Ebay Sniping?

TennesseeOutlaw

I saw in a thread not too long ago a program called "Bidnapper." I was wondering if anyone had used this? How it works? I really want to win this auction if at all possible, and I dont want to trust a program that I have never used before and end up losing the auction because something wasnt set-up properly or whatever the reason (add 1).. Any help would be appreciated..

Thanks in advance,

Josh

janmike

Enter in the maximum amount you would really pay for the item. If you do not win then no big deal as you would not have paid that price anyway. Everyone else is thinking the same so unless it is a sleeper item the bidding can be intense. Good luck.

Rivrrat

I use auction stealer. Just put in your max bid, and it'll drop the bid right before it ends. It seems to me most auctions are sniped right at the end now. I saw some guy pull down some Rt/fx's yesterday with a day to go because they were only up to two bucks. I figured today they'd get run up well over 100 bucks what with the snipers.

candyliquor35m

janmike wrote:

Enter in the maximum amount you would really pay for the item. If you do not win then no big deal as you would not have paid that price anyway. Everyone else is thinking the same so unless it is a sleeper item the bidding can be intense. Good luck.

All this does is run the price up. Sniping is a much better alternative.

janmike

For some it does. It really depends on what you are looking to buy.

heiney9

Try eSnipe. I use it and it works great. Very easy to get started and free snipes for 30 days. Hell, almost everyone snipes so I started doing it as well.

BaggedLancer

What's wrong with sitting in front of your PC and clicking the mouse?

RuSsMaN

Nothing, it's what I do. Old school snipe.

exalted512

I had a guy ask me what sniping program I had because I outsniped him when he was using esnipe. I told him a T3 connection:p
-Cody

candyliquor35m

heiney9 wrote:

Try eSnipe. I use it and it works great. Very easy to get started and free snipes for 30 days. Hell, almost everyone snipes so I started doing it as well.

Do you know of anyone who has had their ebay account hijacked after using one of these services? That's the only thing I worry about since you have to give them your password.

beardog03

I`m with Russman here...

old school snipe !!

heiney9

BaggedLancer wrote:

What's wrong with sitting in front of your PC and clicking the mouse?

Well let's see if I'm at work when the auction ends or perhaps out to dinner or maybe sleeping I let the snipe bid handle it. I have bought and sold a total of about a two dozen things on eBay so it works for me when it's something I really want. Doesn't happen too often.

heiney9

candyliquor35m wrote:

Do you know of anyone who has had their ebay account hijacked after using one of these services? That's the only thing I worry about since you have to give them your password.

I know several people including my bro who use it and never an issue. My bro has bought and sold close to 1000 different items in 9 years and never had an issue. If you are ultra paranoid change your eBay password while you are sniping something and then afterwards change it back. There is always a small amount of risk when dealing on-line no matter what you do. I believe eSnipe is one of the better known older services out there.

candyliquor35m

janmike wrote:

For some it does. It really depends on what you are looking to buy.

I can see the logic behind sniping but I can't see the logic behind bidding early. IMO it's similar to poker and even though I'm not an avid poker player, I believe a big part of poker is not showing your cards until you have to and either leading the other players to believe that you have a great hand when you don't (bluffing) so they'll fold or leading the other players to believe that you don't have a great hand when you do to entice them to bid the pot higher so you can snipe it. Of course on ebay you want to snipe it for as little as possible don't you so why show your hand early.

Of course it depends on what you're buying. I believe the only way you'll win the bid by bidding early is if hardly anyone else wants it or if you're willing to get into a bidding war with someone which to me means, you probably paid more than what it's worth.

TN_Polk_Lover

I agree with candyliquor -- never bid until the very last few seconds. It's the only way I have ever won on anything. I do it the old fashion way, I wait until about 60 seconds left, hit the bid button, enter the amount, then wait until there is about 20 seconds left before hitting the submit and confirm bid buttons. Its the thrill of the timing!

sbpolk

Hmmm, are you looking at some polk speakers by chance? Looks like people are waiting till the last minute to bid on my RTi setup. Nice way to buy, sucky way to sell! Ha!

heiney9

TN_Polk_Lover wrote:

I agree with candyliquor -- never bid until the very last few seconds. It's the only way I have ever won on anything. I do it the old fashion way, I wait until about 60 seconds left, hit the bid button, enter the amount, then wait until there is about 20 seconds left before hitting the submit and confirm bid buttons. Its the thrill of the timing!

Yeah, but if I'm sniping and I'm out to dinner or at work or sleeping and I can have it put my bid in with 6 seconds or 3 seconds left. I get a nice tidy e-mail confirmation. . You loose :eek:

wingnut4772

I use Auctionsniper with no problems.

candyliquor35m

sbpolk wrote:

Hmmm, are you looking at some polk speakers by chance? Looks like people are waiting till the last minute to bid on my RTi setup. Nice way to buy, sucky way to sell! Ha!

That's very true. I've seen some sellers make all their auctions end within a few seconds of each other which makes it harder to snipe them if you're bidding on more than one of them.

In the end it should all work out the same. If the bid for your speakers is $200 with 1 minute left then someone that wants them and knows they're worth $500 will put in a maximum bid of $500. Unfortunately someone else will also have to bid $500 otherwise the buyer that bid $500 will get them for $210 or whatever the incremental bid is.

cmy330go

I always snipe manually. Another trick I use is to bid a few dollars above a round number. For example: lastnight I was bidding on a set of Clapton tickets, but didn't want to give over $200 for them. In the last minute I threw in a bid for $196 figuring that someone may try to snipe them at a nice even $195. Sure enough that's exactly what happened.

Listing here.

danger boy

I wish someone would snipe my Ebay auction.

WilliamM2

Hmmm, are you looking at some polk speakers by chance? Looks like people are waiting till the last minute to bid on my RTi setup.

If they bid at all. Your starting bid amount is higher than any have sold for recently.

janmike

Fees, fees, fees. It never ends. For final end bidding I agree with the old fashion way.

candyliquor35m

heiney9 wrote:

Yeah, but if I'm sniping and I'm out to dinner or at work or sleeping and I can have it put my bid in with 6 seconds or 3 seconds left. I get a nice tidy e-mail confirmation. . You loose :eek:

Do you recommend the 3 second option or is that riskier since that's cutting it pretty close if there's a software glitch?

heiney9

candyliquor35m wrote:

Do you recommend the 3 second option or is that riskier since that's cutting it pretty close if there's a software glitch?

I use the 6 second option

TN_Polk_Lover

cmy330go wrote:

I always snipe manually. Another trick I use is to bid a few dollars above a round number. For example: lastnight I was bidding on a set of Clapton tickets, but didn't want to give over $200 for them. In the last minute I threw in a bid for $196 figuring that someone may try to snipe them at a nice even $195. Sure enough that's exactly what happened.

Listing here.

I do something similar. Say I'm bidding on something and I decide that $125 is as high as I want to go. I'll bid something like $126.99. For some reason it seems to work better by putting in an odd amount. But, then again, I may just be crazy.

Robert

Gaara

cmy330go has a good point, and I learned this recently. Someone beat out my bid by $.01, didn't even realize you could do that.

From now on I have two windows open, one with the auction up giving me the time left, and one with my maximum bid amount put in. I wait until 3 secs are left then switch over to the other screen and hit confirm bid. Haven't messed up yet and the bid generally goes in with 1 sec left, sometimes 2.

Ya gotta be quick though, I leave the cursor where it says "confirm bid" and turn down the mouses sensitivity to nothing. Then I use F5 to refresh the auction screen, and alt+tab to switch over. Saves a lot of time rather then clicking refresh, and clicking to the other tab, the trying to click confirm.

Jared

TennesseeOutlaw

Well, this thread has really stirred up some differing opinions.. Well I went ahead and used bidnapper, and I won the auction. I have nothing but god things to say about the program.. It's just too bad that in about a week the free trial is over! Nonetheless, I got what I wanted, and that's all I wanted to begin with. Ive never been an Ebay'r. As a matter of fact, these 3 items that I have purchased over the last few weeks are the only items I have EVER bid on/purchased from the site from it's inception.

Josh

ND13

All I need is my 10.0 cable connection. I can put 3-4 bids, easily, in the last 10-15 seconds of an auction. I can't remember how many auctions I won just by that technique alone. Another thing is to not let your "opponent" know what increments you'll use. I'll use like $75.13, $83.13, 94.13, and then at the very end, I'll change up the change part to like... 78 cents or something. It has tricked more than one "opponent". They would try to beat me with as little as possible, like when I was using 13 cents in my bids, he/she would start using 15 cents or 20 cents.

The key is to not be a predictable bidder.

BaggedLancer

In the end, I still agree with Russ, if there is something i REALLY want, I sit there till the last seconds and bid on it myself. If I am at work I find a reason to sit by my computer. If I absolutely can't do it I have someone in my immediate family do it.

I absolutely trust no one else or any software to use my password/s to bid on something like that.

I am far too young to risk any kind of indentity theft/fraud. From what I hear it takes many years to get your credit and indentity back if it is ever the same again....

heiney9

BaggedLancer wrote:

In the end, I still agree with Russ, if there is something i REALLY want, I sit there till the last seconds and bid on it myself. If I am at work I find a reason to sit by my computer. If I absolutely can't do it I have someone in my immediate family do it.

I absolutely trust no one else or any software to use my password/s to bid on something like that.

I am far too young to risk any kind of indentity theft/fraud. From what I hear it takes many years to get your credit and indentity back if it is ever the same again....

That's all fine and dandy, but if someone wants to steal your identity they will do it whether you use a computer program or not. It's actually 1000 times easier to go thru your mail/garbage or pick up a receipt at a store, etc. to steal your identity than a simple sniping program. We are all vulnerable at all times and in every situation. But different strokes for different folks.