Sniper is the way to go....

[tramcar trev]

Auction Snipes is the way to go, I had been eyeing off a set of carbide micro drills, the auction started off at 1 cent. Every time I put in an auto bid of whatever amount I was outbid by, yes you guessed it, 1 cent.... So as these are constantly re listed I didn't bid initially instead I Sniped it with a top amount of $5, I got it for a cent.... I may be cynical but maybe some schill bidding going on in the carbide drills dept???


http://www.auctionsniper.com

 

[SteamySteve]

Ebay is by no means a conventional auction - in an auction the bidding ends when no one will bid any further, on ebay bidding ends at a fixed time. In my opinion the best strategy is to decide your maximum and bid in the closing seconds. This has a number of advantages - it avoids your early bids identifying desirable items to others, it avoids the 'psychological warfare' of bidding or opportunities for schill bidding and it can lead other bidders to leave complacent late bids. The downside is you only get one chance, so you have to be certain you've bid your max and that you won't be upset if you're outbid by £1 (or upset if you win at your maximum bid!). Ebay could easily negate this practice by a simple means such as extending the deadline by a fixed time when a bid is made in the last few seconds, but I suspect it's not in their interest to do so. I use EZ Sniper - I started using it for bidding when I was away from the PC, but tend to use it all the time now.

Steve

 

[Madman]

That's the clearest explanation of how to bid on Ebay, Steve. I started that practice of waiting until the last ten or twenty seconds a few years ago. After loosing a few times, I became adept at waiting until the last three or four seconds to push that button. I haven't tried any of the snip programs, but I think I'll look into them now.

 

[bobg]

The only problem I've had with waiting for the last seconds is that something I was watching all week was suddenly withdrawn with about 20mins to go, presumably because the seller thought it wasn't going to make enough.

 

[Wobbleboxer]

Years ago Yahoo auctions (before they got swallowed by eBay) did extend the end time by 10 minutes if there was a bid in the last 10 minutes. It certainly avoided last second sniping.

I now do the same as above, it freaks SWMBO as she can't take the stress of doing it herself.

 

[maxi-model]

The only problem I've had with waiting for the last seconds is that something I was watching all week was suddenly withdrawn with about 20mins to go, presumably because the seller thought it wasn't going to make enough.

I always thought you could only use that option minimum 12 hours pror to close of an auction. I have used it rarely, I tend to trust in the number of unique views and watchers to work out if an item will make a good price. Too low and I pull it.
Max.