Why do people do this? Everyone knows how the system works by now. Seems like a surefire way of paying more or getting shilled.
Currently watching an item with only two bidders (so far). One guy places a bid, the other bids it up, incrementally, until he matches or is just below the current high bid, then leaves it and the other punter bids again. Bidder 2 looks like he shill bidding (to me, anyway) but, surely, bidder 1 must realise this so are they both in on it???
Surely he's just bidding till he's the highest bidder?
Depends how popular the thing is though, if its likely to be popular then I might wait to the end, if its just 2 people bidding on it then what's the point, you just end up wasting time watching a clock, may as well just put your bid in.
Isn’t what you’re describing just eBay doing its auto bid thing for bidder 2?
Amazing how things sell for more than what there worth New, sometimes.
Given the stupidity I see (in others) daily, this does not surprise me.
Amazing how things sell for more than what there worth New, sometimes
Prime wheels with no warranty just sold for £110 more than CRC are currently selling them for 🤦♂️
Isn’t what you’re describing just eBay doing its auto bid thing for bidder 2?
Nope, it's a genuine fully signed up plonker who still has not got the idea.
It befuddles me too. I've mentioned it here before and there are still people who come back and defend the practice. Stupid people just like to waste money it seems.
Ebay auctions are so simple - find item, google what it's worth, determine the very top you would be happy to pay for it, bid once and as late as possible either manually or with a snipe tool. Incredibly minimal risk of missing out for less than you are prepared to pay. Why do some people find this so hard to fathom?
Tell me more convert please. Genuinely. I've never bid on eBay and know sfa about it. Intrigued
And whose death is imminent?
Tell me more convert please. Genuinely. I’ve never bid on eBay and know sfa about it. Intrigued
Well exactly what Convert said, It's not rocking horse science. Decide what you want to pay & bid up to that price (maybe a couple of £ more but that's it) Just check your'e not paying above the odds.
I once bought a fishing reel from an Ebay shop, didn't use it & sold it for £8 more than I paid, even though it was still the same price from the shop I bought it from.
Tell me more convert please. Genuinely. I’ve never bid on eBay and know sfa about it. Intrigued
Not a lot to tell really.
Putting on an early bid just means it's there to be fired at by others. That is both the complacent previously highest bidders and other numpties. Add the human condition of temptation and you get bidders who keep on persuading themselves to go a little higher. You want your interest and you final top amount kept out of sight and out of mind until it is too late for them to respond. The number of highest bidders who given the opportunity would bid again to beat you is unreal. Your perfect bid needs to be within the last 5 seconds of the auction end.
Find your item, or many of the same item you would be happy to own. Find the ebay auction number that is on the advert. Determine the very maximum you are prepared to pay. Not nearly the maximum but the absolute maximum. If your googlefu search has not helped you do this already search successful completed listings (price in green) to get a feel for the maximum.
Then find an online snipe tool. I use esnipe.com but there are plenty of others. Submit the auction number, the amount you would like it to bid for you and how many seconds before the end of the auction you would like it to bid. If there are a bunch of similar items and you'd be happy with any of them create a group in your snipe tool and enter all the auction reference numbers and what you would like to pay for each item (you might be prepared to pay more for one than another) and it will keep on bidding and go down the list until it is successful at which point it will stop (so you don't end up owning more than one).
The only way you miss out is if you bid more than anyone else but the difference between your bid and the 2nd best is less than the minimum increment. Then you won't 'win' it but would have done if your bid was entered earlier before theirs. But in literally hundreds of auctions where I have used a snipe tool that has only happened to me twice. Conversely I'm pretty sure the snipe tool has won me hundreds of auctions and saved many thousands. You of course rarely pay your absolute maximum, just one increment more than the 2nd highest bidder.
The only time an early bid might be an idea is an item that has no bids with a short time to go. In that scenario a seller can withdraw the item with no penalty just in case it goes for a silly low price. It 'might' be worth putting in a low holding bid in to make it harder for the seller to withdraw it from auction (though still not impossible) but with your real bid to beat other last minute bidders coming in from a snipe tool. If no other bidders bid the snipe tool won't outbid your own low holding bid and you get it for the early first amount. Happy days.
Some people think this is all very unsporting - I just think it turns ebay into a closed bid system which is what is should have been in the first place. If you don't get the item because it went for more than your previously considered maximum you should hold no grudge, just be pleased for the seller and know it went for more than it was worth to you.
Bidder loose all sense of reality when focused to much on winning something it seems.
yeah, seems it's a bit like fixed odds betting machines for some - some kind of massive thrill, being in the lead, then being overtaken and coming back again
... or perhaps mere stupidity
If you only ever bid at the last minute you'll loose more than you'll win. There are many reasons why you would bid before the end of an auction. Of course you will get a lot of bid frenzy types but you can also do it to work out how you might want to proceed. For instance, if I'm watching something that finishes on Wednesday but there are a couple of things finishing beforehand, do I wait till Wednesday then potentially get outbid? Or should I put a bid in and see what happens? If I'm outbid several days before the auction finishes I can go for the other things on my watchlist.
I also might be away for a weekend or even a night and try a punt on something, if I win woohoo, if I don't well que sera. I could use a snipe tool for this but sometimes it is just a punt.
There's also the argument for going in strong at the start If its something you really want. You could remove several other prospective bidders from the get go and not give them a week to dwell upon it.
Not that I use eBay as much these days, this was more when I was collecting stuff, I was aware of what things could go for and what they sometimes did go for and by and large I picked up a bargain.
If you only ever bid at the last minute you’ll loose more than you’ll win
can't see the logic in that at all.
I bid with 6 seconds to go.
Decide the maximum amount something is worth to you and then place that bid 6 seconds before the end - this probably beats the sniping tools as they probably use a bigger 'safety' margin.
If you then get outbid and lose the auction then it is no matter as it went for more than you thought it was worth to you.
If you bid earlier then there is a tendency to keep readjusting your view of how much something is worth to you, and therefore bid more if you get outbid. 6 seconds doesn't give you enough time to make that reassessment, nor anyone you might have just outbid...
^^^
This
SO many times people get caught ina 'must win' mentality - they simply bid up..up..UPPP until teh item is costing more that it was EVER worth; new or old!!
Bid with seconds to go, with the max you WANT to pay, and if you win, you win. If not - it's too expensive for you!
DrP
You may win more by going early, but you'll pay far more for it, so it's a bit of an apples:oranges comparison.
Assuming you will only ever bid x regardless then doing so with 3 seconds to go is far more likely to win auctions than having it sat there for everyone else to consider for days. This is basic statistics.
Points about "you lose auctions because you're not around when the auction end" miss the point entirely.
For instance, if I’m watching something that finishes on Wednesday but there are a couple of things finishing beforehand, do I wait till Wednesday then potentially get outbid? Or should I put a bid in and see what happens? If I’m outbid several days before the auction finishes I can go for the other things on my watchlist.
But not being immediately outbid is far from a guaranatee that you're actually going to win the item... So you're still likely to wait until Wednesday and get outbid, and if you want the other items why wouldn't you bid on the earlier ones anyway? You can always withdraw sniped bids on the Wednesday item, because they've not actually been put in.
In your scenario what you're doing is worse - say you don't get immediately outbid on the second item, but you now have a bid in place, which effectively means you could definitely end up with two of whatever item if you buy the earlier one, but you have no idea if you'll actually win either. So once you've put your bid in and not been outbid then what do you do?
And whose death is imminent?
well - theres mention of a sniper, so thats quite worrying. I'll lay down some covering fire of tiresome questions to the seller and click 'watching' on items I've no intention of bidding on, you click 'buy it now' and run for cover.
I was bidding for a torque wrench on Ebay
I'd heard about bidding at the last minute and I didn't want to lose.
But despite this technique it was still a loss so I don't know if my bolts are loose. You snooze you lose, and now I'm a looser bolt loser
For anyone who isn't used to eBay bidding, the reason it's different to a traditional auction is that eBay allows you to enter a 'maximum' bid, and then automatically bids until you're winning or you reach your maximum. Which means you can put in a bid without seeing the other bids and not worry that you'll pay more than you need to. If you're prepared to pay £250 in a traditional auction, you wouldn't open the bidding on that because if nobody else wants to pay more than £200, you've wasted £50. If that happens on eBay, the automatic system will win it for you on something like £205.
Im a big ebay fan, and often leave bidding to the last 10 seconds. This proved quite successful for a recent furniture purchase where I won one of the two items the seller was selling. Turned up to collect my furniture to be told the other bidder had backed out of the deal on the 2nd piece so a quick cash offer ( incidentally less than my max bid) and the 2nd piece was mine. I do however do my research and set myself a maximum bid....
I also occasionally ask the sellers to end early for a cash offer, bit cheeky though but managed to get some proper bargains over the years!
eBay really is a very, very stupid place.
eBay is great, once you come to terms with the fact that it's not perfect. How else could you buy and sell all sorts of 2nd hand stuff so quickly and easily. Not to mention the cheap Chinese stuff and random DIY bits and pieces.
Sniping on auctions, of course. It's just the way to do it.
For anyone who isn’t used to eBay bidding, the reason it’s different to a traditional auction is that eBay allows you to enter a ‘maximum’ bid, and then automatically bids until you’re winning or you reach your maximum.
Apart from the fact you can also do exactly that at a traditional auction...
I also occasionally ask the sellers to end early for a cash offer, bit cheeky though but managed to get some proper bargains over the years!
Do people actually fall for that? I just delete messages like that without reading to the end and take it as a sign that the item will sell well - and they do.
eBay is great, once you come to terms with the fact that it’s not perfect. How else could you buy and sell all sorts of 2nd hand stuff so quickly and easily.
Agree. You get probably the highest price you can get due to the huge number of users and it can be problem free if you use Buy it now with immediate payment. I don't sell much as an auction as it can lead to hassle with non payers. I sell as Buy It Now and just leave it for a week and then just reduce the price every few days. Very rare to have something around from more than a week though.
By far the best way is to:
Find item
Think about how much you would pay for it max.
Subtract whatever fantasy postage figure they have put on it
Never bid round numbers, always add £1, 50p or 75p, less chance of matching a prior bid.
Enter you bid into an online snipe tool with 6 second delay.
Sit back and enjoy life and get a surprise email to say you have "won", no manic bidding or paying too much.
Apart from the fact you can also do exactly that at a traditional auction…
exactly - not everyone in the auction room is bidding for themselves - some are there as 'Proxies' bidding for someone else up to a previously agreed maximum. Even the auction house will bid on your behalf in that way. This is exactly what eBay is simulating.
Do people actually fall for that?
Quick Simonj ruuuuuuun!
Do people actually fall for that? I just delete messages like that without reading to the end and take it as a sign that the item will sell well – and they do.
This. The only time I *DID* end an auction early was when someone offered me silly money for a broken MacBook Air. From completed auctions I had seen I knew I was getting a very good price for it anyway (and more than I was expecting).
Thanks all.
So what's the difference between a snipe and an eBay autobid?
Is it just that the snipe does it all at the last minute?
Is it just that the snipe does it all at the last minute?
Yep, which is pivotal in the success of the strategy. You can obviously do it yourself, but you're actively trying to avoid eBay Auto Bids, each of which mean you're paying more!
I've ended a few auctions early, but not for years, eBay have made it very hard to swap contact details. In the last few months you no longer get the PayPal addresses of people who buy from you, so you can't email them and say "want another one?", which is frustrating, used to get loads of sales that way!
They scan messages for that sort of thing and will reprimand sellers, so IMO it's not worth it now, combined with people using making stupid offers which aren't worth taking anyway, from a buyer who always seems to imply they're doing you a favour.
I bid early with a genuine maximum fairly often, particularly if the end is days away and I won't be around to deal with last second bidding. Quite often get things for below my maximum even with a flurry of late bidding. Sometimes lose, but then the price is more than I was willing to pay.
Amazing how many people don't seem to grasp what "maximum bid" means. Putting £100 max bid in isn't the same as shouting out £100 at an in-person auction.
As for giving away your credentials to some shady 3rd party "sniping site", fools is all I'll say.
As for giving away your credentials to some shady 3rd party “sniping site”, fools is all I’ll say.
Do you have a tin foil hat? Do you want me to bid for one for you? In 14 years of a snipe site knowing my ebay password nothing scary has happened and I have snatched the odd hour of sleep. I know, I'm mental.
I have two approaches on eBay.
1. Stick a low bid on early, especially when the item has a vague description. I have picked up silly bargains that way but it is increasingly rare.
2. Last second sniping as described above. The tip about odd pricing is good as well. The high bidder on an item I sold yesterday evening was £23.03
What I do find odd is the stupidly low offers I receive from people who end up paying over the counter offer I send them, because they declined it, then get caught up in a bidding frenzy. Morons
My best ebay purchase was a Rohloff hub. Aided by a bit of dyslexia I spelt it incorrectly when searching. Evidently the seller was equally stupid and had done the same. My (late snipe obvs) bid was the only one and I walked away with a nearly new 'Rolhoff' hub for less the £100. Since then I've also searched for misspellings in auction listings if the object is a bit tricky to get right.
Just use Gixen.. saves missing auctions and only pay up to max bid
Some you win and get a bargain.. some you lose
Retrobike used to have a full section of misspellings. You'd click on them and it would take you to eBay and have searched for you.
Njee, I've a feeling what I'm trying to put across is failing. What you are saying could happen but by bidding early it can give me an idea how an auction will go. It doesn't mean I'll win, but will know I'm not going to if I get outbid. From there I can decide how I want to proceed.
What I am trying to put across is that people will bid before an auction end for a variety of reasons and because you don't doesn't mean that it's dumb.
by bidding early it can give me an idea how an auction will go.
No, it'll give you an idea how the auction will go under the scenario that there is a strong bid in from the outset that others are firing at. It gives you very little idea how that auction would have gone if the bid was put in late.
The best way to tell how an auction will go is to do a comprehensive search of previous completed auctions (not just the successful ones). If you want a bargain your max price needs to be near the bottom of the range with a good chance you'll be outbid irrespective of when you place your bid. If you just want it regardless of cost (within reason) you need to put a bid in at the top of the completed listed sale prices. Put that bid in as late as possible to secure for the least possible.
Have to agree with Turnerguy's approach. Don't show your hand until the dying seconds. If you put your max bid out there early, a fool with auction fever or the seller's bezzie will probably trump or match your bid.
The only time I bid early is when, nobody has bid on an item and the auction is approaching the final twelve hours, to stop the seller pulling the item early. I only cover the starting bid and hold back with my actual offer until the end. This is due to the amount of times I've watched items for almost a week and seen them disappear before the real action is about to take place.
You rarely see an item only go for the starting price, nowadays, as almost everyone snipes, so pulling the item seems daft to me. If you're worried an item will underperform, in an auction, then list it as a BIN auction, as Kerley states.
Anyway, bidder 1 must have really wanted the item, as he won it, with a little help from bidder 2 and (what looked like) a genuine bid from someone else at the end.
Also, eBay are really cracking down on people making cash offers to end early.
I had a BIN listing for a bike and had some stupid guy hassling me about ending early for cash. I just ignored him (if he really wanted it, all he had to do was click the BIN) but ended up removing the listing as someone local bought it on Gumtree for less money. (The ebay buy it now was slightly more to cover their fees/PayPal commission)
eBay just assumed I had sold it to said to$$er and gave me a warning for circumventing their fees.
My best ebay purchase was a Rohloff hub. Aided by a bit of dyslexia I spelt it incorrectly when searching. Evidently the seller was equally stupid and had done the same. My (late snipe obvs) bid was the only one and I walked away with a nearly new ‘Rolhoff’ hub for less the £100.
There was was story early in the days if eBay of someone selling a bottle of Alsop's Ale that had been brewed for Scott's Antarctic expedition. Sold for thousands but the buyer just immedially re-listed it with the extra 'P' in Alsopp and sold it for 10x the price.
My best bargains have come where people have listed things so vaguely that nobody looking would find it.
For ages I was looking for a sliding bed table saw. Searching is tricky as people give them all sorts of names 'Panel Saw' 'Dimension Saw' and so on. I spent ages looking for every permutation I could think of. Out of frustration and boredom I just searched for 'Saw' in the hope that I'd stumble across another descriptor+saw that I hadn't thought of. Clicking on 'ending soonest' up popped .... 'Saw' there was enough info in the description that I could confirm it was what I was looking for but nothing that would have served as a key word in anyones search. Caught it in the closing minutes and was the only bidder so got it for the opening bid of £300 - could have sold it again for £3k and just got my buyer to collect it from his house 🙂
one thing worth mentioning as well is unpopular finishing times, middle of the working week often means people miss the end of an auction due to work etc.
I watched a set of XT pedals sell for £25 on sunday evening, just bought a different set of XT's for £10 because they finished at 3.30pm on a Monday afternoon.
^^^^ This was definitely the case in the days before mobile internet/smartphones. I've tried to nick a few things, recently, with less than optimal end times and was surprised at the level of interest shown.
Never ever do this: Place a bid, be the only bidder, then place a second bid. The seller can see that there's 2 bids from one person, it's basically an invitation to shill bid.
Bidding early can be worth it when you really want the item- I bid early on my new car frinstance. And also, you can use it to tactically break a Buy It Now as they go away as soon as there's a bid over reserve.
