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<p>[QUOTE=&quot;Kasia, post: 2074297, member: 31533&quot;]Sniping is a fact of life with eBay. It can get you what you want, but sometimes not. Basically, all sniping is (for a lot of people) is bidding the most you are willing to pay and/or the amount just over what you think others will bid on it and having that bid set to go in on the item within seconds prior to the end of auction. On that, you are presuming your snipe bid will be the last one in before the auction ends, that any previous snipe bids will not match or exceed it, and that anybody not bidding by sniping (i.e., incremental bidders or those who have bid early with their &#039;max&#039; bid or who bid it up to the point where it sat with no other bidders upping it, as in a bidding war) will be unable to see that they have been exceeded and put in another bid. </p><p><br /></p><p>Sometimes people snipe because they are seeing that the auction is having some action and they don&#039;t want to get into a bidding war incrementally with someone, driving up their price. No harm in self protection that way for the buyer. </p><p><br /></p><p>But in the end, if you have been outdone with a snipe bid, it simply means you didn&#039;t bid as much as someone else was willing to pay for the item and you didn&#039;t increase your highest bid to account for a possible snipe at around what your &#039;highest&#039; bid actually was. If their bid was higher than yours at the end, it really doesn&#039;t matter (theoretically) if it was put in at the last second or if it was put in within the first minutes of the listing. But if you are upset because you would have put in a higher bid and didn&#039;t on the assumption that had you done that you would chance having someone bid you up past your comfort point in which you would prefer having bought the item at, then you maybe should start finding out your max bid and putting that in as your first and/or your final bid, or putting it in as a snipe bid. </p><p><br /></p><p>What sniping does (and is probably worthwhile for) is to lessen the known interest in the item so that all parties are more or less blind to who might want the item, and to also lessen the amount this particular item is noticed (except by people really wanting it or having another interest in looking at the auction). So secondarily, it lessens bidding wars.</p><p><br /></p><p>Sniping is generally (IMO) for the buyer than for the seller, but not always. Sometimes two people who are bidding snipe at the end with high bids to ensure they get the item, not thinking that others will do the same. I sold one item that I thought wasn&#039;t worth too much --- to someone for 50.00. The auction had run out with no buyers with a 2.00 starting point. After that ended I got a message asking if I would re-run the auction because the guy had wanted to bid on it, but had problems that prevented him doing so in the last couple days. So I did. It ran with him bidding what I saw at 2.00. At the end, it sold to him for 50.00 because someone else had put in a high bid to try to beat him to it and it also was a high bid. Good for me, but bad for the other guy who had it.[/QUOTE]</p><p><br /></p>

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