A sniper in a traditional auction will sit back and let two people duke it out, driving up the price and scaring everyone off. After one person has dropped out the auctioneer attempts to solicit more bids from the crowd.

At this point in time if the item is still within the sniper’s price ranger s/he will jump in and either the process begins again or they win the item.

It all comes down to emotion. In any auction we’re trying to get a “deal”. And if it looks like we’re going to get a great bargain we become emotionally attached to our bid.

Thus we naturally get upset or unhappy if we lose out on our item at the last minute.

But as other people have mentioned. Getting outbid at the last minute is the same as getting outbid right from the get go. If you’re not bidding with your “true” highest bid you’re being disingenuous to yourself in the pursuit of your deal.

I agree with Mrs. Micah that eBay is all about trying to get the best deal. And quite frankly, the best way to get a good deal is to put in a bid at the last minute. eBay is a big corporation, and if they truly frowned upon sniping, they have the power to do something about it. Sniping is completely within the rules of bidding.

That being said, just because you snipe at the last minute, it doesn’t mean you’ll win the auction. Even though I bid at the last minute 99% of the time, I have lost my share of auctions. Why? Because the person who bid before me was willing to pay more than I was, and they put in their true maximum when they bid in the first place. If you’re going to bid early, put your maximum amount (the true maximum) right away. If you win, great. If you lose, you weren’t willing to pay that much anyway.

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WOW, THOSE POSTS ARE BRUTAL. I DIDN’T MAKE UP THE TERM, AND I AM NOT A SORE LOSER. BUT THANKS FOR TRYING – I GUESS MOST THE PEOPLE WHO HAVE POSTED SO FAR DON’T CARE ABOUT SENSE OF FAIR PLAY OR ANYONE BUT THEMSELVES. I LEANRED ABOUT THE TERM WHEN IT HAPPENED TO ME YEARS AGO AND I WROTE TO EBAY TO FIND OUT WHAT HAPPENED. THEY TOLD ME ABOUT THE TERM, AND THAT ALTHOUGH IT ISN’T QUITE ‘FAIR’, IT IS STILL DURING THE AUCTION, SO IT IS ‘LEGAL’ SO TO SPEAK. AT LEAST WE TRIED!

THANKS AGAIN.
SUSAN
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I have to say that while I understand Susan’s frustration with getting pinched out of an auction at the last minute, I still have to side with my original advice and most of you that left comments. My take (like many of you) is that if you can’t watch the auction until the end, then you must enter your maximum bid, and if you win, great, but if someone comes in and outbids you in the last minute then that is just how the game works (like Kacie said). If it is truly your maximum bid then it should not be an issue if you got outbid because you were not willing to pay that amount anyways. Thanks to all who took the time to leave their opinion!

eBay (and winning an item) is a game. If you don’t want to watch the auction end, then you probably aren’t going to win anyway, since most bids seem to happen during the auction’s final moments.

Kyle – you didn’t over react in your response email to Susan – not by a long shot.

if they are the winning bidder at the time of the sniping.

As Mrs. Micah also suggests – that statement indicates that Susan thinks the person with the highest bid with a few seconds to go is the winner which is obviously not the case.

It is not the same as a real live auction, it is an online auction, and online auctions have different rules.

If you choose not to bid at the last second – who says the rest of the world follows the same convention? It is nowhere in any ebay rules anywhere. So basically you’re playing by an unwritten rule no one else has to follow.

Seems an easy way to get stomped on by other bidders every single time.

And..I think that’s why I’ve gone away from Ebay, its not a frugal choice for me, because when I decide I want something & bid on it, I start to think of it as mine and want to keep it at all costs, and end up spending more than I planned or more than it was worth.

You can prevent people from sniping you by putting in odd amounts for your max, such as 10.63, so if a person attempting to snipe you sees the high bid at 9.01, and bids 9.50, then 10.00, then 10.50..chances are by the time they put in all those bids the time will run out & you will still win.

That is part of the game though, and its been that way as long as I’ve used Ebay. If Ebay frowned on it that badly, they wouldn’t let you have a “watch” list in your profile, they’d make you bid on something to be able to track it without actually running a new search each time.

Granted, someone coming in and outbidding you by 1 cent is a tough deal, but honestly, why are people complaining? If they put a max bid of $10, and someone comes in at $10.01, then you must not have been willing to spend $10.01, or else you would have made that your max.

It’s part of trying to go for a deal, you risk other people taking it. Calling it “sniping” seems to assume that the high bidder somehow has the right to it before the time is up.

A bidding war is all about being the last person and having the highest bid. Whether it’s two people going back and forth or one person ducking in at the last moment, that’s just how the game works. It’s only unfair if you assume you had a right to that object before you’d even paid for it.