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Winny_Pooh

grungebob said:

If your going to snipe never bid in whole numbers. Always add on an odd pence figure, this way the manual sniper has to add the same or more oddments in multiples of £1,£5 or £10 dependant on the value of the item. 

I don't get this, if a competing bidder bids anything higher regards of pence than the value shown to beat your bid then its sufficient.

Bridgehouse

Auctions work on the assumption that the market will settle on the highest price that a member of that market is prepared to pay. In an auction room, the auction continues until the market normalises and reaches the highest price. 

As a bidder in the auction room two clear facts remain: you hear others bids immediately, and you always have chance to react to a bid. No one else will know if you will go higher. Someone puts a bid in? You have chance to react. 

Ebay doesn't adhere to either of these facts - which is why it isn't a true auction. If you are sniped, you might have put a higher bid in. The buyer might lose out. 

Ebay can stop all this nonsense by simply resetting the clock to add another hour if the last Bid entered is less than, say, 10 mins before the end of the auction. Buyer gets another opportunity - seller gets best price, eBay gets more commission,sniper has to bid fairly.

Dave_Mc

Norwegian_Blue said:

Just decide how much you want to pay, and make that bid with 5 seconds to go... You'll either win it at the price you wanted to pay (or less), or not. Often leads to a good price, as there's no time for people to bid you up to your maximum. You'll never spend more than you have, or have the temptation to keep bidding.

I haven't used Ebay for a while, but that's what I always used to do too. Decide on your price long before the end of the auction (so you don't get into a bidding war), but don't enter it until the last few seconds.

UnclePsychosis said:

I love all this " I hate losing by £1 so I snipe" stuff. I can only assume that people still don't understand how eBay bidding works? 

For all you know the other guy's max bid was £100s more than yours, just because the sale price is only a little higher means nothing. 

Absolutely. Putting in your max bid right at the end only really protects you from people who get sucked into a bidding war against their better judgment. But it's better than nothing.

Unless of course a decent early bid can put off other bidders, which may well be the case.

I think you just have to choose your method, and treat it like @axisus said- "If you win you win, if you lose you lose."

Sassafras said:

I've seen used stuff go for more than the same new item. I'm not sure sniping or even bidding has much to with common sense.

Yep me too. But that's the other advantage of bidding at the last second or two- if it goes above a sensible price long before the end of the auction, I don't even have to bother bidding.

GuitarZero said:

I do the same as many others it seems and bid the maximum I'm prepared to pay in the last few seconds.  I've tried bidding 'normally' as you would in a live auction but I always seemed to lose out somehow.  By doing it in the last few seconds, if I lose out, then it went for more than I was willing to pay anyway and I don't give it a second thought.

Yeah.

@UnclePsychosis ;;; said:

---if you bid early and lose out it then it goes for more than you're willing to pay anyway. It's no different. 

Given all the comments you see along these lines the only conclusion I can draw is that even after all this time people don't really understand how the bid process works on eBay. Is that a fair comment?

If people were rational, yes. But people aren't rational, and some people, if outbid, will keep bidding (manually) so as not to lose. So bidding at the end avoids losing out to someone like that. It's one thing losing to someone who was willing to pay more- that's absolutely fair enough. It's another losing to someone because of psychology.

@Cirrus : Agreed.

Winny_Pooh said:

grungebob said:

If your going to snipe never bid in whole numbers. Always add on an odd pence figure, this way the manual sniper has to add the same or more oddments in multiples of £1,£5 or £10 dependant on the value of the item. 

I don't get this, if a competing bidder bids anything higher regards of pence than the value shown to beat your bid then its sufficient.

It works if, ordinarily, you'd have both bid the same amount.

Suppose both I and bidder B are willing to pay £100 for an item. Whoever bids first wins (assuming neither bidder gets a rush of blood to the head and continues bidding).

However, suppose I'm willing to pay £100, but think, "Well, I wouldn't want to lose it for the sake of a few pence."

So I bid £100. 23 or something like that.

In this case, I win, regardless of whether I bid first or not. And if anyone else bids the same round figure of £100 (pretty likely), I'll beat them too. If I only bid in the last few seconds, they likely won't have time to enter another bid.

While a lot of people are wise to this, a lot aren't, and even with those who are- I might still beat them if they bid £100.17, say, and they might not have time to rebid before the auction ends. Plus even a lot of the people who are wise to it bid £100.01 or £100.10 something round-ish like that. Psychology doesn't beat everyone, but it beats enough that you improve your chances substantially. And it even beats some of those who are aware of it, too.

It also means that you don't have to enter the minimum extra bid to outbid the other bidder- for example, in the original example, if I changed my mind and was willing to pay a little more to get the item, to win it I'd probably have to bid £105 or something like that. But by using the "pence" method, I don't have to do that.

EDIT: Sorry, got a bit carried away there with the post length. I guess while I never got carried away with last-minute bidding on Ebay, that doesn't apply to forum posting.

midlifecrisis

human nature in a lot of cases suggests someone will only bid if they see someone else bidding on it. ie they need confirmation and lack confidence that it is a good deal so once there is a bid, other bids pile in. which is why shill bidding works 

skinfreak

I always bid low to get my nose in and then aim to snipe manually towards the end. However there is an awful lot to be said for bidding your max early. For example, I lost a MXR OD because I left my phone downstairs and it went for £38! Then conversely my last minute sniping for two close auctions meant I bid and won a pickup I didn't want, and lost the one I did all because of the popups for ebay confused the crap out of me. In hindsight I would have been better off bidding sensibly to start with. 

rico

I missed a JCM800 combo on ebay by about £3, I was in meetings so I couldn't watch the auction but ffs £3!

I should have used a sniping thing.

bobliefeld

^ I think £3 over wasn't necessarily the winners max bid.?   The real max bid could've been £300 over your max bid but ebay increases the price at some increment over the previous max bid..

Sniping makes sense, if you show your hand too early then people can just bid £1 more than your max.  I sold a lot of stuff a couple of years ago and bidders behaviour was really weird.  People getting into bidding wars on day 1 of a 7 day auction 

Bygone_Tones

Always snipe, and always add a few quid on top of the 1st figure that comes to your head. Psychology dictates that somebody somewhere has that same figure in their head. This has proved correct several times for me, and I've outbid someone who bid my initial thought price. People like a nice round number, so you need to aim slightly higher to win the auction.

Bidding early is showing your cards to other bidders, and gives them opportunity to rethink their max bid and outbid you when they really want something.

Bygone_Tones

There are also a lot of sellers who get their friends to shill bid, or they will have a look to see what your maximum bid is, retract it and bid just slightly under your max to squeeze the maximum amount out of you. This stuff is more common than you might think. Not everybody plays fair in life.

ICBM

I haven't sold anything on Ebay for years and won't again, but now with all this sort of crap it isn't even worth the hassle of bidding on auction items. I don't even bother with Ebay at all now other than for Buy It Now when the price is OK.

Shame, it was once a decent site for both buyers and sellers.

m_c

I generally go for the two stage approach.

If the auction has started low, I put a low-ish bid in early on, to at least get the auction up to a reasonably figure and get rid of the tyre-kickers, then if I'll be near a reliable internet connection, I'll bid a near the auction end up to what I'm really willing to pay. If I won't be, I'll just stick in my maximum. Given that I'm normally bidding on quite specific things that I have a good idea of what the market value is, and how much the location of the item is going to cost/benefit me, I don't notice any significant difference that could be attributed to sniping.

I did bid on one item, that I suspected had a shill bidder. Every time I bid, a couple hours later I was outbid by the same bidder who's feedback was a bit questionable (not too low, but the won listings just didn't seem to tie in with the item being bid on), so I played the game, putting new bids in every day, and still with a couple days to run, was up to the max I was willing to pay. Unsurprisingly, a few hours later I was outbid again. I left it at that, and the questionable bidder won it. Within about 30 minutes of the auction ending, I received a second chance offer.

Sassafras

I've had far better deals on the BIN or Best Offer deals than any auction items.

grungebob

Winny_Pooh said:

grungebob said:

If your going to snipe never bid in whole numbers. Always add on an odd pence figure, this way the manual sniper has to add the same or more oddments in multiples of £1,£5 or £10 dependant on the value of the item. 

I don't get this, if a competing bidder bids anything higher regards of pence than the value shown to beat your bid then its sufficient.

Because at certain points of value the bids must increase in increments of say £1,5,10 etc. So if you bid say £35 and I bid £40.61 you now need to bid £45.61 at least, but if your sniped bid was at the next increment of £45 it'd be rejected at not meeting the minimum of the next bid. You'd have to refresh the page and add the extra which takes time, usually more time than is left on the auction if your manually sniping at the end. 

marktheharp

I didn't even know about sniping.. very interesting to know.... crazy shit...
I  just lost out on some cycling gear. Bid too early  and got into a bidding war ,then it got weird and pulled out in the nick of time..
How long has this sniping been around?never heard of it....
You learn something new  everyday... I certainly do on this forum...thanks for all the input..

UnclePsychosis

ICBM said:

I haven't sold anything on Ebay for years and won't again, but now with all this sort of crap it isn't even worth the hassle of bidding on auction items. I don't even bother with Ebay at all now other than for Buy It Now when the price is OK.

Shame, it was once a decent site for both buyers and sellers.

The problem is massively overstated. I still buy and sell quite a lot of things on ebay and always pay attention to the bidding activity: very, very rarely have I come across the stuff being talked about here.

stickyfiddle

grungebob said:

Winny_Pooh said:

grungebob said:

If your going to snipe never bid in whole numbers. Always add on an odd pence figure, this way the manual sniper has to add the same or more oddments in multiples of £1,£5 or £10 dependant on the value of the item. 

I don't get this, if a competing bidder bids anything higher regards of pence than the value shown to beat your bid then its sufficient.

Because at certain points of value the bids must increase in increments of say £1,5,10 etc. So if you bid say £35 and I bid £40.61 you now need to bid £45.61 at least, but if your sniped bid was at the next increment of £45 it'd be rejected at not meeting the minimum of the next bid. You'd have to refresh the page and add the extra which takes time, usually more time than is left on the auction if your manually sniping at the end. 

Correct, but if you actually bid the 45 you're prepared to pay rather than the 35 then you'd still end up as top bidder. It's only when entering your bid that you have to be a specific increment above the current winning bid. 

The only reason to snipe is because so many people don't understand that ebay automatically bids for them, and that the winning bid in any auction with multiple bids is *always* just a hair above the second highest.

People seem to forget that, even in a real auction, the final price is not necessarily the absolute max that the top guy would pay. It's the amount just above what the second guy would pay.

Neil

stickyfiddle said:

grungebob said:

Winny_Pooh said:

grungebob said:

If your going to snipe never bid in whole numbers. Always add on an odd pence figure, this way the manual sniper has to add the same or more oddments in multiples of £1,£5 or £10 dependant on the value of the item. 

I don't get this, if a competing bidder bids anything higher regards of pence than the value shown to beat your bid then its sufficient.

Because at certain points of value the bids must increase in increments of say £1,5,10 etc. So if you bid say £35 and I bid £40.61 you now need to bid £45.61 at least, but if your sniped bid was at the next increment of £45 it'd be rejected at not meeting the minimum of the next bid. You'd have to refresh the page and add the extra which takes time, usually more time than is left on the auction if your manually sniping at the end. 

Correct, but if you actually bid the 45 you're prepared to pay rather than the 35 then you'd still end up as top bidder. It's only when entering your bid that you have to be a specific increment above the current winning bid. 

The only reason to snipe is because so many people don't understand that ebay automatically bids for them, and that the winning bid in any auction with multiple bids is *always* just a hair above the second highest.

People seem to forget that, even in a real auction, the final price is not necessarily the absolute max that the top guy would pay. It's the amount just above what the second guy would pay.

When I used to bid on ebay a lot  I always found a mechanical sniper was more successful than just placing your highest bid to start with.

If you put in your bid early you show your hand and other interested parties (or shills) will bid the item up.

If your bid is left to the final few seconds it circumvents that.  It also helps if the auction finishes at an ungodly hour.

It doesn't guarantee you will win but gives the best chance IMO.

SonicScythe

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SonicScythe

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fretfinder

SonicScythe said:

SonicScythe said:

Say for example that you see a guitar worth £300 that you're mildly interested in. It starts at £1 and ends in 7 days. By day 3 of the auction it's had a bunch of bids and now rests at £260 with another 4 days to go, would that not put you off hanging around for a snipe at the end? Thus creating a chance for the current highest bidder to get the guitar at a cheaper price since their competition has been driven away?

I don't think anybody answered this?

Here you go then...

It wouldn't put me off continuing to keep an eye on something if I was genuinely interested in it.