

I've learned to do this because of what several sellers have done to me (or at least, I strongly suspect they did to me.) I now have 5 sellers on my ignore list (I will never buy from them no matter what.) Here is the sequence of events in all 5 cases (complaints filed with eBay with no actions taken.)

Item goes up for bid ($0.99)
I place my max bid - say $50 ($0.99)
7ish days pass with no activity
10 minutes (or so) before end of auction, 51 bids all come in within a few moments of each other each $1 more than the previous ($51 I'm no longer winning.)
The final "bid" is withdrawn with the seller's consent.
I now win the item at $50
All 51 bids were from a single user, with little or no feedback.
All 51 bids (and the withdrawal) take place in an extremely short period of time.
Conclusion: The seller used a shill account to raise the bid to my max then one step beyond, so that I would be forced to pay my max amount even though nobody else was interested in the item. eBay claims that this is not allowed, but I've never seen them do anything about it. So, I gave up. Now, I research a seller, and when in doubt, don't give them the time to pull that on me again.

Golly. Did the sellers in question have good feedback scores?

Well, I never said I was unhappy about getting the items. I got them, and I didn't pay any more than I was willing to pay for them. But, I would have been much happier if I had only paid $0.99 for the item. The way it is supposed to work, is the seller sets the minimum they are willing to take for the item as the minimum bid. But evidently these sellers didn't do that. They set it at $0.99 to get the lowest possible listing cost. But they weren't willing to sell it at that amount, so they hiked the bid. Under normal circumstances that would be risky, in that they could end up buying their own item. But with bid-withdrawal being available, that risk is removed. I also disagree with the sellers that pad their "shipping" cost. Shipping for a medium-sized 5 lb item should "NOT" cost $99. eBay sure was quick to start stopping that though... You now get charged penalties if your S&H cost is too much more than eBay's automatic calculators figure.

As for their feedback, just looking at the surface it looked OK, they had a positive value. But if you pulled up their comment history, it was liberally sprinkled with red marks. Also, not everyone gets suspicious if the bid takes a sudden jump in the last moment. I only got suspicious because of how precisely it got to my max bid, and not everyone would notice or care about that. Getting out-bid in the last minutes isn't that surprising. Having the bid jump up a bit at the end isn't that surprising. But having it jump in the last minute to exactly what my max bid was, is a little coincidental. I check the bid history (though that doesn't help as much nowadays,) in a few cases, it was natural - one or maybe two bids came in at the last minute, and the last one evidently matched my max bid. It never went over, nothing got withdrawn, so all was good. It was the systematic way in which it happened that was suspicious.

waaa
you lost the auction because your bidding strategy sucked, plain and simple

I don't use auto bidding software and I can only count with one hand I have ever used it because I really wanted the item badly. Other than that, I always bid in the last 10-30 seconds of the auction because that increases the chances of me winning, and me getting the item at a LOW PRICE.

Nothing is more n00btarded than people who place a bid 6 (yes, SIX) days before the auction ends! What is this accomplishing for you? Smearing your name all over the auction so that it's "yours" because you marked your territory like a rabid dog? No, in fact, it brings attention to everyone in the world. An item with a crappy title name all of the sudden draws attention because someone was interested enough to bid on it. Nevermind the fact that there are dozens of others of auctions selling the same thing, people will think the others are uninteresting. So, the result is, we all see there is a crazy bid war 5 day before the auction ends. When the auction does end, the winning bid becomes hundreds of times greater than the starting price. If you are one of those persons who uses ebay this way, congratulations, you are an idiot and you helped line the seller and ebay's pockets deeper!

I've gotten so many cool shit off ebay cheap because I used the watch list function and went out of my way to bid at the last seconds. Not drawing attention to the auction gave me a better chance of winning and a better price. I got a basically brand new samsung "all in one" laser printer for $50 as opposed to the dozens of other auctions selling the same thing for $200 one time. It's all because I didn't bid till the last seconds. I was the only bidder and I won. I got it cheap and the seller was obliged to ship me the item for that price. Too bad for the seller, he should've raised the starting price to begin with! 😁

Now, if I'm too busy to bid on an item that's important to me, then I am forced to use bidding software. I have and I still will. But I avoid doing this anyway because for one thing, I'm still using trial licenses of them. I have no desire to pay for them because I don't buy from ebay every day. This is all besides the point of questionable ethics and ebay TOS issues.

This article basically is saying the same thing I am saying:
http://www.kenrockwell.com/tech/ebay/index.htm

so bottom line is, you want to win your auctions? use a better strategy!
can't handle the stress and madness? Don't bid. Use "buy it now". It was designed for people who don't want to fuck with bidding.

@TheMAN
Did you call me names, buddy?
I repeat, I was the only bidder until some other person outbid me in the last seconds. My bidding strategy sucked? To me ebay is not a matter of life and death, but I get angry sometimes. Like, I never win a bid because some A-holes outbid me in the last 5 seconds?
IMHO, ebay should be as a classic bidding shit. Whoever bids more should get the item. No time constraints.

I am an ebay sniper The way ebay has been since the beginning is bidding early only drives the price up. Anybody who bids early only drives up the final price, that is all that happens. If all of us dropped our bids in the last ten seconds the outcome would be exactly what each of us imagined at that time. Bidding earlier only gets people thinking they might want to pay more for something than they originally thought.

Basically, if I just want to buy something I compare the price on Amazon or Ebay and check completed listings for comparison. If I am unwilling to pay those prices I save a search and occasionally save auction listings and keep an eye on them If I have the time and the money and the auction is closing at a reasonable price and at a reasonable time I might sit and watch it down to the last ten seconds and place my maximum bid.

I don't figure this is snagging anything out from anybody because more often than not the other bidders put a higher maximum bid anyway. It just keeps me from adding five or ten bucks to the pot because I've become too infatuated with that particular item.

One case where bidding early is an advantage is with when a fairly common item comes around with a starting bid lower abut not insanely lower than the typical winning bids. Going in early can discourage others from jumping in since they will want to have a shot at a similarly slightly lower price themselves. Basically people queue up for the 75% spot. But it only works with common items that don't go for a lot to begin with.

I usually bid in the last few hours, last few minutes if it's a really interesting or unusual item. But i'll pop a bid in early from time to time. It's odd but I haven't really noticed much difference in winning/price paid percentages no matter what strategy i've used. But i'm patient and search a lot. The best deals always see to be because of poor description/classification or day/hour of bid closing.

Another way of looking at it that snipers get snipped too. So the trick is to navigate away from the scrutiny of snipers and their "bid within the bid" games. Not easy to do but having off beat tastes helps:)

Does no one else here routinely bid on items that no one else seems to be interested in?

No one bids on my auctions at all. 🙁