Sidebar Sidebar
Become a MacRumors Supporter for $50/year with no ads, ability to filter front page stories, and private forums.

Ebay Sniping or Ebay Proxy Bidding ?

Status
Not open for further replies.
fab5freddy

fab5freddy

macrumors 65816
Original poster
Jan 21, 2007
1,206
7
Heaven or Hell
I wanted to know what is better :

To use ebay's automatic proxy bidding
or to use a 3rd party ebay sniper like Esnipe or similar ?

What are the advantages of both and what do people use and why ?

thanks for any advice ;-)
 
for winning the snipping last min is the best way. Ebay Proxy bidding people just keep upping their max amount to get it until it crosses yours. Snipe it the person does not have a chance to raise and no one else can just keep slowing raising you.
 
I don't generally buy on eBay anymore - too many weird sellers imo/ime - but I still buy a tie once in a while from this guy in Germany. The thing is, they're popular so there's a lot of people watching them, wanting... waiting... waiting to bid (the devils)

I love to snipe. I can usually sneak in with two seconds to go. But, sorry I don't know which method is better. Sniping is great because you come out of nowhere and snatch it from under their nose (if you've got the high bid)
 
I don't buy too often, but i almost always snipe, unless it's something that doesn't seem to have much interest or if I don't care a lot whether I win. I use a free program called jbidwatcher - it works perfectly.
 
arkitect said:
I prefer to snipe using software.
Beats forgetting about an auction or not being near a computer to do a last split second bid.
Click to expand...

Yep that's the difference. Whether or not you'll be there in that small time frame to snipe it.
 
Sniping is proxy bidding.

The only difference is they put their high bid within the last 10 seconds. Effectively "sniping" anyone else who may try to bid in the last moments.

However, if/when you ever bid...bid what you are willing to pay. You shouldnt be watching the auction count down and going "man, Ill add another $5 to my bid". Why not do it in the beginning? Yes, you want the item for cheaper, but if you truly WANT it, bid what your willing to pay for it.

Otherwise, you may get sniped when someone outbids you by $1.

Snipes only work when they bid higher than your highest (proxy) bid.

Sniping does nothing but make the user feel powerful.
 
well if you are bidding on something and get outbid you can then go back at the last min and do ebay's new 1 click bid and put a bid in at the last 3 seconds. i just won a lcd monitor this afternoon that way. i think it's fun but as a seller i hate it lol
 
fab5freddy said:
when you snipe manually, do you wait till the last 10 seconds
to place your max bid ?
Click to expand...

Wait as long as you can, I once saw someone bidding against me three times in the last minute. I won but he raised the price with more than 100 euro ...

I usually play a song with iTunes to know when I have to bid. Choose a song you know well and that doesn't fade out.
 
I used bidnapper and never had a problem, it was great and relatively inexpensive. They have a per winning bid pricing scheme or a monthly plan with unlimited snipes.
You can set up a chain of items too. Say you want to buy an ipod touch for $100 (unlikely, but this is hypothetical). You add all of the ipod touch auctions you can to bidnapper with a $100 max bid. It keeps trying to bid until you win one, then cancels the rest.
It also includes a service that searches for misspelled words (ie. ipod tuoch or ipo dtouch) that will receive much less traffic and probably sell for less). If I still bought off of ebay, I would renew with them in a second. Sniping manually takes a ton of time and there is more chance my internet will hang at the last second than theirs.
If you enter your max bid from the start of the auction, people will just keep chipping away and costing you a fortune. It is amazing how many people submit a huge number of bids incremented by a small amount. They just don't get proxy bidding.
 
i must agree, sniping manually is alot better than using software, it really gets the blood pumping and it's a nice thrill. I have never used software but the only thing i can say is that the software will help if your not home.
 
Guys,

Need your advice.

I've been bidding on THIS North Face jacket for my girlfriend, and over the past 2 hours, I've been involved in a bidding war for it......and there's still 5 days to go in this auction!!!!! :rolleyes:

You must understand that this particular jacket (in other colours) sells for around $65-75, so the fact that it's at $96 right now means the crazy mofo bidding against me really wants it. RRSP of this jacket is $129 US dollars. :rolleyes:


I really want to get this jacket for my girlfriend for her bir, because she's always cold during winters. In Australia, it sells for around $190 US dollars, which is why I want this jacket so badly via eBay. I didn't think I'd be paying more than $85-90 for it, but even if I do, it's still cheaper than RRSP in Australia. It's easy to get an XS black version on eBay, but not in this colour.

Am I getting out of hand? We've exchanged "highest bidder" title 4 or 5 times now. Maybe this person lives overseas as well, and may be willing to go higher and higher on the price. On the other hand, if this person were American, I think we'll hit her maximum bid soon --- probably $105 or so. Otherwise it wouldn't be worth it.

I usually just snipe that s***. Should I wait 5 days and try again, or should I follow the advice given so far in this thread and simply bid my maximum now? I figure if I bid $105 right now as my maximum bid, and pay the ridiculous $35 shipping fee, that's $140, which still saves me $50 USD. Anything over that price is crazy.


PS: At first, $85 was my max bid. :p I only bid more when I realized that if I don't bid higher, I'd probably never get a brown XS version of this jacket again, and I need to buy/win it in the next 10 days or so.
 
Never make any bid until the last few minutes. Just sit on your nerves and try to snipe it. If you really want it snipe it with an insane high bid, chances are you pay less than that amount. However, make sure you can afford the insane bid.
 
teleromeo said:
If you really want it snipe it with an insane high bid, chances are you pay less than that amount. However, make sure you can afford the insane bid.
Click to expand...

The potential for disaster is too high.

I'm going to lose this bid. I don't mind. There's a cream coloured one that I like more, and rather than listening to the advice on putting down your max bid whenever you want, I'm going to go for the sniping technique, which I normally do within the last 20 seconds of an auction.

I'd snipe with even less time, but once I lost a bid that way. I had lost an auction after tried to bid with 5 seconds remaining. My internet temporarily slowed down, and failed to send the proper data after I had clicked on the "BID" button. I don't know what happened, but it said I didn't win. The winning price was below what I bid. THere's a chance that the person I bid against bid higher than me, but he won the product at a very good price, and I was willing to pay a lot higher (because it was more expensive in Australia than in America).
 
Status
Not open for further replies.
Register on MacRumors! This sidebar will go away, and you'll see fewer ads.
Top Bottom
Back