Users of sniping tools suck Posted By: Thomas Date: 6/3/05 00:08 GMT

Everyone is entitled to their own opinion, but by your own statements you are guilty of what what you accuse others of...

In Response To: So Was It Automated Snipe or LIVE ? ? ? (jeff stein)

It's against the ebay rules, you know.... .

Interestingly enough, I did a search of the eBay user agreement for the words: "Snipe", "bidding", "program" and "service" and found no passage within the eBay user agreement that would support your statement above. In fact I found no instance of the word "Snipe" at all, and the only instances of "bidding", "program" and "service" my browser found had nothing to do with Sniping.

Noone can compete with a sniping program manually, no matter how fast your connection.

I disagree...

A sniping program or service only works if the bid which they are placing is higher than everyone elses bid. If you place a bid 15 seconds before the end of the auction, it's recognized/processed by eBay and it's higher than everyone elses bid by one bid increment, it will win no matter what method was used to place the bid: program/service/manually.

I and many other people here and elsewhere have successfully won auctions against sniping programs and services via manual bids. It only requires the money to place the winning bid and the willingness to commit to pay for the item should your bid be the winning one.

Sniping Is no more than waiting until the last minute to place a bid or in Poker parlance "Lay one's card's on the table". There is nothing immoral, unethical, illegal or wrong about keeping one's cards/intentions close to one's vest until the crucial moment of an auction. There is nothing untoward in waiting until most of the fireworks at an auction has occured before placing your first bid ($300 new bidder!)...

Here is the schtick with bidding manually. It can be just as effective as snipping, as long as:

• eBay is operating properly,
• Your connection to the internet is working properly.
  • If your DSL/Cable connection goes down, or your power fails or your modem connection is too slow to react you could be disappointed that your high bid would have won if you had been able to post it. That's one of the pitfalls of last minute bidding. If there is a technology glitch somewhere along the line you could be burned.
• Your Brower/bidding program/Operating System/etc. is operating properly.

Bidding manually at or near the last moment of an auction can minimize the visability of your interest in an item and make it more difficult for competitors to react to your bid. Because, if you bid $500 more than the current high bid with 5 minutes left to go, folks would still have 4 minutes 50 seconds plus to pick away at it. If you bid $500 more than the the current high bid with 10 seconds left to go (no matter manually, program or service) competitors would have less than 10 seconds to react/pick away at it. As always having the highest bid wins as long as it's one bid increment above all the other bidders before the auction ends.

But, there are some rubs about bidding at the last minute too:

• technology glitches: power/phone/DSL/Cable/Sniping Service outage at the critical moment of an auction.
• if you are using a bidding program it could unexpectedly quit/crash/fail to place the bid/etc.
• with bidding manually at the last minute, not only are you limited others ability to react to your bids, you're limiting your time to react to theirs...
• with a bidding program, you are adding yet one more piece of technology that can possibly fail, you have to make sure your system's clock is syncronized with the real time, that the program is up to date (eBay changes stuff ALL the TIME), and that you know how to operate it properly.
• with a bidding service, your bids will only be as reliable and as timely as the service you choose, you have to know how to place bids accurately via their site, most of them are pay services (usually 1% of winning bids), and there is a dead period (usually 5 minutes) before the end of an auction that you can't change your bid... In other words if with 2 minutes left to go you decide against placing a bid, you can't rescind it with a bidding service, you have to ride it out.
• Not only can your technology fail you, but there are lots of other snipers out there, sometimes you bag your quary, sometimes even talented snipers get outsniped.

I know a number of people who've been burned by each bid placing method: manual/program/service, and for important items they will set up bids at the same amount via multiple methods (manual/program/bidding service/etc.) to insure at least one of the bids does get placed properly in case of a glitch. There is nothing wrong with that either.

That said, I installed such an application as well,

There is nothing like condemning others for practices you participate in...

to be able to keep up with the cheaters.

Again... as I've pointed out above... there is nothing within the eBay User Agreement that mentions Snipe or Sniping, Bidding programs or Bidding services. If it's not mentioned in the User Agreement it is not prohibited by the User Agreement. You can feel about that any way you wish to, but if it's not against the User Agreement it isn't cheating.

Funny thing is, there is so much talk here about fake watches, but software which manipulates ebay auctions - and has made the whole bidding process a joke - is considered appropriate ?

How do you figure?

There are programs and services out there that help sellers package and "produce" their eBay listings so to present their products in the best possible light in order to generate the most number of hits on the page, interest among bidders and hence higher final bids. Is that manipulation of eBay auctions? Is that inappropriate? Should they be banned?

Sauce for the goose T.

The seller's goal: the seller's goal is to maximize the amount of the winning bid.

The buyer's goal (typically) is to either:

• minimize the cost of the item,
• maximize his chances of winning the item at a price that the buyer is willing to pay,
• maximize his chances of winning the item at all costs,
• a combination of one or more of the above.

Sniping on eBay is a strategy of waiting until the last moment in an effort to minimize the ending bid of an item and maximize one's chances of winning the item. Standard eBay auctions are set up so that they have a fixed ending point. If one has a problem with fixed ending point auctions one should consider only bidding on Dutch Auctions on eBay or only using other auction sites which have a policy of allowing bidding to continue after the stated end of the auctions for X number of minutes after the last bid...

For those who haven't tried seen one of these floating end point auctions... If the stated end of an auction is noon, and three people place bids at 10 seconds to noon, those bids are registered, the high bid posted and the end of the auction is extended for (usually) 5 more minutes to allow further bidding, if no one bids within 5 minutes the auction ends, if someone does, the end is reset for 5 minutes after that bid, and so on. It's more like an "in-person/live" auction. eBay auctions aren't like that. If you don't like the eBay format, try another auction site that has a different format. I believe Yahoo Auctions are set with a "floating" end point based on a 5 minute "Going, Going, Gone..." type ending format.

The one sure way to win any standard "fixed endpoint" eBay auction is to place a bid at least one bid increment above everyone else that is registered by eBay before the close of the auction. For that way wins every time. All other strategies will succeed based upon the knowledge/skill of the bidder's and their willingness to bid higher than all the others.

Hilarious at best...

So's namecalling for things you do too. But that's just the way it looks from here.

The U.S. Marines have a saying: “Improvise, Adapt, Overcome”. I have an addition to that: ‘Or don't and you won't’...

The rules are the same for everyone... Bid as you see fit, or don't. The decision is yours.

Good Hunting!