Not if they didn't know you were there waiting. They might bid up the existing bid just enough to win, not knowing you had a much higher bid waiting to come in.
But they're not going to win unless they bid $81. They will never get it for $51, if I'm bidding. If all they're willing to pay is $51, I'll win for $52.
I'm with ya, Fatty. It's bogus. But, hey - it's successful in one area: it draws in people who believe in it and makes money off 'em!
Why do you keep saying "I"? I will bet you millions of dollars that we have never bid on the same item. If it is you, I snipe, and you bid more than me you win. If it someone else who doesn't like to bet their max at once, or close to end of auction will compulsively bet more than their first set max bid, I snipe them, I win.
I look at it like this. I bid on ebay because some items would be cheaper than what I would pay for in a store. The trade off is the hassle of emails and waiting for my package. Thus I only bid if I'm saving a good enough amount of money (something no more than ~ 75 - 80% of the retail price). If the item you were willing to buy at $80 dollars on ebay is only worth around $85 in a store, I wouldn't even go through the hassle of bidding for it on ebay. Now if it's a item worth more than $100 in a store then I would like to gt the item around $50 but would be willing to go to +/- $5 of $80. Bidding at the last minute gives the option to bid for the item at the last minute would give me the best chance to get the item around the true max price I want.
Fatty, you're completely ignoring the points made here... The vast majority of ebay buyers do not BID and wait, they WAIT then bid, thus the reason for esnipe. I challenge you to use their 14 day trial and buy a few things using it trying to save 10-20% more then what you are "willing" to pay for it. As said, most bidders WAIT until the final day/hours to bid on items (thus again the reason for the "number of watchers" in the eBay selling page). The sniping programs are more for those people looking to spend as little as possible on their items, ones that won't mind bidding and losing on 2-3 of the same item to save 10-20%. There are books, websites, paid services all teaching the intracacies of getting the most bang for your buck when buying and reselling on eBay and they ALL teach to wait until the last minute to bid. Now, you act like we are saying that sniping is the ONLY way that you can save money on ebay, but that isn't true there are countless ways to do so. For instance as you mentioned mispelling by sellers, I bought a $1000 set of Titleist golf clubs in 2001 for 150 bucks because the guy spelled it Titliest. Other ways to save big-bucks is to set a certain price for what you are looking for and search a few times a day for "newly listed items" with the "buy it now" option. Ebay is a great place where people make "quick cash"... let's say they got thrown in jail for a bar fight and have to pay their mom back for covering bail, so they throw high priced items up there for waaay below market value with a buy it now option so they know they make their money quick... Anyway, the point is sniping is extremely widely used tactic for bidding in online auctions and simply because it doesn't work for you and your bidding/buying style doesn't mean it doesn't work. I've sold and bought roughly $50,000 worth of stuff on eBay and "sniping" with or without a service has saved and made me more then a traditional bidding... while I was unemployed for 6 months I made all of my income from buying and reselling on eBay and did pretty damn well, it was just too much work for me to go through when I can just get a nice IT job and post here all day
And you win the award for the most irrelevent and ridiculous comment ever. I don't actually post on the forums, I enter my text and the post is placed for me.
Dude, I've GOT to go to bed. My point, once again, is that I place the max I'm willing to pay for it. ebay will automatically re-up my bid if a sniper comes in. The only way you take it away is if you are willing to surpass my max bid. If you do? Congrats! The sniping doesn't work, and is dumb. There are much better ways to find good deals, like I mentioned above.
The only problem with this is that most ebay bidders don't know their max. Say you have entered a max for an item is 30 and the current bid is 10. Some tire kicker might bid 12, then seeing that it's not the hig bid, move onto 15 then maybe 18 before giving up. If you didn't bid at all, he would have stopped at 12 seeing that he was the high bidder and your sniped bid would win at 13 instead of 19. Most ebay bidders don't know what they are doing. The few who do, use sniping and over time save quite a bit of money.
So.... You don't realize or recognize the difference between placing a bid at an auction, and establishing a maximum bid? And you say my post is irrelevant and ridiculous? To make it easier on you, I'll speak Playschool for you... Bid When you participate in an auction, the bid is the declaration of an amount that you will commit to pay for the auctioned item. Example: when the auction is at $50, you can bid higher than $50. If the auction closes and you have the highest bid, you are committed to purchasing the item at the bid amount. Maximum bid Also called the "ceiling". This is the most you are willing to spend for an auctioned item. It's like saying, "I won't pay any more than this amount." If the bids by others in the auction exceed this amount, you will not win the auction. mmkay... so now you hopefully can see that there is indeed a difference between a bid and a maximum bid. Now, there used to be (and still are) auctions that weren't on Ebay or the internet. At these auctions, the "bids" were submitted by people manually as the "bid" amounts were called out by an auctioneer. The bidders would manually increase their "bid" amount. When a person would reach their "maximum bid" they would stop bidding. Now, at Ebay, when you are participating in an auction, the participants do not enter "bids" at all. They only submit their "maximum bid" and the "computer" automatically increments the participants' "bids" appropriately for the auction.
Except that tire-kickers (or anyone else for that matter) don't actually enter bids. They enter maximum bid amounts. So, the tire-kicker wouldn't bid 12, and then 15, and then 18... he would just enter a max bid of 18 and the auction would automatically increase his bid amounts.
You would think so, but believe me, that's not how it works. Many people are content to inch bids up until they are on top, and won't increase their bid until someone outbids them. Most people don't have max bids in their mind before they bid. Serious, experienced bidders do, but many do not. Sniping doesn't work every time, but over time will save you lots of money. I've using ebay to get lots of inventory for my business since '98 and am positive it's saved me a lot. You can say that you don't believe it works , and that's fine- don't use it. It doesn't make a difference all the time. But if you use it to place all of your bids, over time you are going to come out way ahead.
Fatty - If everyone thought and acted like you we would need to snipe. But the fact is there are MANY people who do not put there max bid in and walk away. Fatty Way: Current Bid held by ImAEbayNoob: $50 You put a bid in for $80 Current Bid held by Fatty: $51 ImAEbayNoob comes back to check his auction - he's losing - not good! ImAEbayNoob comes back and bids $60, $70, $80, $90 ImAEbayNoob wins it for $81. Now you have to keep looking for that item. Or if he stops at $80, you have to pay $80 where in the scenerio below you will see a cost savings. Sniping Way: Current Bid held by ImAEbayNoob: $50 ImAEbayNoob comes back to check his auction - he's winning - good! With 5 seconds left you put a bid in for $80 Current Bid held by Fatty: $51 Fatty wins it for $51. ImAEbayNoob keeps looking. You see IF everyone were to put in their max, sniping would be a waste. I've lost auction because I didn't snipe and put in my bid too early only to have the guy I outbid, rebid and win. Or I've paid more because the same guy came back to try and outbid my max before giving up. You may be satisfied if you can get it for $80 and content if you get outbid since that was your true max, but I've experience many time the pain of repeat bidders. That is who sniping beats - repeat bidders who don't put in their max and walk away. The other thing esnipe will allow you to setup a folder that will monitor all the specified auction under that folder and keep bidding until you win. Say you want to get the Bogan's rookie card and there are 10 auctions ending tonight. You want to pay $10 for it, so it bids on the first one - bid too low, 2nd one, too low, 3rd one - high bidder and you win. Then it stops bidding on the other auctions since you don't need or want 2 Bogan rookie cards. Also, reserve is a psychological thing to work on those people who think they might get it cheaper then get caught up. Also I've seen low bid start amounts go much higher than the same item that has a Buy-it-now. You see not everyone on ebay is as smart as Fatty and these games are for those people.
Well, let's say that a competitor (named Joe) has set his maximum bid to $50. He intends to increase his max bid amount at the last instant of an auction (let's say, from $50 to $60). If my max bid for the auction is set to $80, I'll still win the auction at $61. I don't see how I could have benefitted by using a sniper. Now, let's reverse the role. Let's say I'm Joe and I want to win this auction. I have no way of knowing that the amount I have to beat is $80 (which is the other guy's maximum bid). I start with a bid of $50. But my bid is immediately surpassed by his max and he immediately gets the high bid of $51. So, I decide that I'll try to change my max bid to $60 at the last instant, hoping that my max is higher than his and I'll win. But I don't win because his $80 max bid is higher and he wins the auction at $61. Again, I don't see how sniping would have helped me. No matter how I slice it, the only thing I could do to win the auction is set a max bid higher than his $80. (and, thank you for not being rude in your discussion about this)
Your example would be much more clear if you adjusted it: it is not possible to enter a "bid" at ebay. It is only possible to enter a "maximum bid". If you could adjust your post to indicate when people enter and change their max bid amounts, and remove all statements that say "xyz places at bid at..." your example would be more clear.
I've set max bids before. And then raised them when I've been outbid. So my max...is not really my max. I'm the guy you beat by sniping. I've only won one ebay auction. I've been snipped out of several. And on some of those...after looking at the winning bid...i think...i could have gone higher. By letting me know that my leading bid...is not the leading bid...you give me time to consider if I want to bid more. It shouldn't work. But I expect it does.
In the cases you have described, you are right it won't help. But many ebay bidders are not rational, and don't plan things out that well. The point is that sniping will never hurt your chances, it will only help them. Not always, but enough to make it worth it. I've done it hundreds of times- set up my max bid through esnipe and let it go. Sometimes, with a day left the bid is higher than my max, and I'll go back in and up the max by a few bucks- I think well if it's worth $31, then it's certainly worth $34, and so on. If I still get beat, the guy who won, lost money by bidding early, because I never would have adjusted my max if he would have waited until the end to bid. If you use ebay alot, it's worth it to try it. It's very cheap, and can only help your cause. I think that's about all I can say about it.
hmmm.... so what you're saying is.... People look at an auction they're losing and manually increase their maximum in order to win it. Sniping prevents this by making it appear that they're winning the auction (and they therefore don't feel the need to increase their maximum) and then, at the last instant, the sniping application automatically increases my maximum bid. This prevents others from realizing that they are now losing the auction and increasing thei max bid accordingly. That sound about right? EXAMPLE: (using ArtV's verbage): Scenario1 (wihtout sniping): Current Bid held by ImAEbayNoob: $50 I put a maximum bid of $80 Current Bid held by me: $51 ImAEbayNoob comes back to check his auction - he's losing - not good! ImAEbayNoob changes his max to $60, $70, $80, $90 ImAEbayNoob wins it for $81. Scenario2 (sniping way): Current Bid held by ImAEbayNoob: $50 ImAEbayNoob comes back to check his auction - he's winning - good! With 5 seconds left my sniping software puts in a max bid of $80 Current Bid held by me: $51 Auction closes before ImAEbayNoob has time to increase his maximum bid. I win the auction for $51
