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Tired of being 'Sniped' (eBay)

A

andym172

macrumors 6502
Original poster
Oct 24, 2003
335
3
UK
In the past week alone I've lost out on a handful of auctions due to being outbid in the very final seconds of an auction.

I'm 99.9% sure that the buyers are using sniping software as they appear to be able to place a number of bids in very quick succession.

If you can't beat them join them - can anybody recommend a good/reliable snipe software for the Mac?

I've had a look on versiontracker but none really catch my eye.
 
steelfist said:
what's sniping?
Click to expand...

It's when you sit in a building overlooking an eBayer that's bidding on something you want, and you shoot em in the head with a big rifle.

Andym172 wants to improve his accuracy with some software. ;)






edit: I felt bad about making a sarky comment without helping, so here's a thread discussing it before. I'm afraid I have no experience of sniping though, cause I just take my chances when bidding.
 
Wouldn't setting up a proxy bid up to a specified maximum amount negate the need for software like this?

Unless you really are trying to improve your aim, then I recommend Halo 2 ;) :p


Edit: Found this this but it seems awfully expensive.
 
andym172 said:
If you can't beat them join them - .
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it's the only way ;)

I can't stand the people that start a bidding war with 9 days remaining... :rolleyes: needlessly bumping the price, are these folk stupid or what? that and the seemingly UK phenomenon of sticking stupid reserves on items pretty much negating the whole notion of a bargin. :mad: :( :rolleyes:
 
After getting caught up in bidding frenzies in my early days on eBay (1997ish), I'm now horribly sensible. I figure out what my top, top bid is; the amount after which I'd feel done.

Then 20 seconds or so before the auction closes, I bid that amount regardless if the current bid is much lower. I usually win since even with rebid software, there's rarely enough time for more than a couple of bids. And, if someone else does win, it's beyond my 'I feel done' price so I don't generally mind.

Stupid reserves are annoying though when they bear little relation to the value of what something is really worth. I can understand putting a reserve at say 75% of the realistic price but when it's 25% over the reasonable price, it seems mad. And don't get me started on con-artists using 'Buy it Now'
 
I agree, what nobs bidding up items. I had a friend whom I tried to straighten out but all he could say is, its good to know where its at. The only thing I could make of that was if someone else had already bid he wanted to know how high their possible proxy was. Yikes, ebay is full of such stupidity. That is when I'm a buyer, as a seller its great :)

I use BidSlammer, you buy tokens, and they have two for one sales on them at times. You pay everytime they place a bid, more for winning and a minimum for losing.

I use to do the proxy thing at the end of the auction as mentioned but that takes up to much time. This way I see something and slam it right then at my highest price. Never think about it again usually until I get an email saying I won. Much better.
 
Applespider said:
After getting caught up in bidding frenzies in my early days on eBay (1997ish), I'm now horribly sensible. I figure out what my top, top bid is; the amount after which I'd feel done.

Then 20 seconds or so before the auction closes, I bid that amount regardless if the current bid is much lower. I usually win since even with rebid software, there's rarely enough time for more than a couple of bids. And, if someone else does win, it's beyond my 'I feel done' price so I don't generally mind.
Click to expand...

That's exactly what I do, and I too rarely lose unless someone with more money than sense enters a bid much higher than the item is worth.

When I'm buying, people who start bidding wars with 9 days remaining drive me nuts- what the hell are you doing?? You aren't going to win a 17" powerbook for £49!! However, when I'm selling, these people are all my best friends.
 
I can understand the frustration of being sniped, but at the same time, it's one of two viable and valid strategies for winning an auction.

The other is to simply decide what is the maximum amount you would be prepared to pay for an item and bid that at any stage in the auction. If you loose it's because the item sold for more than you were prepared to bid - thus you wouldn't have bid again anyway.

The problem is that there are a proportion of ebay users who get hooked into the competitive aspect of auction participation and who see the process as 'winning' rather than 'buying'.
 
za9ra22 said:
The problem is that there are a proportion of ebay users who get hooked into the competitive aspect of auction participation and who see the process as 'winning' rather than 'buying'.
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Too true. Ebay uses the whole "winning" terminology. I used to say I won an auction, till my friend got on me about it. So when talking to him I'll phrase it like, "I won the legal requirement to pay for an item for a specified price" on ebay.

We are lame.
 
DaveP said:
Too true. Ebay uses the whole "winning" terminology. I used to say I won an auction, till my friend got on me about it. So when talking to him I'll phrase it like, "I won the legal requirement to pay for an item for a specified price" on ebay.
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Just one more reason I'm happy to say I've never bought or sold anything on ebay....

D
 
Absolutely. My dad's a bit of an eBay fiend, and he's always told me to bid the maximum you want to pay a reasonable time before the end. I have nipped in at the end before, but I still leave it at that maximum I want to pay.

Once or twice I felt I'd got caught up in a bidding war, and while I didn't massively overpay, I still felt pissed off I'd paid more than I wanted. My dad's advice still seems the best to me, I'm afraid, although whether I'd admit this to him is debatable....:D
 
Mr. Anderson said:
Just one more reason I'm happy to say I've never bought or sold anything on ebay....

D
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Selling your stuff is an amazing experience. eBay is a sellers market, start your auctions low and find joy in people over bidding for your crap.

I love eBay.
 
Hmm, I like the "buy it now button" as long as I don't feel like I'm being cheated out of my money. If the buy it now price seems way too high, I just pass it up and find something lower. I guess I'm not very eBay savvy, I've never even heard of sniping except in the grassy knoll type context.
 
Bibulous said:
eBay is a sellers market, start your auctions low and find joy in people over bidding for your crap.
Click to expand...
LOL. How true! That has been my experience when I sold my Canon XL1 digital camcorder for about $500 more than what I expected. On top of that, the buyer lived in another country and had to pay for shipping, escrow charges, and duties. :rolleyes: :eek:

When someone starts bidding blindly, it's so easy to want it so bad that they pay more than what it should really sell for.
 
i downloaded powersnipe, but i haven't used it yet because i don't want to pay for something that's probably not going to save me much money

you can get powersnipe off softpedia
 
i just have 2 windows open.. one with the auction and one with the "confirm bid" screen. when there are about 4 seconds left, i click confirm bid. most of the time it goes through. ive gotten a few angry emails though...

Edit: I know it sucks for the people that lost but just remember; i was one of those people.
 
caveman_uk said:
Oh the 'I've got a G3 iBook and I reckon it's worth £500' phenomenon? What knobs.
Click to expand...

yep, those are the ones.

Applespider said:
I figure out what my top, top bid is; the amount after which I'd feel done.

Then 20 seconds or so before the auction closes, I bid that amount regardless if the current bid is much lower. I usually win since even with rebid software, there's rarely enough time for more than a couple of bids.
Click to expand...

Which is exactly how I do it, though I usually wait until 5 seconds until closure as that really negates any opportunity by other parties.

The stuff I usually hunt down on eBay though is generally no longer available, so the price you're prepared to pay is usually how ever much the item is worth to you, rather than it's actual monetary value.
 
i rarely use eBay now, the good deals are long gone. I think you can only get good deals on very rare stuff nobody knows about.
 
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