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Sniping software recommendations?

#21
For anyone interested, I ended up using a Firefox extension called "Myibidder Auction bid sniper for eBay." I'm not sure exactly why I chose it over the other options that were suggested. It had pretty good reviews, so I went with it.

https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/myibay-auction-bid-sniper-ebay/

It seemed pretty straightforward so I tried it on the auction I started this thread about in the first place. I put it my max bid and told it to bid with 5 seconds left, and then I went to work. Got home 5 hours later and was pleased to see that it had worked, as I had an e-mail from eBay telling me I won the item.

I don't see myself using it that often, but it's nice to see that it did what it was supposed to do.
 
#24
BIGEJ2 said:
Completely illegal. If you catch a guy doing that (and you can by looking at the bid history of the seller), his and his friend's eBay days are over.
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Yeah, but how do you prove 2 people are working together?

I saw THE most obvious case of shill bidding a year or so ago. I can't remember what the item was, but it wasn't something super popular, it only had 1 or 2 bidders. Anyway, with about an hour left the high bid was around $200. Then a new bidder kept placing bid after bid in $5 increments until the he was the high bidder, and then he retracted his last bid. By then he had bumped the high bid up to $400, which was obviously the max bid from the person who was leading the auction a few minutes earlier with the $200 bid.

No one else bid, so the winning bidder was now paying double what he was an hour earlier. This was before eBay started hiding users' names, so I e-mailed the person and told them they were a victim of shill bidding. They never replied, so I don't know if they paid the $400 for the item or if they contacted eBay.
 
#26
Thunder Pulse said:
What worries my about these services is that I have to log into them with my eBay password. My password is ridiculously long and secure, but I'm going to change it to something else equally long and secure.
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This is a concern, make sure you don't use that password anywhere else.

Oh and waiting to big at the very end of an auction is the best strategy for paying the lowest price for the item, I personally prefer "buy it now".
 
#27
Thunder Pulse said:
Where did I say that?

Wake up in a bad mood today? I know how eBay works, I've been using it for over 10 years. I've lost plenty of auctions when my snipe bid wasn't the highest bid, and I've shrugged my shoulders and moved on. I've also won plenty more at the end with my snipe bids. Had I placed that same bid earlier other bidders may have "changed their minds" about what their highest bid was and bid higher. I've seen that a million times.

Here's another scenario: I want item Y. Seller has set $100 as the minimum bid. With 6 days... 5 days... 4 days... 3 days, there's no activity, so I go ahead and post my max bid of $500, but since I'm the only bidder so far it shows my current bid as $100. Seller gets nervous/upset that no one but me is bidding on his item so he has his friend throw some bids at it too. His friend bids $125, and he's immediately outbid by me at $126. This continues until his friend has bid $400 and gets outbid by me at $405. No further bids get placed, so I get it for $405. That's $95 less than my max bid, so should I be happy, or should I have waited until the last second, bid $500, and gotten the item for $100???

If you're looking at an item that's going to generate a lot of bidding then I guess you're not really losing out by posting your max bid early on, but other than that I can't think of a single advantage to showing your hand that early on. Thanks, but I'll stick with sniping.
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Exactly. It's funny how some people get upset with you when you suggest that bidding on eBay actually involves strategy. You don't tip your hand until you're ready to play it. Let the other guy get comfortable with his high bid, then submit yours at the last second. Of course it doesn't always work, but it works often enough. Why is it so important to some folks to belittle eBay users? If you don't get it, that's on you.
 

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