ebay madness

[shiato storm]

why is it when you've got your eye on something that nothing happens for a good 24hours before teh bid ends then suddenly in the last hour of the bid the amount virtually doubles!! really quite annoying that way it happens...

[Nick F]

There is a program you can download called, bid sniper, or something like that that will bid for you in the last couple of minutes of a auction.

[5lab]

i've not seen sniper software you can download - teh stuff i've seen is the online sort - basically you pay 20p a pop (or some similar small amount) adn teh company bids on your behalf (you give it your user name and password) on that item on ebay, say 1 second before the end of the auction.

[DeludedGuy]

I always bid in the last 15 seconds.....

[Spud1]

whats the point in bidding early? all you will do is drive up the prices

people are starting to realise this now

theres plenty of ebay sniping software out there, plenty on usenet if you have access, or on the shareware sites

[Knoxville]

I never use bid snipers, I just leave it to the last 30 seconds or so.

[shiato storm]

what if you just wack in a higher max bid? or does it go over that?

i hate the sound of this bid sniping stuff. is there anyway to counter act it?

[skuzgib]

Fight fire with fire...

[Knoxville]

what if you just wack in a higher max bid? or does it go over that?

i hate the sound of this bid sniping stuff. is there anyway to counter act it?

If you put a max bid of £30 on something thats at £23 and the sniper tried to get it with a max bid of £25, you'll still win, if he puts a max bid of £35 however you'll loose.

[jimborae]

Bidding in the last few seconds of the auction with the max you are prepared to to pay is the only way you'll win e-bay auctions these days if it's a popular item being auctioned

[shiato storm]

yeah...sucks to be honest. currently been outbid on about 4/5 separate occasions right at the last second...takes the p*ss. and is really annoying for those who weren't aware of these sniping mongrels. whats the deal? its as though there wer about 10 snipers all at once!
its like speed dating only worse. speed bidding!!

[Elmo]

it's annoying when u're wanting to buy something, i tend to go mainly for buy it now items now rather than the auctions cos they just get silly. However if you're selling something it's usually a blessing. I sold something yesterday that had a starting price of £2.99, and a buy it now price of £7. Someone decided to bid for it which automatically makes it an auction and no longer buy it now. In the end it reached £10.50! £3.50 more than i was looking for! I was totally chuffed

Oh and also, i only go for things that arent too popular. Things that everyone is looking for is where you get snipers and last minute bidders.

[skuzgib]

What gets me is the way people bid on the first day of a 9 day auction. WHY??

Surely any human being can see that for the lowest price, it makes sense to bid in the last few minutes?

[shiato storm]

tell me about it.
well, I think I sort of figured out how to get a bit luckier on what I'm bidding for. by being a bit crafty and lucky...looking at similar bids at the same time or in the recent past you can get an idea of who's bidding regularly and for how much i.e where they top out at. so far I've seen this pretty regularly on things I;ve been bidding/watching. there's also a common factor in all the items I'm going for in that they are going for around 40% (+/- 5%) of their actual retail value...so, in order to out do the snipers a bid around the 30% mark, with a raise in the last few minutes to 40% (or as high as the max bid i want to pay, at the moment 40% of what this retails at is quite a lot )...if it goes past my limit way before the final hour then i guess I misjuged the item. if its going crazy in the last 5mins and i'm not at 40% then I'd probably do that.(one item I was watching leapt from my modest £55 bid right up to £100 in the last few minutes/seconds! one was in there with 5secs to go...)
its all wishful thinking I know but there is a method to it and how other items have gone and how bidders behave. I'm sure tehre are books out there on it written by some ebay junky with too much time on their hands.

[5lab]

i bid early on in auctions for several reasons.

often, i'm far too lazy and buzy to hang round on ebay and wait for somethign to reach its final time, so i just stick the bid in early

secondly, putting a bit in early often draws another bit out of other people, so you can see if you have competition. if you do, simply bid on a similr item.

[shiato storm]

quite. its just a shame similar items were all placed in around the same time point so everyone was gunning for a bid. i just sat back and watched the second item go for £50 more than the first one and the third another £50 on top of that!