Sniping on eBay: The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly

I totally disagree with you about sniping. Out of curiosity, I put my highest bid on an item an hour before the auctions end. Half an hour later, the previous highest bidder placed another bid. Had I sniped, the other bidder would not have known I was going to bid – I rest my case.

Though I agree with you about the sniping services out there, I find it funny how the proxy-bidding system, your main reason why people shouldn’t snipe, contradicts your statement on why sniping is bad. You assume the sniper always bid the minimum amount. Contrary to your belief, snipers also bid the max amount they’re willing to pay. For example, if the current item is $6.00 and the min price to bid is $6.25, I’m not going to bid $6.25 but $25. Yet if the previous highest bidder wins, I’ll be gracious in defeat because I’m not willing to pay more than $25 for the item.

Of course, if you like bidding wars be my guest; I’ll stick with my sniping.

Have you ever sniped, let alone use a service? After reading your article I don’t believe you have. It appears you think that sniping programs and services make the minimum bid, then see if they are outbid before making a higher bid. THIS IS NOT THE CASE! A sniping service enters the maximum bid that you have instructed them to make a few seconds before the auction closes. After that, it’s up to Ebay’s proxy bidding feature to determine who wins based on maximum bids. It prevents the other bidder from seeing that they’ve been outbid and, in the heat of the moment, making a higher bid that results in either a loss or a higher selling price.

Your readers can see for themselves how this works by watching any hotly contested item on Ebay. They’ll see bids being made by the same bidder in several increments over a period of time until other person’s bid is topped. If this were a snipe, they wouldn’t have the chance to do that. It essentially turns the auction into a sealed-bid auction where the highest maximum bid at auction close wins.

Regarding whether to trust a sniping site with your Ebay info – Are you saying that sniping sites are run by criminals? How would they stay in business if they violated their customer’s privacy? And how are they going to get my financial info? That’s an entirely separate service (PayPal) with it’s own login and password, which I’m certainly not giving to ANYONE, nor is it somehow already in my Ebay profile. Snipers can bid for me, but I still have to pay for the item manually.

Please revise this misleading article. It detracts from the authority of the about.com website.

What the article says about proxy bidding makes sense, but on the other hand, I think sniping can still help in that it can avoid a bidding war. If several bidders really want the item, they may post increasingly higher maximum bids in order to try to win; however, if I were to snipe right at the end of the auction, I may end up winning and avoiding a bidding war, thus getting a good price.

Very often, there seem to be bidders who are always willing to pay more than a reasonable price for an item, and I think that’s where eBay’s proxy bidding system fails. If I bid the highest price I’m willing to pay and then ignore the auction until it ends, that just leaves the door open for someone else to bid higher and higher until they have the highest bid.

Another note – I’ve read about online sniping services that collect your eBay username and password; I feel uncomfortable giving out my username and password, so instead, I’ve used sniping software on my own computer, such as iSnipeIt. iSnipeIt was made specifically for eBay, but unfortunately, it currently no longer works properly; their web site says eBay has made significant changes, and they (iSnipeIt) are in the process of re-writing it so that it works properly again with eBay.

I forgot to add the following:

Regarding “Bid Canceling”: Sniping sites aren’t talking about canceling bids on Ebay. They’re talking about canceling your bid instructions on their sniping server. Once you make a maximum bid on Ebay they won’t let you decrease the maximum, even though the actual bid price is still lower. You also can’t cancel the bid (with a few exceptions). You can if you entered the same bid with a sniping service, because the service doesn’t actually bid on Ebay until the end of the auction. You can retract at any time before the server commits it to the Ebay site. How many times have you made a bid, found a better deal later and wished you could unbid the earlier auction? If your bid is on a sniping service, you can.

Finally, one of the most compelling features of sniping services that you’ve overlooked is group bids. I wanted a new video card. I found all the auctions that sold the card I wanted. I then made a group on the snipe site and added each of those auctions to the group. I set my price for the bid in each auction. Then I went camping for the weekend. While I was enjoying myself, I lost the first two auctions but won the third. At that point, all the remaining bids for auctions in the group were canceled. You can’t do this in Ebay with proxy bidding. You can’t tell Ebay that you want to retract your related bids because you won an item, so you have to bid on one item, wait for it to finish, then bid on another item if you didn’t win. Meanwhile, your family is telling you your obsessed with Ebay because you don’t have time to do anything else.

I have to agree with Gwen regarding sniping as that I also disagree heavily with the author of the article.

What I have found that a number of auctions people can get emotive with their biddings and the incremental bidding simply raises that price. above the bidder’s expectations. When it comes to sniping, remember that the old saying that you never show your hand until right at the very end.

There are two important rules when it comes to bidding which includes sniping. First – Never fall emotionally with the item. There will be other bargains around if you look hard enough. Second – Never bid over what you believe is the maximum value.

What I have found numerous times is that incremental bidding brings a false sense of wanting. An hour before closing, you make your maximum bid where 30-minutes later someone else bids above you. It is human nature for the bidder then feels that he or she has had the item taken away from them so they feel that they should bid higher. This is why you take the emotion away and bid at the end before you make your move.

I agree with the others that the author of the article has it wrong.

In a world of perfectly rational buyers, sniping would be useless; everyone would determine for themselves how much they were willing to pay, place their bids via eBay’s built-in proxy system, and that would be the end of it.

We do not live in such a world.

Some eBayers underbid, placing an initial bid lower than they would actually be willing to pay, in an effort to “test the waters” before making a commitment. If the initial bid fails or is later outbid, they’ll come back with a higher bid.

Some eBayers overbid. They get caught up in the battle to claim an enticing item and bid more money than they really want to spend. Their restraint in placing the initial bid gives way to the urge to win. (eBay feeds this urge by sending e-mails that say, “Don’t let it get away!”)

In both cases, sniping is a winning counter-tactic. The underbidders, seeing their low bids apparently leading the auction, are lulled into a false sense of security. The overbidders never have a chance to get excited.

(Sniping is *also* helpful to keep the sniper from getting caught up in these same irrational behaviors…)

Although, I agree with the above, please keep in mind that the whole reason to snipe is to keep your bid as anonymous as possible until the last possible second. So, placing a small bid at the beginning of an auction gives yourself away to those bidders who follow your buying trail. Lastly, although eBay does have a proxy bidding system, a user would have to be available at the last seconds of the auction to enter their proxy bid on eBay themselves. eSnipe places your proxy bid on eBay at the last seconds of the auction for you. Which means that you don’t need to be anywhere near your computer at bid time and nobody knows about your bid until it’s too late to intentionally enter a manual bid to top you, abd this helps prevent bidding wars and keeps the final cost of the item down. As long as you are the highest bidder by at least one bid increment, you win!

This article is mostly promoting ebay for its own advantage. Ebay certainly promotes emotional bidding wars for their higher commision revenue and to encourage sellers. OK, this is fair enough, but such a transparent promotion turns off discriminating users.
That being said, MAKE SURE you thoroughly vet any sniping service you are considering. Pick one that has been around for awhile and READ their internal forms first.

The guy that wrote this article is a moron. I love the way he assumes that snipers fire away with a reduced amount. Wrong! Most snipers are advanced bidders and know exactly what they’re doing. They realize that sniping in the last seconds means they only have one chance at it and they typically do a very good job of understanding just how much they are willing to pay for an item.

Fact: It’s true that if all eBay bidders entered their maximum bids the first time around that sniping would lose much of its strategic advantage.

Fact: Millions of eBay bidders do NOT use the proxy bidding system properly.

Fact: That leaves thousands of opportunities a day for snipers to save money.

Sniping (and by extension, snipers) on eBay takes advantage of the morons who don’t understand the concept of placing their maximum bid the first time around. Since there are thousands of people out there that fit that description, sniping is useful (and will continue to be unless eBay begins extending auctions automatically after each bid).

We could stop there, but here are some other features of sniping that are useful. Some of these have already been brought up in other comments.

Fact: Bid groups are extremely useful tools when a buyer is attempting to locate and buy an item that is very common.

Fact: Bid canceling is very useful. With sniping programs it’s typically a snap. With eBay it’s a pain in the ass (though technically possible). Advantage: sniping.

Again, don’t listen to the author of this article. He either doesn’t know what he’s talking about, or has some secret agenda. Either way, he’s simply wrong about the utility of sniping.

Jason

I’ve been sniped. Did I like it? Of course not but could I have avoided it by placing a higher maximum bid? Why yes, what a concept. Why blame the sniper? They outbid me though maybe not on the fair and square but still if I had really wanted the item I should have made a higher maximum bid. Everyone wants a bargain, and I would have loved to get the item at that bargain price but to curse someone for outbidding me at the last moment makes no sense. If I really wanted the item that badly I would have increased my max bid. So to complain about this would be sour grapes – I wasn’t sniped – I was just outbid.

1) Sniping avoid bidding wars. So the price doesn’t run up.

2) Sniping lets you beat all the stupid whiners.

How does this work? Well, many (stupid) people that are going to whine about losing to snipers are really just trying to find others to fault their own loss.

All you need to do is put in a higher bid and you will beat a sniper. Snipers shouldn’t effect you at all. Let’s there’s an item you want. YOU decide on your own, this is worth maybe $50, and $50 only. If it’s anymore, you will not pay for it. Not even at $50.25. Then, once you have decided that, you enter $50. So even if a sniper comes along, they enter $30 at the last second, you will beat him anyway. So how does a sniper effect you?

If, let’s say, a sniper comes and bids $50.25, well

A) You wouldn’t have paid more than $50 exactly anyway
B) If you were willing to pay $50.50 to beat that sniper, then why didn’t you put $50.50 to begin with?

See how this is a stupid logic to complain and whine about snipers, trying to make them as scapegoats for your own loss for not bidding high enough.

The previous post is too long and has too many errors to read. Anyone who wants to call other people stupid should, at the very least, know how to spell.

And yes, this article wreaks of misinformation. If people must put their points of view out for the masses, make sure you iterate these as opinions instead of trying to convey false data as factual information.

b7rhcv http://diW6V2Pkd0fGga78U1jf.com

I agree with all the comments. When I snipe, I usually have a reasonable idea of the value of the item and set my max accordingly. If I`m outbid I`m not too concerned, as I don`t really want to overpay for the item. I couldn`t believe the remark about bid cancelling. I recently had a snipe on an antique clock. While in bed, I looked once more at the image I had printed off and found a defect I had missed, so next morning, one click and the bid was cancelled. On ebay this is difficult without a valid excuse.

I am very new to this type of horse trading and am an avid CL buyer and seller. I set up tent 2 weeks ago and have kind of tested the waters with a bid here or there on some tools I have wanted. I gathered very quickly some of the shifty eyed maneuvers and tactics. I didn’t think I should reread my copy of “The Art of War” by opening my account. I get very good deals when dealing with the seller directly and with a dbl degree in Consumer Psychology (Behavior as known by most)/Marketing, I feel that every person involved in the transaction should have the opportunity to address the final “bet”, if you will. I have never played a game of poker with a Scrabble hour glass and someone upping the bet on some time scale without all involved given the chance to counter. Flawed beyond dimension. As a seller I would want/demand an automatic extension per counter to maximize my return on my item. Just Sayin…

You know, I dont understand why Ebay says sniping is agaist their policy, and yet do nothing about it. Yeah you can give the excuse that buyers should make sure they make their maximum bid. I am a seller. It really aggravates me to NO end, when I have 10-15 watchers on an item throughout the corse of the auction with not ONE bid. 5 minutes before the auction ends, I get bids. Oh wow. Then I normally get bids about 20 seconds before it ends. Its rediculous. I dont know why Ebay won’t fix this. Why can’t Ebay fix it so that we have the option of extending the auction for 5-10 minutes for each bid within the last few seconds? this would end sniping. But NOOO Screw the sellers who PAY Ebay and let the buyers do whatever they want….

My name says it all… Why “complain” about snipers. The whole point of any auction is to offer an item to the marketplace and hopefully make a sale and a profit. Not friends, per se. The buyer wants the item at a fair or lowest possible price. As a shopper, people need to use every, for me, legal means possible to get whatever it is they covet. Period. Why bid against yourself in incremental bidding? Dumb move. The better is to watch and be ready for your target price — which should know BEFORE you get in the action. Do your due dilligence on the item FIRST. Only the final 45 seconds really matter. If you really learned the craft, the last 20 seconds is even better, for obvious reasons. Pull the trigger and let your bid fly through cyberspace. Ninety-nine percent of the time, I bag the target of my desire. If not, I move on. Not bragging; I am deadly as a snipper. My only competition is other snippers of equal talent. You never should feel bad if someone gets the item at a price over YOUR maximum price. The happy sole got what they wanted; you didn’t spend more than YOU planned. Buy without remourse — good snipers do — or get out of the action. Semper Fi!

I don’t endorse this article either. I lost my first auction to a sniper, it pissed me off. I didn’t truly know how the system worked and I got handed a big FAIL first time out. That event never happened again. I am a sniper, hardcore all the way.
I study what bidders are doing before I decide to “watch” the auction. I will say this…if the item is common, I prefer “Buy It Now” b/c the years of buying on EBAY prove I can find what I want and not have to wait and watch fools run the price of an item sky high when they could have used a Buy It Now auction for less.

Anyway, once I watch an auction I know what my max bid is going to be and I wait…with my DSL connection I know exactly how many seconds it takes to place and confirm my bid and I wait to see a green check mark….damn I’m good! I don’t use sniping software, I use my own mouse.

What have I done, I just put my max bid in, usually with less than 3 seconds for anyone to respond. If I wanted to pay max prices, I’d go to a store. When I want a good deal on EBAY, I look for a Buy IT Now then I snipe. Works for me. Sometimes I lose to other snipers, most of the time I don’t. I pay right away, and have never had a seller get mad with me over that….my feedback proves that.

Sniper All the Way!

I’m delightfully surprised to see the number of well thought out posts written in decent English on the pros of sniping. I also get a kick out of the one person commenting against sniping who, among other things, couldn’t even spell the word “no” correctly (here’s looking at you, Jeffreysmile).

It’s simple. If we want a deal, we come to try our hardest to SAVE money. If you, the seller, are upset because you didn’t get the profit you were hoping for, then why the hell did you not raise your minimum bid?! This article just shows that whatever we want, it’s never just good enough. Both the bidders who keep coming back and changing their maximum bid, while the sellers have bodily functions all blocked up because they didn’t make the money they hoped for, are proof to this.

You obviously work for Ebay. Your Ebay sided article is so blatantly false you might as well be a politician.

I’ve used a sniping service as recently as last week and I won my auction.

I have only lost 1 auction in the last 75 – maybe it was to the proxy bidding eBay has set up – maybe to another snipe – whatever the case – sniping is an excellent way to “set it and forget it” for little or no money, and win your auction.

The article’s author simply doesn’t know what he is talking about. The eBay format is clearly established – it is a fixed time, second price auction. Both sellers and bidders have the opportunity to set any price they desire within eBay’s format. It’s a non-issue, and all the whining about sniping is absurd. Sniping is a buyers best friend, and it isn’t necessarily bad for sellers either as they have a serious buyer(s) actually putting in the highest bid they will pay and not nibbling and looking for a bargain.

What a blithering shill for Ebay!! The Ebay proxy bid is a bloody joke!! You can not

(a) Change it

(b) Cancel it

(c) Do group bids where all your other subsequent bids are cancelled if you win one of the group

You CAN change, cancel and group bid with a snipe service.

Once Ebay gets you to type in a bid, it ONLY shows the curren bid amount that is jsut above the last bid even if you had doubled the prior bid. Then, if there are later bids, it keeps raising your bid until you are out or you win.

Get off it. You are totally clueless. I have used a snipe service for well over 1/2 dozen years. I can change or cancel the bid until 5 minutes before. I don’t have to be near the computer. I don’t get sucked into bidding wars where others can keep bumping my bid – and never breaking it, just pushing it up. (Note: They only keep pushing a bid if they know it is there. They can’t push my snipe bid.,)

Do I win? Yes – 98% of the time because I have researched the prior selling prices and I know what I will pay. DO I save money? You betcha – they don’t get to test my bid and push it up.

Tell your employers at Ebay that readers of the paen to Ebay are on to you.

This article is amusing at best. It’s quite clear you don’t understand how sniping services work. Sniping is one of many effective bidding strategies. To discount it as inferior to the Ebay proxy bid process is disingenuous.

Sniping works best for people who want to use a system to maintain financial discipline. Set your sniping software/service to what maximum bid that you’re willing to pay and walk away. No emotion, no bidding war. Will you win every auction? No. But, for most people, the point isn’t just to win the auction. It’s to win the auction at a price they feel is reasonable.

I disagree that sniping doesnt work and here is why I believe it works: there is really no point in bidding on an item days in advance thus just upping the price of an item unnecessarily. I have seen people just engage in these ridiculous “races” of outbidding one another way in advance, getting into feverish competition for no good reason as all they do is give the other person a chance to outbid them and increase the price and vice versa. Since what really matters is the price at auction *closing*, engaging in bid wars with others will just artificially inflate the price.

I have seen people get into it to the point where they ended up having a bid of let’s say 190 on an item that they can right now get in the instant buy option for 135. It is ridiculous. Dont underestimate how people really get carried away.

As to my original point: let’s say you are willing to pay 100 dollars for an item. If you place the bid now, all you do is showing your hand and essentially allowing others to bid and bid until they reach your maximum bid and maybe even outbid you. But if you snipe, then what you do is reduce the cost to yourself because others wont have a chance to inflate the price. This can save you tons of money. Why pay 98 if you can pay 45 due to sniping?

The point is that by not engaging in placing bids hours and days in advance, you actually keep the price low. I genuinely dont understand people who place bids days in advance and engage in bid wars – all it does is harm their pockets (it’;s good for the seller though).

word tattoos on wrist,

The people that complain are those that don’t know that you can PROXY bid and bid the _real_ maximum you are willing to pay. This helps deter sniping but you still have to outbid it thus it doesn’t matter if you snipe or not but as long as your bid is high enough you will win. You will likely pay more from your proxy bid vs sniping but in the end the highest bidder wins. If you bid $120.85 and a sniper bid $150.00 then apparently you didn’t want to bid more than $121.00 so you would still have lost even if you sniped $120.85 or if the $150.00 bid was a proxy. If your true bid WAS $120.85 and immediately was outbid then at least you know someone wants it more than you do and you can quit and stop wasting your time on that listing.

All you snipers undoubtably have something in common. You’re all self-centered. Bidding war is clean and fairly justified by showing upmost interest in a product. Keep hiding behind your sniping software as it proves you’re all fearful and straight up pussy.

I think that sniping is a bad term, I mean really would we call the people who are patient enough to go to a big box store at 3 am the morning after Thanksgiving and buy up all the tv’s for cheap a sniper? No they are just savvy shoppers. If a person chooses to wait until the last minuet to place their high bid and wins they are just as much a savvy shopper. Now using a program to do this is just silly why pay for something you can do for free?

Just found this article, and find the whole discussion very amusing, since I run one of the most popular sniping services.

@Aron: the main reason why sniping is so useful is not technical advantages (though that helps too), it’s human psychology: in too many cases users put as their maximum bid what they want to win the item for, not their true maximum. They realize that only when they are outbid. Snipers understand this – they snipe because that leaves no time to other bidders to change their mind.

@Duiker: Of course snipers are self-centered, that’s the point, as it is the goal of any trade – to get the best deal. It’s not a macho contest.

What is the definition of a “sniper”?

Someone that places their maximum bid 1 minute before the end of an auction? 30 seconds? 12 seconds? 18 seconds? 2 minutes? 3 hours?

Does that person have to win the auction in order to be termed a “sniper”?

I will spell out the true definition of a “sniper”:

Someone that wins an auction because their MAXIMUM BID was the highest.

Get it?

Maximum bid was the highest.

Anyone that complains about this DOES NOT UNDERSTAND HOW EBAY WORKS.

Everytime you complain you display your ignorance of how ebay works.

How can anyone complain that someone else wins the item because they were prepared to spend more than you?

Hilarious.

My main reason for sniping is to avoid being ripped off by the shill bidders that are rife on ebay.

Many many times an item will have no bids, but within minutes of me placing a bid (often days before auction end) another bidder magically appears and bids the minimum above me.

I then leave it until the very last few seconds to avoid being shilled again.

If you want to stop sniping then you should extend the auction by 5 minutes every time somebody bids within the last 5 minutes, this way the bidder willing to pay the most will win. Just like it would be in a proper auction.

Like a previous poster wrote, I use sniping to defeat shill bidders, too. I am surprised this article did not address the practice of shill bidding and how sniping helps to counter it.

Go Gixen! Love using the service.

This nonsense about extending auction times when bids towards the end occur would be nothing more than changing the rules in mid stream. If Ebay were to allow such idiocy, then buyers should be able to cancel bids at will – even after winning. Fair is fair.

I agree with the comments about whiners who didn’t win because they didn’t bid high enough. To blame it on sniping is ridiculous; there seems to be some misplaced sense of entitlement by the whiners and their bids. “How dare anyone bid more than me!” seems to be the driving rationalization.

As for the author of the article – clueless is a pretty good description. Plenty of misinformation in there, as has been pointed out.

Interesting stuff. Most of these posts appear to have been made by buyers rather than sellers…

I don’t quite understand why eBay does not automatically extend the auction by 10 seconds or so each time a bid is made. This would then emulate ‘normal’ auctions and, it seems to me, give equal ‘rights’ to both seller and all the bidders. On the other hand, from a buyer’s perspective, I agree that the sniping option does limit the problems of getting emotionally carried away… but isn’t that part of the auction thing…?

Perhaps as Jason suggested the ideal solution would be to offer to the seller the option to extend auctions. Thing is, I can’t imagine why one would not want this to happen as a seller (or eBay for that matter as they make more money).

Curious. I guess as long as everyone knows where they stand at the outset, it is all fair. But clearly, we all don’t as evidenced by the original article, some of the comments… and yes, I learned a thing or two reading through all this, too!

Çäðàâñòâóéòå äîðîãèå ãîñïîäà

íàñêîëüêî ïî êàéôó î÷íóòüñÿ ñ ïðîñòèòóòêîé ÷åðåç íåæíîãî ïðèêîñíîâåíèÿ ãóá… Äà ýòî ïðîñòî ñåêñ, äëÿ áîëüøèíñòâà ýòî èëëþçèÿ è ñòðåìëåíèå, êàêóþ áåñêîíå÷íî íåëåãêî ïîñòè÷ü ïîä÷àñ îòñóòñòâóåò íè æèâîé äóøè ïîäëå ëèáî ïðèñóòñòâóåò, õîòÿ ïðîñòî íåêîòîðûé. ïðîâåðèâ òàêîå,êàê èíòèì óñëóãè îò ïðîñòèòóòêè óäèâèòåëüíîå ñòðàñòü êàê ëàñêà ñîîáðàæàåøü èç-çà ÷åãî ðàñïëà÷èâàåøüñÿ. ïî ïîíÿòèÿì ìíå íåçà÷åì êòî-òî íà ïðî÷íîé îñíîâå, â äàííîå âðåìÿ ÷òî, à îôèãèòåëüíî ñïîñîáñòâóþò ïðåîäîëåòü ñ äåïðåññèåé òðàíññåêñóàëû. òåì áîëåå, ÷òî îíè íàõîäÿòñÿ ñòîëüêî êàê äîëãî ìíå íóæíî, òàêèì îáðàçîì åùå ýëèòíûå äåâóøêè ìîñêâû äîâîëüíî ïðèëè÷íî. òîëüêî ëèøü, ÷òî-òî íå ïåðåñòàåò áûòü ìàëîïîíÿòíûì â öåëÿõ ìåíÿ êðóãëûì ñ÷åòîì ýòî ñåêñ äîñóã, òî åñòü áîÿçíî ïðîáîâàòü, äàæå åñëè èíòåðåñíî.Òðàíñû Ìîñêâû äîñòàòîíî ðàñïðîñòðàííåíîå ÿâëåíèå.

Ñ óâàæåíèåì âàø äðóã Ýëåîíîðà

Proxy bidding is fine. The problem is that people get so caught up in 1 auction, they will end up paying more for something because they don’t want to lose that one particular auction. So placing bids early ends up hurting them in the long run.

I use sniping tools all the time. And I am a big seller on ebay as well and I don’t mind snipers. For me, I prefer my auction to sell then not sell.

I in fact am starting a mobile ebay auction sniping app.

Check it out The Winning Bid