I just did somesniping on ebay...wish me luck guys

[Steve]

I've won and lost when it comes to sniping. I remember once driving home and running up the stairs, and confirming the winning bid with all of two seconds left.

I recently lost an auction to somebody who would outbid me by exactly $2.50 everytime I outbid him, always within a few minutes of my bid. At that point the price had gotten stupidly ridiculous, and I was just driving it up to make him pay more, so I wasn't too broken up about it.

 

[mchammer187]

Originally posted by: MercenaryForHire

Originally posted by: mchammer187

Originally posted by: RagingBITCH

Originally posted by: Tom

Originally posted by: Toastedlightly
Sniping use useless if the person is using proxy bidding like they are supposed to

proxy bidding has plenty of flaws, especially when dealing with a system that is so open to manipulation.

Like? I'm curious as to how it's flawed.

with bid retractions the seller can find out what someone's proxy bid is using another account to artificially drive up the bid

So what's your eBay handle again?

- M4H

its the same as my AT id and it has about 15-16 feedback in 4 years

i have never done so but this is the reason why i always snipe to avoid this kind of disaster

 

[Steve]

Originally posted by: Thegonagle
I always "snipe." I look at the auction, decide the most I'm going to pay, and enter that amount with seconds to spare. Sometimes I lose to somebody else who already put in a higher bid, and sometimes I win for a lot less than the bid I entered.

Somebody told me a trick to try, is to have two browser windows open. One that you constantly refresh for the countdown/rising price, and the other with your bid ready to go. I'll have to try that sometime.

 

[Baked]

Originally posted by: sm8000

Originally posted by: Thegonagle
I always "snipe." I look at the auction, decide the most I'm going to pay, and enter that amount with seconds to spare. Sometimes I lose to somebody else who already put in a higher bid, and sometimes I win for a lot less than the bid I entered.

Somebody told me a trick to try, is to have two browser windows open. One that you constantly refresh for the countdown/rising price, and the other with your bid ready to go. I'll have to try that sometime.

I do that. Need fast connection though.

 

[victimizati0n]

what is snipping?

 

[Tom]

Originally posted by: Ranger X

Originally posted by: mchammer187
with bid retractions the seller can find out what someone's proxy bid is using another account to artificially drive up the bid

You could easily get banned for that. You can get someone you know to bid on your auction to drive up the cost but then again, that person could end up winning your auction. Hence, you'll lose out on the insertion fee and the final value fee but if you look on the bright side (if you can even call it that), you can give each other a positive rating.

So how is proxy bidding flawed again? I don't see how proxy bidding is flawed since it works as designed.

even without bid retractions a seller can avoid selling an item for a low proxy bid, by outbidding the proxy bid, not completing the sale, and relisting.

and proxy bidding is fine if a person knows exactly how much they want to pay for something, but that isn't the only scenario in an auction. Often the amount a person is willing to pay isn't finalized until they know how much the item costs, which in an auction isn't set until the auction ends.

Ebay auctions have a built-in flaw, compared to actually attending an auction, because the end of the auction occurs at a set point in time, not when everybody who wants to bid has finished bidding. Sniping is just a way to get an advantage in how close to the arbitrary end of the auction a person can wait to make their final decision.

Using a proxy, for any purpose, is balancing a person's ability to make their own decisions based on all the information they can get at a particular moment in time, with giving up some of that control to another entity, because it is inconvenient or impossible to carry out on your own. That loss of control over the final decision is what I mean by a flaw.