I recently lost an auction due to a bidder placing a bid in the last few seconds of the auction.

[roberspark-54]

This last second bidding is rude if not also unethical.  This is also not in the best interest of sellers because another bidder might want to raise the bid even higher.   In a real live auction, the auctioneer asks, " going once, going twice, sold".  This is to check that there are no more bidders.  I wold suggest that when a bid is made in the last minute before the auction closes that the system should automatically extend the closing time by 10 or 15 minutes.

[reallynicestamps]

That 'sniping' bidder bid more than you did.

If you were going to bid more, you should have.

With the use of electronic sniping services, which take bids and execute them at the last second, the bid could have actually been placed several days before.

In a live auction (and our family business includes live auctions) the auctioneer is checking for that last minute bidder-- the sniper.

However eBay is not a live auction, it is more like a mail auction, where all the bids are opened at the same time, and the highest bidder wins.

There is a deadline on eBay auctions. That's the rough equivalent of the auctioneer's hammer.

Bid once. Bid your maximum.

The highest bid wins.

[roberspark-54]

First of all: What is this sniping software?
If this is so honest, why not make the actual bids know? They disappear off the system immediately (except for the seller). I recently say a bidder take an item for $5 more than another bidder. Both bids were made in the last 10 seconds of an auction. Does anyone really believe the lower bidder would not have upped his bid had he know or had time to react.

[burge.ca2015]

When I first started buying on ebay 2 years ago I had a similar thought on the whole process. Now that I've had these 2 years worth of buying and observing, I have learned how to work with the system. I still have times when it is very frustrating and seems unfair but what else can you do? Sniping is allowed by ebay - it's an acceptable way to bid.

The problem I have with reallynicestamps's advice to bid once and bid your maximum, is that if you bid on an item from the U.S. (or U.K) that is listed as being shipped using the Global Shipping Program, then the shipping cost will change (usually go up), along with any applicable import charges that are shown, as the bid prices go up. You can only guess at what those costs might be for a given bid price (your maximum, for example). It won't even show you what the new shipping and import costs will be for a bid of only the next minimum increment. (To see those numbers you actually have to place the bid.) For someone like me who factors in these costs to the overall purchase price and whose buying / bidding decisions are affected by this total, it continues to be very frustrating. I often try to over estimate the cost a bit, basically erring on the side of caution, instead of under estimating. Not perfect but I don't have a better way right now.

Any advice from others to not buy from those sellers that use the GSP is simply not always practical or possible. You may have very few, if any, other options. It highly depends on what you're buying - new vs. used, out-of-print vs. in-print, still being manufactured vs. no longer being made, etc.

As for sniping services / software, I have signed up with one that gives you (I believe) the first 2 auctions free but I have not used it yet as I have just done my bidding without it so far. Sometimes I've set a maximum bid early, other times not. Sometimes I've had to increase my maximum because I was outbid, other times not. And, other times I've done the sniping manually at the last few seconds. In all of these cases, sometimes I was the winning bidder and other times I was not. There's no guarantee of being the winning bidder with any of them.

I would encourage you to read as much as you can about bidding by going through the various Help section topics about bidding and buying. For a start, here is a link to one of the relevant pages: http://pages.ebay.ca/help/buy/outbid.html

With more experience you should be able to figure out the best way for you to bid in order to win more often, like the way that I have. But again, there's no guarantee and you never know what other people are going to do or bid.

[aubreyclay56]

if you want something bid what you are willing to pay and if you did not bid high enough you will not win plain and simple as is true for a live auction,the higest bidder wins,if you dont win oh well no ones fault but your own plain and simple????