I want to get started sniping.

I've read long and hard across the 'net, here at FPN and elsewhere, about the benefits and detriments to "sniping" an EBay auction. Now I'm going to try it out. What's your favorite location / site / tool for sniping? Please feel free to comment about any aspect of sniping.

I personally will want a system which is entirely off-line -- I will likely turn my own computer off, and not have it running while the auction is ending, so it's all up to my sniper's computer and internet connection to make it work out for me. In addition I will want not to have to enter too much personal information at the sniping site. The less they know about me, the better. I'm happy to create a new (fake) user name, linked to some new anonymous email account I only access once or twice; and even a new EBay identity just for the snipe. (This has the disadvantage of making my participation have a "zero" feedback rating at EBay for starters, but that's fine with me, I'm a once-a-month guy, I only have 7 feedbacks right now anyway).

Here are some services I've found listed here at FPN:

• Auction Sniper: http://www.auctionsniper.com/
• AuctionStealer: http://www.auctionstealer.com/
• BidNinja: http://www.bidninja.com/
• Bid-O-Matic (Biet-O-Matic): http://sourceforge.net/projects/bom/
• eSnipe: http://www.esnipe.com/
• EZSniper: http://www.ezsniper.com/
• JBidWatcher: http://www.jbidwatcher.com/
• JustSnipe: http://www.justsnipe.com/
• Snip: http://www.snip.pl/

If you guys all add your specific comments, I'll see what I can do to create a spreadsheet of all of these (and more) that we can keep pinned at the top of the Marketwatch Forum, if the moderators think that's a good idea.

I use JBidWatcher when I'm at my computer and AuctionStealer when I'm not going to be.

I used to use esnipe and discovered that eBay is updating their site to prevent use of these services. Now I just sit and watch - more fun, but a pain when away on business.

How is EBay moving towards preventing sniping? Is there some change afoot?

IMHO, unless they go the Yahoo!Japan route of automatically extending auction end times after last-second bids (which I could get behind), they'd be fools if they did. Sniping has been a part of eBay for years, and they're not going to stop that as long as they leave the hard end times. If they force manual sniping (with or without their new Real Time Countdown), they're going to cost themselves money. People who aren't able to manually snipe because they're at work or asleep won't bother to bid at all, knowing they can't compete with the manual snipers, and that'll result it lower ending bids in many cases.

Back to the original question. Because my computer is up and connected all the time, I usually use JBidWatcher. It does well for me, but because it has to snipe further in advance than other services, there is a chance for someone to manually up their bid over you. When I really want something, especially that looks like it will have a lot of competition, I use JustSnipe and it's done well by me.

Have you got a reference for this? I'd like to read more. I don't see how they could prevent automated sniping...the sniping service just logs in as me and bids at a specified time, right? If they delay the close of an auction for last-minute bids, that would make sense and be more like a live auction...is that what they're doing?

I've had good luck with jbidwatcher. It's free and open source, which I like. I've used it on both Windows and Ubuntu Linux without any problems.

I remember that jbidwatcher was broken once, after an ebay update. It was my understanding that ebay didn't intentionally block sniping software, as it isn't really any different than bidding manually at the last second. Ebay updates do break sniping software sometimes, however. Maybe it is intentional, but it seems that they would have to change their policies before officially blocking bid sniping.

OK, I've taken this thread's recommendation (so far) and gotten an account at JustSnipe. I've set it to snipe two different auctions upcoming (one for a pen!). I took the trouble to establish a brand-new EBay membership, to associate with my new JustSnipe membership (though at EBay I did use my real home address and credit card, which already exists in their database under other memberships ... wonder if that'll be a problem?).

So we'll see how it goes. First one ends tomorrow (Sunday) evening.

OK well, it went fine, I won the item. But prowling around at JustSnipe I discovered this statement:



That's silly. I don't really see a real advantage to that. I mean, it's nice that my personal maximum will now be placed at the last possible moment (8 seconds, in the free JustSnipe service), rather than hours beforehand. And yes, that does helpfully defeat nibblers. But what about all those auctions I've seen, where a winning bidder actually increments up his bid ten or fifteen times, all within the last minute? Isn't that some kind of sniping program?

I would really like it if my sniping program would actually proxy-bid for me. At one minute to go, before the end of the auction, the FinalSniper software logs in to EBay, finds out the item's current price, and bids one increment higher. It then monitors the winning bid, and at any time that someone else squeezes in a higher bid, it ups again. Thus, I'm not at the mercy of the EBay proxy bidding system, but instead am at the mercy of FinalSniper's.

This seems to me to have several advantages, but I can't really describe them. Am I all washed up here? Are there sniping services that would do it my way instead of the way JustSnipe has just done it. They only enter one bid for me, at 8 seconds to go. That's better than nothing; but it's not what I thought sniping would be. They're just firing one bullet. I want them to accurately fire a whole magazine of them, as many as necessary to win at a price as low as possible.

Make sense?

Anyway, I did win this item. Pretty ...

Nice pipe!

I think eliminating the nibblers is reason enough to snipe. Also, depending on how active you are, your identity is hidden from other bidders, so no one knows if they're bidding against you or not. Of course, ebay has mostly done away with that as a problem with the new **** bidder IDs. One of the other things you can do is queue up a bid, but later delete it if for some reason you'd rather not bid - better item found, etc.

I see no reason to make multiple bids at the end of the auction. Sniping works.

Well, thanks for all the info, guys. You've just given me all the reasons I need to cancel my ebay account after 5 years. Never mind that I limited my purchases to an average 10/year. Seriously, if sniping is how it is done now, I don't need to be there. It's no longer an "auction" house. It's a machine-generated steal against those not so techno savvy, or those who want to honestly just want to get a good buy of an item someone else no longer needs. After my two remaining bids that are riding out there are "sniped," I'll go back to garage and estate sales. I need the exercise, anyway.

These "sniping" tools remind me all too much of the cheat programs that are now prevalent in online games. No one thinks they are wrong or bad to use, except the for a few of those that still think there should be some kind of honesty left among the masses and still play the game as it was meant and designed to be.

Sorry I have this opinion, but it IS just my opinion, after all. I've said too much.

Carry on.

Sniping is not "cheating". High bidder wins no matter when the bid is put in and Ebay has a deadline, pure and simple. I hardily agree that last minute bidding is the only way to stop people that nibble which I find very annoying. I use auctionsniper which has a small fee but, I'm sure the free ones probably work just as well.

Roger W.

Closed bid auctions are still auctions. The move to more sniping simply means that auctions are semi-open, not open (as originally intended).

So there's no reason to have a multiple-bullet sniping gun? Just one bullet will do? Hmm ...

Other points:

I think Kiavonne has one good point and one bad one and (I think) missed one.

First, the bad one. No, winning by sniping is not "stealing" the auction. The high bidder always wins, regardless of whether it was done by a snipe program or by a manually entered bid. Someone who feels that an item would have been won by him, but who lost because a late snipe got in there, should have entered his REAL personal maximum when he entered his manual bid. The fact that he didn't, in the hopes of not having that max upped by competitors, makes HIM the cheater -- trying to "cheat" the auction by not entering a real maximum, but instead a fake maximum. The snipe program AND the eBay proxy-bid system both require that you enter a real maximum at some point. And the highest maximum always wins, snipe or not. It's simply NOT "cheating" to use the auction the way the auction was intended and win only if you have the highest bid, and lose if you don't. That's quite different from video-game cheats, which allow you to win even if you DON'T have the (metaphorical) highest bid.

Second, the good one. Yes, sniping on eBay does favor the more tech-savvy. I do agree that this is a mild detriment to the growing prevalence of sniping. For now, it doesn't mean that happy eBay members are all sniping while unhappy eBay members are none of them sniping, but it's going to come down to that at some point in the future. Kind of like performance-enhancing drugs in sport -- there are coming to be situations in which some sports simply "assume" you're going to use them (like in pose-off weight-lifting competitions) and therefore anyone who tries to compete WITHOUT the drugs is just not in the running. I think, however, it's kind of silly to complain about a computer-based service requiring technical knowledge. Signing up for eBay in the first place was harder for me than joining the sniping service which I used. JustSnipe WANTS my business, so they make it as user-friendly as possible. EBay doesn't need my business, they'll be just fine without me, so they're (marginally) more convolute.

Third, the missed one. Sniping has a further advantage. The winner (who would win either way) wins at a likely lower price. I got my pipe at one increment higher than the next highest bidder; but his highest bid was the one he posted in a long time ago, rather than the one he "nibbled" in against my maximum. If I'd manually non-sniping entered my maximum ($150) he would have nibbled to his maximum ($140?) and I would have gotten the pipe at one increment over his $140 -- at $142.50. Instead, I prevented his nibbling, the right person won, and I got a lower price, at $129, which is one increment higher than his initial maximum. I've saved him from his frenzy, won because I deserved to, and only reduced the advantages of ONE person -- the seller. Sellers must hate sniping. EBay gets the same fees, PayPal gets less fees, and the seller gets a lower final price. (Of course, without sniping I might not have bid on the item at all!)

So, Kiavonne, I think you're misled. If you want to manually enter several lower bids and then "at the last minute" manually enter a higher one, and think of that as more honorable, then I'll remind you, that you're already cheating, by not entering your personal maximum at the outset. And in that sense, Deirdre agreeing with her (calling it "less open") is only marginally accurate. Yes, only those people who have access to the internet will be able to continue to use eBay happily, if everyone goes to sniping all the time (which isn't happening anyway). But that constraint -- access to the internet -- is something that's necessary for eBay in the first place, so it's not constraining anything that doesn't already exist. Indeed, Deirdre, you're right: a new limitation is placed on eBay membership; but that limitation is open to an identical amount, to the limitation that was already placed on eBay membership: internet access.

I still don't understand the advantage of sniping. If I see a pen that I want on eBay, I bid the top price I am willing to pay. If I bid $400, and others all stop bidding at $300, then I'll get the pen for $301, which is a great deal for me. If somebody snipes, they'll get the pen for $401. I shouldn't be sad, because $401 is more than I was willing to pay. If I had been willing to pay more than $400, I should have bid more than $400.

The advantage is that there may be others willing to pay $400 but who want to get it for less so they bid it up slowly...

If you snipe them in the last seconds when its at $350 and win it then you paid $351 without giving them time to outbid you. So you get the item AND pay less than your maximum.

That's why the sniping. Otherwise they just outbid you.

It depends on your perspective on auctions.

Are you a person who goes in hoping they'll buy the item for X amount and that no one else thinks its worth that or are you going in thinking you want the best deal possible? From my point of view if you're buying at auction then you want the best deal possible otherwise you'd buy from a regular dealer.

Edited for typo.

What I meant was open in the sense of open vs. closed bidding.

An open bidding scenario is the classic motion picture auction.

A closed bidding scenario is sealed bids handed to the auctioneer, but not revealed in presence or quantity to other bidders.

With snipes, you've got a mix of open bidding (with semi-hidden limits) and closed bidding.

Correct. If everyone put in their maximum bid one time, whenever that was, there would be no need for sniping, in fact, it would be advantageous to bid as early as possible, as in a tie, the early bidder wins.

Sniping is a means to buy at as low a price as possible, not necessarily to win the auction.

We (an ebay seller I work for) use sniping all the time when buying items, so we really can't complain as sellers when it is used.
:-)

The advantage is the same as in poker of having your cards face up (bidding early) vs. down (sniping): it's all about when information is available to others.

I cannot speak for all sniperware, but i have a sneaking suspicion that those auctions with several last minute bids by same fellow represent nibblers firing by hand. Hoping maybe to clog the pipeline (though i have great doubts that would work).



If i follow, this does not impact your bidding. Sniperwarde that fires your bid at very end will yield a final bid one imcrement above the underbidder's max.




Again, if you map out what happens with a single last-second snipe vs the model i believe you outline, i believe the outcome is exactly the same. Furthermore at worst, your system- if i'm not misreading the suggestion- poses greater risk for not winning your item even at price you would have paid which might have won. Firing bids takes little time. Opening page to scope the bid seems to take bit more. Since your high bid will be set by ebay to only one increment above second high bid, there is no advantage to having to open the page repeatedly to set new bids.

regards

david

I think that's more effectively addressed with eBay than with buyers. As I mentioned earlier, there are other auction services that eliminate the "closed bidding" by extending the auction time after a last-minute bid, thereby assuring that other bidders can react -- like a live auction. Ebay instead has a hard end time, which allows -- even encourages-- sniping. Given how long that system and the resultant sniping have been in place, I must conclude that it's now an intentional part of the system, not a 'cheat'.

My favorite eBay sniping tool is a Casio stopwatch.

What she said! Extending the bidding time if there is active bidding would eliminate this issue. However it would drive prices up and benefit the seller more than the buyer. The perception would then be there would be fewer "deals" to be had and fewer participants, which means fewer auctions which means less volume and thus less money.

It also dramatically increases the complexity of running the auction as opposed to a hard end time, which increases costs and again decreases money in Ebay's pocket...

Also, with no hard end times, an auction could be strung out indefinitely, which gets into its own type of problems. At least eBay knows when it's getting its money now.

Ebay certainly has its challenges, but I don't mind the discrete ending time. Who would want to have to sit about all evening whilst things nibble up for extra half hour per $20 pen? There have been (still are?) open ended e-auction sites, but at least early on they didn't seem to thrive.

regards
david

Charlie, the answer is that- I assert- sniping makes one more likely to get his pen at a given bid, due to issues of auction psychology, which i and others have outlined in other discussions over the years.

No one reasonably asserts snipping will let one win all auctions, but it does *maximize* the likelyhood of winning at a given price. Even a mild benefit mapped onto hundreds of auctions yields many pens won well.

regards
david

Deirdre: ah, I see what you mean by "open" and "closed" now ... technical auction terminology, sorry I missed it.

Advantage to sniping: highest bidder still wins, but often at a lower price than with non-sniping, because the second-place guy is prevented from irresponsible nibbling. That second-place irresponsible nibbler's maximum SHOULD be his total maximum, period; not something which he's willing to increase when it becomes clear that it's not the top bid. If he's willing to increase it, then it's not his maximum. So, as a nibbler, he's messing with the assumptions behind eBay. Consequently, sniping is actually MORE true to the ethical foundation of that type of auction, than nibbling is.

(There, does that make sense? I tried to make it as simple as possible.)

About extending the time limits. EBay in Japan and (IIRC) Australia do this -- if someone enters a bid within (I guess) a minute or ten of the end time, then the end time is extended a few more minutes to allow further bidding. I think there's a limit to how many extensions are possible.

But what about the best sniping service? Which one do y'all use? JustSnipe worked for me, fine; though its website is a bit klunky (has some edges unsealed, so to speak; you can end up having to log back in umpteen times, because you can't find the main auction page because it's not adequately linked from some of the FAQ pages and others). It's free, for up to five per week.

i use www.esnipe.com. the fees are low, they e mail me if i am outbid during the auction so i can modify my bid--or not. they do not charge anything if you lose the auction. they have never screwed up in the 6 years i've used them.

Personally, I prefer a manual semi-snipe. I wait until two or three minutes left, then put in my real maximum bid.

That doesn't leave a lot of time for nibblers to rack up the price.

Well, thanks for the discussions and opinions after I popped in earlier. I'm disappointed, but I can see the points you've made here.

Me, as of an hour ago, ebay and I parted ways. After seeing this thread I knew I wouldn't get the items I'd put bids on, and the last was just sniped by a dealer (from the look of his/her history) with a lot more to spend than I. I really just cannot compete. I'll be dragging out classifieds from the newspaper for estate sales and garage sales, now. Probably just as well. Hard lessons learned, but I won't forget them.

/hugs all around.

Nice stick, man, Stickman.

Lets roll this all back to first principles.....
Highest bidder (or first bidder at highest price) wins.

Every seller wants the most - every buyer wants to pay the least.
Thats it!!
How we get to the best price is the issue here.

A person using shill bidding can work the ante upwards during bidding. That's the chance that they take if the item is knocked down to their shill bidder.
If they have a reserve, they could use a shill to get the bidding just under the reserve to encourage bidders to pay reserve or over. (Dummy bids). If it is below reserve the product won't sell, so there are no fees and no transaction.

As a bidder you can put your highest and best bid down, but that will show your hand to folks like me who like to fish a little at a time to see where the bids are going. I hate to put up a high amount, but will make multiple bids to my level to ensure that I don't overbid (to my way of thinking). I hate showing my hand too.

Gotta love Auctionsniper.

It works hand in hand with eBay and I often use it for a few reasons.
1). I live in Australia and items often close when I'm asleep.
2). There are times when I don't want folks to know just how far I'm prepared to go.
3). That way they don't keep bidding on my amount - in other words I keep my bidding secret.
4). I can put in a very high snipe on something and hope for the best.
5). The eBay proxy service makes sure that my bid is just the next level from the underbidder and not the full amount that I have stated.
6). This proxy bid system is a whole lot more favourable to the buyer than a Highest Bid In Full Wins system (thank goodness)
7). It works well for both parties.
8). Last second manual bidding is subject to the slowness of the internet and is very difficult to time especially with a busy server and 16,000kms between destinations........

I bought a pen last week when I put a snipe in at 501 and I got it for 120. Can't go wrong there, I was lucky and nobody else saw the value that I know is in this one ;-))
In the same manner I have been outsniped on many occasions and have no idea how high the primary bidder would have gone.
The most expensive pen I bought went at the reserve exactly and my high bid exactly (without my snipe). I had a snipe in as well but fished out the reserve for my own knowledge before going to sleep. Auctionsniper tried to charge me, but I had them waive the charge as my bid won prior to sniping.

Its better that way.

Umm ... yer point is ... ?

From reading all of the above, I think I'm one of the low-life, Morelock creatures, known as a nibbler. Because I have limited resources, I have a different buying strategy. It means little to me whether my strategy depletes the wealth those with larger resources. I seek to discover how low I can go in a bid and still win. So ... it differs little from the well-funded bidders strategy. We both hols a common goal to win at the lowest cost.

As to snipers and what not - I can see the use of it for proffesional bidders, who must win in order to maintian their business

I like the surprise of winning via sniping. I get text messages. "Oh look, you bought a toaster!" (our vintage toaster was an eBay purchase)

I assert it matters not whether a given bidder is wealthy or on tight budget, amateur penster or pro.

The issue with sniping vs nibbling has to do simply with maximizing the likelyhood of winning for the lowest bid possible. I would expect that those on the most tight budget might be the most inclined to snipe, as certainly nibbling makes them less likely to win the auction at their maximum planned bid.

regards

david

Nibbling: it's not just for the toasters any more ...

i want the item so i snipe. i use esnipe, it is inexpensive and has never let me down. the url is: www.esnipe.com.

David, you may be correct here, but there is a touch of fun in bidding.

That i cannot argue with

david

So what happens when two/three/etc. snipers are bidding against one another in the last seconds? He whose service gets the last high bid in at the last second wins? So you kick the service and say bad words if the winning bid is lower than your highest bid?

The "pipeline" rarely is the issue anymore. In case of multi snipers, the highest bid generally will win, just as if all had bid bit earlier or nibbled.

Keep in mind, the "odds' benefit in blackjack for a casino does not result in 100% win on all hands dealt. The casino still makes zeelions of dollars with a 1% or so house advantage.

Similarly who are familiar with sniping do not assert that sniping yields any sort of guarantee in any given auction (as with any given blackjack hand). Rather, due to the "obvious" elements of auctions psychology (detailed in other posts, but available for reprint now if needed), sniping gives a modest benefit in some auctions. But, when one is bidding on a couple hundred auctions per month, a couple-ten percent advantage is a very useful thing indeed... especially when there is no downside to the process.

regards

david

I had the misperception that a sniping tool would enter, and re-enter, and up, and re-up, my bid up to a maximum, incrementally. It does not. It just enters my maximum bid amount, and it enters it only once; but it does so automatically and at the last possible moment rather than at some earlier time when I'm sitting in front of the computer. The preceding question is perhaps founded on a similar misunderstanding. So, to answer it, if there are several people all sniping at the last possible moment, all that happens is that several bids are entered within seconds (or micro-seconds) of one another and mere moments before the end. The highest bid wins. As per normal.

Amen.



I use esnipe also. The service is good, but not perfect. The failure rate ("ebay connection problem") for me is about 0.5%.

So why bother sniping at all instead of just entering your maximum bid earlier? Because you know you probably won't get it at that price and someone will outbid you? Therefore the person willing to pay the most will win and that's the whole idea behind any sale or auction.
I might be willing to pay $500 for an item but at a push I'd have gone an extra 5% just to ensure I got it but a sniper comes in and buys it for $501 but wouldn't have gone over $510 for anything. Is it fair they won? You would say you should have put in $525 earlier then but I could reply the sniper should have put in their maximum earlier as well then and we'd both have been sniped for an extra few bucks.

I've often nibbled if I don't want something too badly and just fancy a bid or two in the passing. I've even been sniped and still ended up with the item because it didn't quite reach the reserve and I'm willing to pay more than the sniper when I open a dialogue with the seller afterwards or I ask the dealer if they have another if it's a new item. I've even done some little tests where I put in my maximum bid early, even if it's something like $40 more than the 5 previous identical items from the same dealer have gone for and I'm still sniped in the closing seconds. It just seems crazy at times.

Giving other people information earlier frequently changes their behavior.

Therefore, you're not the person willing to pay the most for the item, you're just the one who gets in with the highest last second bid. In theory then, if you snipe using software you don't have any moral high ground over a nibbler. To pretend you use such services for any other reason than to get the item at the best deal is really deluding yourself. Every buyer is out to get the best deal possible. Not that I've never given a seller a little extra if I've won something at a very good price, but if they were too worried they should have used a reserve.

Let me explain in another way... and I have seen this happen in a bunch of auctions....
When someone decides to place an early bid, it is recorded in the auction.... then someone comes along and decides to raise that bid.... they find out they are already outbid... so they raise it again and again they are outbid... this sometimes starts a strange mental process of "I'm going to outbid that SOB no matter what" and they continue until they are the high bidder.... NOW that person may not have actually wanted to bid that much when he started looking at the auction... but for some strange reason auctions bring out some interesting mental processes in some people and they suddenly have to have the high bid...
When I snipe, I know what the top dollar I want to spend on an item is... I snipe that price and go away.... I usually look to see where the item is occassionally and if it goes above my snipe well so be it... unless I decide I really want it and then I MIGHT (rarely) raise my snipe... but very rarely...
By hiding what I decide is my top dollar offer, I keep the "I'm gonna beat you" mentality bidders at bay.....
That does not mean I win a load of auctions.... this week alone, I was still low bidder on all my auctions... sometimes by a little and sometimes by a lot....
Sniping is no guarantee you are going to win...
As for your moral ground argument... who ever said that auctions are some sort of moral ground.... I find this moral ground argument very interesting.... I am out to beat the other guy... no morals involved... I am out to beat them... if I can do that by sniping, I will.... I see no problem with that...

That's in fact the entire point. I don't see why I'd pretend otherwise.