I use a sniping website to enter the bid. But yes, there is nothing wrong with it.

Sniping removes emotion from the bidding process. Nothing more.

sniping is the only way to ebay.

http://www.esnipe.com/

Agree and this is a much more fair arrangement.

One more fan of GB's 15 minute rule...

And no, I've not been sniped on ebay - as others said, enter what you are willing to pay and see if someone wants it more...

I snipe all the time.
If someone snipes you at the last second and gets the item for less that you were willing to bid, you didn't bid enough. if they snipe it for more than you were willing to bid, who cares?

I think it all boils down to people trying to buy something for much less than it's worth and then getting upset when someone else pays closer to the real value. That is the only reason sniping works.

Figure out the maximum you are willnig to pay for something and submit that price. You may get it for less, cool. you may get it for your max, OK.
you may not get it at all because someone's else's max was higher than yours, oh well.

I put my bid in through auctionsniper.com and ignore the auction. If I win, great. If I get outbid by a buck, that's perfectly fine, as well, because I set my bid at what I'm willing to pay (including shipping -- some people cheat by overcharging on that). Removes the emotion from the process.

I often see some new bidder come in at the last minute, and suspect they bid on impulse and didn't see the flaws (or more likely, unrevealed aspects of the item being sold) and fail to allow for that. There's a 'herd instinct' effect in public auctions, which you completely avoid by setting up snipes. By using the eBay proxy system, you wave a red flag in front of other bidders, which can provoke irrational bids. Remember the $1500 orange bar hood emblem?

I use esnipe.com

Never bid manually any more. Removes emotion, frees me up from having to be at the computer.

My biggest ***** with Evil-bay is what some of these dirtbags charge for Shipping and Handling". I had one guy try to charge me $9.00 to ship an 8x10 photo. I told him to go scratch. He tried to write me up as a non paying bidder. After i put in a rebuttle he removed it.
Ebay used to be good when it was just people selling old junk and stuff. Now that its mostly "stores" selling new crap, it really went down hill.

I too dont agree with the whole sniping thing, you set your max price. If someones willing to pay higher, thats life..

I would never bid on anything where all shipping, handling, etc. costs are not agreed in advance.

Isn't the shipping charge usually listed in the description? Most of my eBay shopping is done through Buy It Now, where the price is usually a little lower, but shipping higher, so the seller pays less of a commission to eBay and makes it back on the shipping. Once in a while I've emailed a seller, when it was clearly an auction for something obscure and I knew the shipping was way out of line and just asked for a reasonable shipping charge. Sometimes it works.

Yes to that, Wayne. I never thought of that, but it's a good idea. Personally, I hate sniping, but it's a fact of life now. I just don't have to live that way. I got sniped about 3 years ago and that soured me on eBay auctions. Consequently, I have bought maybe 1 % of what I might have.

eBay is more poker than it is an auction.

I like the way bidz.com is setup. It is fun to win auctions on that site.....SmileWavy

I've switched to Craigslist. Too many delivery fees, payment issues and crap products on eBay.

Better to deal in person than anonymously.

Automated sniping also protects you from shilling, which is rampant.

I've had some auctions simply say "shipping fees calculated at auction close". For me, it has always been so that I could chose a shipping method and because the seller charged actual shipping costs, but I could see how this could easilty be abused.

I snipe only. There's absolutely no point in bidding before the last 5 minutes of an auction. All it does is drives the price up. I simply flag what I want, research the "fair" price, figure out what I'm willing to pay and put the amount in with about 5 seconds to go. Either I get it or I don't. No regrets either way.

The way I see it, a 7-day auction is 6 days, 23 hours and 55 minutes of advertising and 5 minutes of price determination.

+1
snipe or be sniped.

I Never use max bid..... fastest way to get outbid.

Did you get them?

I snipe using the highest price I'm willing to spend. If the previous bidder has a higher proxy bid then so be it. Using max bid is fine if you really don't care if you get it or not or if you're willing to pay more than it's worth, but as I see it, there is always someone willing to out bid your max by a percentage or two just before auction close.