Thank you Taffy Cheerful, I also hate bidding wars and have learned a valuable lesson today. I just had'nt come accross this before. [img]graemlins/rose.gif[/img]
Everyday my goal is to learn something new, this board provides me with that oppurtunity and helps me grow, thank you all for your responses. [img]graemlins/rose.gif[/img]
Taffy, I do exactly what you said, except I often don't even make the first bid. Therefore, my ID almost never shows as anything but the final, winning bidder. I refuse to place a bid that will make my final cost (or anyone else's) any higher than it has to be. Watching two parties bid against each other over and over again for an item I really want to win, is very annoying.
This has been enlightening, I didn't know what a snipe bid was. I usually do this, and it sounds like a bad thing. What I have learned with the bidding wars is that I hate them and sometimes I have gotten caught up in them and pay too much. But, this is what works for me or I feel I would never get what I truly want. I usually will bid on something I want at a low price and by the time the auction is about to end I will bid my highest I'm willing to give, sometimes I get it and alot of times a may not. At least this way, I don't find myself in a bidding war and I don't get carried away of paying too much for an item. It is just safer for me and my money. In the past, I have had this happen a few times and it scares me to ever do it again. I would bid the highest I'm willing to give way before auction ends and if it is something I really really want, I may put in a price a bit higher. Say last 5 min. of auction someone comes along and has no history (0) feedback. They bid by $2, $5 or $10 and continue to do so until they are under my bid by say $1.00 and quite. I win! but felt that somehow they could figure out what my bid was and bid the auction up to my max. I don't put in my max bid no more until the last few seconds because of that. What is that called and is there a way someone can figure out your max bid and bid you up to it?
Just remember it doesn't matter how late/fast you bid on an auction, it only matters how high you bid. The person who wins is the person who's willing to pay the highest amount.
Just place a bid for the highest amount you'd be willing to pay.
<font size="2" face="Verdana, Helvetica, sans-serif">There are a few online sniper bid programs that you can sign up for, and they will watch you items and snipe at the last possible second with whatever your highest bid is.Originally posted by Wickedgood:
I've also wondered if there was some 3rd party service - some software perhaps that you could plug in the ending time and your bid and it would bid for you automatically with one or two seconds to spare.
If you REALLY care about winning something, my advice is to check out the Advanced Search options and search for the item with the "Completed Listings" box checked. (This is not foolproof, because some completed auctions won't show up depending on how they were titled and listed.) Set your maximum bid right at or a little above what you've seen people bidding at the end. This may or may not work all the time--obviously, we ebayers are a fickle bunch--but it has helped me understand the "value" of some of the retired AG items
Also, I think manual sniping is better than the software sniping, because you can open up several browser windows with higher and lower amounts ready to submit your final bid, depending on how you can see the last twenty seconds of the auction going.
Deborah
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