What is it with some people and their technique for bidding on Ebay?

There's an item (non bike related) that I've had my eye on that could have been a bargin as its been wrongly classified. It was a 10 day auction (don't you hate those!) and with 5 days to go 4 different bidders have bid 5 or 6 times each and got the price upto within £30 of the rrp (£400ish).

I just don't understand why people feel the urge to enter the bidding process until the very last minute (or use sniping software). And why do people feel compelled to bid 10 or 15 times, add £2 a time until they outbid the previous muppet putting a bid on days before the end of the auction?

It's not rocket science people – rock up to the auction with less than a minute to go, slap a bid on for the maximum it's worth to you and if that's more than it's worth to anyone else, its yours for a bit more than the next highest bidder. Leaving a bid there days before to be shot at makes no sense!

I lost all sympathy when you used the meme 'rock up' 🙂

very few bargains on EBAY these days but yes good point I was discussing this the other day after a ride. Makes no sense to me. Look at price of some second hand mtb stuff shockingingly high prices.

My technique is simple but effective. If I see something I want, I add it to my watched items list and then forget to bid on it until after the auction has closed. This saves me a small fortune. 🙂

Agree – bidding before the final throws of an auction is for the hard of thinking
I used to quite like manually sniping things in the last 5 seconds or so but now I can't be bothered & just use Auctionsniper

BD – I have an expensive tip for you. Switch to firefox and use the ebay firefox companion, then its staring you in the face and no excuse to miss it!

Call me old fashioned but isn't that how auctions work, your bid until it ends are you reach your limit?

You're old fashioned! 😉 If you (and everybody else with a serious chance of winning it) bid at the last minute, it essentially turns into a sealed envelope sytle bid, only with the advantage of not having to pay your max if you win, but just a bit more than the next person.

While I'm at it – what's with those people who "rock up" ( 😉 ) and bid just the once, never to be seen again, at the very beginning of the auction for something ridiculous like 99p when the item is obviously going to go for way more – do they ever win anything?

Call me old fashioned but isn't that how auctions work, your bid until it ends are you reach your limit?

Ebay isn't really an auction in the 'going, going, gone' sense though
If you know exactly when it'll end, there's no point showing you're hand until then & risk bumping up the price

Old fashioned.

A study of half a million ebay auctions recently found that sniping was the most reliable way of getting the item you want at a the cheapest possible price.

I reckon Ebay may try to do what Yahoo use to do & only end auctions if the last bid was at least 2 mins ago or even start doing random end times within a certain window

If they do I wont be using it.

I must be lucky then as last few things I've bid for I entered my maximum amount hours or days in advance and waited then won them under my maximum bid but do agree with the sniper software made is all rather pathetic then.

I don't see the point of leaving bidding until the last minute but I seem to be in the minority. I'll bid the maximum I'll pay (which other users don't know)well before the end time. If someone wants to outbid me that's fine.

Traditional auctions (and ebay – the way a lot of people play it) get a good price for items for two reasons. Firstly, given time to react people tend to bid more for an item then they should perhaps do, so if your bid is up there for them to ponder about they will often come back to give it "just one more bid". Slowly what you will have to pay keeps on going up. If your bid is not there until the last few seconds there is no pondering time, or time for a 2nd bid.

Secondly, people are very like sheep with auctions. If the item is of unknown value (its 2nd hand or no longer made) there is quite a bit of "well, if they all think its worth at least £x, I'll put a big bid in too". If the bids are in effect secret because no one has seen each others as they are only placed in the last few seconds, the price far more often reflects the true value of the item.

The answer is pretty simple, the auto-bidder will up towards your max bid if anyone else puts in a similar max bid, eventually one persons max is reached, no-one gets a bargain. If you snipe (well) you get the item at a low price and are quite likely to have lulled the one or two bidders into a false sense of security. Bidding early in an ebay auction is pointless, its like walking into a fruit shop with another customer, with a fixed quantity in your pocket and looking for a bargain, and then spending 10 minutes shuffling cash on the counter until one of you empties your wallet. Meanwhile the smart chap walks in to the next shop, waits until closing time and offers the shop owner a lot less cash for items about to be out of date.

There's a differnce between winning auctions and winning bargains – you simply dont win bargains on ebay unless you snipe, or there's no-one else looking at the item.

Or maybe its their mates/family members upping the ante to make sure it doesn't go for a last minute snipe bargain 😉

depends how you look at it.
in a way, sniping is a fine way of buying.
put your bid in for what your willing to pay and forget about it (until its finished)
but the seller wouldnt agree, as they want to make as much money as possible, so having a bidding war is good for them.

i snipe, and dont worry about it.
if it goe sover my maximum bid, fine, ive saved myself the money until the next one comes along.

can someone please explain sniping to me in simple terms that a 5 year old would understand as I don't understand how it's any different to putting on your maximum bid near the end of the auction?!

as I don't understand how it's any different to putting on your maximum bid near the end of the auction?!

that is sniping – just make sure you put it on without leaving any time for other bidders to respond – in the last 20 seconds is usually enough

i snipe (though don't use software) for the few things i want – coffeeking nails it on the head.

Taxi – I thought that too. But if you click on the bidders you can see how many bids they have made on items offered by the current seller. All the bidders had 50+ histories so you might get away with bidding up a one off on those accounts but keeping it going long term would take a mastermind to remember which accounts had bid on items from which other accounts.

I've got a mate who had his ebay account frozen for a while for dodgy bidding up of items – they seem to spot it pretty quickly these days.

eg. the hemlock frame i won recently – put my max bid in 20 secs from the end, by the time everyone else was putting in their bids trying to catch up, the auction ended and I won someway below my max.

the auction had been going a while, and people were increasing in 10 or 20 quid amounts rather than upping by any significant amount, it was still a very good deal towards the end, i went in relatively higher (a bigish hike anyway) and hoped! it worked! bargain frame 🙂

the hemlock frame i won recently – put my max bid in 20 secs from the end, by the time everyone else was putting in their bids trying to catch up, the auction ended and I won someway below my max.

Exactly the same as me then for my last auction except I bid 3 hours before the end of the auction, many more bids came in at the end but still won below max bid.

Exactly the same as me then for my last auction except I bid 3 hours before the end of the auction, many more bids came in at the end but still won below max bid.

but would those bids have come in if they weren't trying to outbid you?
There's a fair chance they wouldn't & you'd have got it for less

Try one of the sniping services next time & see how you get on – most of them will give you the first few snipes for free & then it's only pennies after that

You can reverse anything without knowing the outcome, what if CP hadn't sniped would and placed the bid he may have getting it anyway.

However it's easier for me to say as it was automatic biding that pushed it up to what I got it for so reached the other maximum bid with a little time left, sniping would have made no odds.

I kinda like the sniping thing, that's the way i used to get bargains on ebay, now i live in New Zealand, where they don't have ebay as such, they have 'trademe.co.nz' which is the NZ version. Here you can't snipe, and every new bid auto extends the auction by 2 mins, so absolute crap go's for way more than it should pretty much all the time as they are quite a competitive bunch. My new business plan is too snipe stuff off ebay and flog it on trademe – actually i have done this a few times and made a few dollars – which to me shows that snipping it a better way to get stuff cheap!

im not keen on the fact the sniping software needs your account password. Anyone had any problems

However it's easier for me to say as it was automatic biding that pushed it up to what I got it for so reached the other maximum bid with a little time left, sniping would have made no odds.

If you really want to believe that, that's fine by me [& Ebay will love you too 🙂 ]
But you are presuming that the other bidders have also entered their maximum amount & are allowing Ebay's proxy bidding system to do it for them. Chances are that some or all of the other bidders are manually increasing their bid every time the system automatically ups the current bid.
Sniping won't always mean you win but if you do win with a snipe you can be sure you paid the minimum possible for it – no other way of bidding can do that
If you go onto the Ebay sellers forums, they are continually whinging about snipers & how Ebay should do something to counter it – why do you think that is?

there's nowt wrong with sniping at all, i've always seen it as auto-bidding for folk who can't be arsed to watch an auction at the end, and sniping is for folks who want a bargain!

I dont agree with sniping software though 🙁

Chances are that some or all of the other bidders are manually increasing their bid every time the system automatically ups the current bid.

Well they're better than any sniper software then given it's a couple seconds between each bid.

Oh for the record the odd time I will try a snipe at the last minute for something but if their maximum bid is higher than mine it makes no odds.

Well they're better than any sniper software then given it's a couple seconds between each bid.

No – not immediately after it, some bidding wars last days

I guess you're just not getting it so here's a simple example of how it sometimes work – not always but you can't lose [only win] so why not do it?

A widget is on for a minimum 1st bid of £10
Bidder 1 puts in a £15 proxy bid & the minimum rises to £11
Bidder 2 puts in his maximum he’s willing to pay £20 – so the minimum now jumps to £17 after the system automatically bids up to the bidder 1 limit
Bidder 1 gets an email saying he’s been out bid so he goes back & increases his max to £18 – the minimum bid now goes up to £20

The auction ends & bidder 2 wins it @ £19

Or

A widget is on for a minimum 1st bid of £10
Bidder 1 puts in a £15 proxy bid & the minimum rises to £11
Bidder 2 snipes with a maximum of £20

The auction ends & bidder 2 wins it @ £16
Bidder one didn't have time to respond

I guess you're just not getting it so here's a simple example of how it sometimes work – not always but you can't lose [only win] so why not do it?

Thanks for being patronising but I got it perfectly, you examples are there to try and prove you point I can do the same. Your first example is pretty much how I've won my last few so proves my point.

So let's look at your second example.

A widget is on for a minimum 1st bid of £10
Bidder 1 puts in a £20 proxy bid & the minimum rises to £11
Bidder 2 snipes with a maximum of £19

The auction ends & bidder 1 wins it @ £20
Bidder 2 didn't have time to respond.

See we can be here all day, sniper increases your chances but only if your maximum bid is higher then others anyway.

yeah OK you're right

Drac- you really don't get it do you and your last post just proves it! You snipe at the maximum you are prepared to pay so in your little example bidder 1 is welcome to it – bidder 2 would walk away happy that bidder 1 had paid too much (or more than it was worth to him).

Any moron can win an auction if they are prepared to pay more than anyone else- just find an auction, put a bid on for twice the rrp in the first minute of the auction and I'll guarantee a 100% record. But that's not the point – if you want to pay top dollar, go to a shop. Ebay from a buyers perspective is about getting a bargin and paying the least possible, even if you were prepared to pay more. If everyone was allowed to put just one bid on and only bid the max they were prepared to pay it would not matter when you bid – you would get it if you wanted it the most. But that's just not how it works. I guarantee that over a number of auctions you are costing yourself money the way you (and loads of others it seems) do it.

The auto-bid/proxy bid system of ebay takes time to re-bid, it seems. While you'd expect their computer system to rebid immediately, it doesnt, I assume it scans each auction every X seconds and ups the bids on your behalf. If you leave the snipe to the last few seconds you almost never lose unless someone else is sniping too. I've never been out bidded by an auto-bidding opponent, despite getting things for stupidly low prices – camera lenses for £1.20 etc. Just hold back, dont show your hand until the last second. Sure you can lob in a high price and sit back and watch but thats a) not the point and b) no fun.

Convert I do get it and just because you don't win a bid doesn't mean the person who did paid too much for it but again thanks for being patronising.

No matter how you bid the golden rule is only bid the most you think it's worth and not just bid to win. I've sniped a few times myself trying to get a few things as bargains and have lost out to the autobid but I've also won a few bargains. However, at times due to work or home commitments I have to bid early with a maximum bid, I've lost many this way but won loads too and still within a fair price.

Hang on – so your preferred method is to bid late, but you can't sometimes do that for commitment reasons. That's not what you said above! Maybe you do get it and are just typing a bit dim 😉

Drac – but on balance, and through serious amounts of statistical analysis, it has been proven that sniping is the most reliable way to win and provides the lowest win price. But if you're busy you're busy, so use an auto-sniper instead 😀

Seems Drac is a bit Fik innit.