eBay sniping services?

[Erika]

For the eBay shoppers out there, is there a particular sniping service you'd recommend? Preferably something where I can pay per snipe rather than a monthly fee, since I do relatively little shopping on eBay. I usually do manual sniping, but it's inconvenient to have to be logged in and online when an auction ends... and, of course, sometimes I just forget and miss out on something I'd been staking out for a week or two.

[fiddlecollector]

I don`t buy on ebay very often and use Auctionstealer

( www.auctionstealer.com ) you get 3 free snipes a week which is fine for my use and get a 10 sec snipe. If you want a priority 1second or 3 second snipe you can pay 1$ through paypal. Ive always been successful unless someone has bid more than i,m willing to bid.

[pahdah_hound]

auctionsniper.com

I have had success with auctionsniper. You get 3 free snipes when you sign up, and 3 more everytime you refer a new member. I don't know how much it costs if you don't have freebies but I imagine its only a nominal amount. It has worked everytime except against PKnorr who always pays more than I am willing. I always feel good when he beats me.

jesse

[Regis]

I use AuctionMagic and have for a few years. Buy it one time (cheap..about $15) and use as often or little as you wish. They update often..free. There is a new remote version that I've not used and don't need.

I actually use it more to watch what things sold for. And, someone will actually answer e-mail when you ask a question.

Regis

[raspritz]

Auctionsniper is a pay per period service, according to their pricing schedule; you sign up for a given amount of money for a given amount of time. It is very expensive, compared to other choices. I use Esnipe, which is purely pay per use, and fee is related to cost of the item; it works great and is pretty cheap. I used the (free) first release of AuctionMagic, and it was very klugy, but maybe it's better now; if you use it a lot, that would be the cheapest way to go.

[Guy_Gallo]

Auction sniper payment details:

New users are not charged for the first three auctions they win using Auction Sniper. Thereafter, we charge only 1% of the final auction price with a minimum fee of US$0.25 and a maximum fee of US$9.95 for only the auctions that you win. Please review the chart below.

Auction won that ended at $25.00 USD or less $0.25 USD

Auction won that ended between $25.01 and $995.00 USD 1% of final price

Auction won that ended at $995.01 or more $9.95 USD

[raspritz]

My mistake. It's AuctionStealer that's a fairly expensive pay-per-period service.

[mstein]

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I use

AuctionMagic

and have for a few years. Buy it one time (cheap..about $15) and use as often or little as you wish.

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Another downloadable standalone program is JBidwatcher. There is both a platform-independent Java version and a Windows executable. It is open source and free (there is a donations link along the left hand side of the home page). The downside is that every so often Ebay makes some sort of change to their format that breaks the software, but the author is pretty good about keeping up. I don't know how often Ebay does something to break the commercial services.

- Mike Stein

[Dora]

Hi, could someone please explain what sniping is and why it is good? Thanks

[jbgilm]

Quote:

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Hi, could someone please explain what sniping is and why it is good? Thanks

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Sniping is using a service such as those discussed here to enter your ebay bid with only a few seonds remaining. It is advantageous because it allows you to avoid bidding up the price. A lot of people enter a bid early without actually bidding their maximum. If you enter a bid about an hour before the auction ends and become the new high bidder, the people you beat out will be able to come back and enter a new bid higher than yours. By entering your bid at the last moment, no one has a chance to come back with another bid.

The chief drawback is that it also deprives you of the chance to enter another bid. Suppose you enter $200 as your max for a violin, and in the end the violin sells for $225. You may then curse yourself for not bidding higher. This would be a kind of "low-bidder's regret." One must carefully evaluate how much you are willing to pay for a violin (or anything else) to use a sniping service.

If everyone always bid the maximum amount they were willing to pay as their initial bid on ebay, sniping would not help at all. But as the bids come in and the price mounts, people often reassess upward how much they are willing to pay.