Just had this happen to me the other day (the sniping, not the BIN business). I was the top bid on a NOS Rage Fury Maxx with $10.00. I slept through the end of the auction and some lucky bastard nabbed it for $20 at the last second. (Apologies if said lucky bastard reads this post.) I've done my share of manual sniping, though, so I guess I shouldn't complain too loudly.

More or less the same thing happened to me, I prefer BIN auctions for that reason. Not much you can do about it.

I use this technique. Nothing wrong with it. Only thing you can do is make your bid as high as you are willing to pay and hope I won't pay more.

If you got outbid by a sniper, then you obviously were trying to get away with the item cheap or else you would have placed a higher bid so you deserved to lose when someone came along in the final seconds who was willing to pay closer to the actual value of the item. Either make a serious bid or stop using ebay because you're doing it wrong.