Re: Subject: [Harp-L] Sniping on Ebay



Two things:

AFAIK no sniping software can place a bid that close to the end of an auction. Some of the software will test your connection speed and some other variables and suggest an interval. At home with cable the average suggested time for the bid to originate for me is around 3 seconds before the auction closes. I don't think the web based sniping services can do much better. The software still has to connect to Ebay, log in, and place the bid. The software types faster than a human, but Ebay takes the same amount of time to validate the signon and process the bid regardless. You'd be surprised how close you can come to doing the same thing manually. You just need to know what time Ebay thinks it is.

The second thing is that you can't win an auction unless you have the highest bid. It doesn't matter that much when you placed the highest bid as long as your maximum is high enough to win the auction. If your max is $51, the high bid 2 sec before the auction ends is $35 and someone snipes with a $51 bid you still win because you bid first. The sniper doesn't know your max unless it's what you've already bid.

In the days of rotary phones there was a sniping method for radio contests where they took the first x calls. Predial everything but the last digit and dial the last one when they said go. Then the stations started taking the fifth and eleventh caller or something similar.


M. Erickson wrote:
Please note, there is a difference between "sniping" (placing a bid in the
last few seconds of an auction), and a "sniping program" (an automated
software program that places bids in the last few milliseconds of an
auction). E-bay's help mentions "sniping", but say nothing about 3rd party
sniping programs.






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