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This would mean that potential buyers are being put off -- and these will be people like me, who've never used eBay, and might venture there to look for something in particular, yet by the time the auction closes find that the price has escalated to a ridiculous amount. That's happened in the past, and it certainly put me off bidding in any auction, real or pretend.

I avoid that whole situation by using Auction Sniper. Basically I find an item I want, go over to auction sniper and put in the ID and how much I'm willing to pay for it, then forget about it until I get an email saying I won or lost.

Even better they have "bid groups" so I could enter 20 or 30 auction IDs for like items and it will keep submitting my bids automatically until I get one at the price I want.

Unless you count "buy it now" or "best offer" auctions I haven't submitted a "real" bid in years.

When I was fairly new to buying on eBay I read an article that maintained that sniping is evil. Influenced by the article, I placed a proxy bid early in an auction on an item that took special expertise to recognize as a good deal. (It was an expensive camera lens that needed repair. I consulted with a friend who was a camera technician before bidding) By bidding early, allowing eBay to proxy bid to my highest acceptable price, I inadvertently called attention to the item which then skyrocketed in price far beyond my highest bid. Was the person who nullified my bid by bidding past my highest acceptable price a shill or just a clueless buyer with "auction fevor?" It really doesn't matter. The net effect was the same: the price raised quickly to the point where the item was no longer a good deal. Ironically, the truly clueless then saw that there was a lot of activity on the auction and the lens sold for more than a similar lens would that needed no repair.

That was the last auction I have ever bid on an eBay auction without sniping.

eBay's proxy bidding system is prone to tampering by shills and idiots, making the system an economically infeasible to use in a couple of important ways. First, as noted in a previous article you are much less likely to win an auction if you don't snipe, wasting your time and effort. Secondly, adding insult to injury, you frequently will pay too much for the items that you do win. It is literally like tipping your hand in poker, allowing the other players to know your hand before having to place their bets. Whether the "idiots" are really stupid or just irrationally exuberant about the bidding process makes no difference, the net effect is that they act as unwitting shills for sellers. This is great for sellers and for eBay, but it's Not So Good for the buyer.

As an aside, when I am really keen to get a good buy on an item and I am willing to put a little time into the process in order to get a good price, I will use a feature on the sniping service I frequent called "Bid Groups." This is a system where I can schedule a (usually low-ball) bid on several very similar auctions and my sniping service will stop bidding after the first auction I win. Using this I usually lose five or six auctions in a row only to get a killer price on the one I win. As always, it's important to normalize the prices by taking into account shipping costs in the total price of each item because the $10 item with $20 shipping may not be a better deal than an identical item for $29 with $1 shipping, especially since sellers with sleazy, predatory shipping policies are best avoided.

When I was fairly new to buying on eBay I read an article that maintained that sniping is evil. Influenced by the article, I placed a proxy bid early in an auction on an item that took special expertise to recognize as a good deal. (It was an expensive camera lens that needed repair. I consulted with a friend who was a camera technician before bidding) By bidding early, allowing eBay to proxy bid to my highest acceptable price, I inadvertently called attention to the item which then skyrocketed in price far beyond my highest bid. Was the person who nullified my bid by bidding past my highest acceptable price a shill or just a clueless buyer with "auction fevor?" It really doesn't matter. The net effect was the same: the price raised quickly to the point where the item was no longer a good deal. Ironically, the truly clueless then saw that there was a lot of activity on the auction and the lens sold for more than a similar lens would that needed no repair.

That was the last auction I have ever bid on an eBay auction without sniping.

eBay's proxy bidding system is prone to tampering by shills and idiots, making the system an economically infeasible to use in a couple of important ways. First, as noted in a previous article you are much less likely to win an auction if you don't snipe, wasting your time and effort. Secondly, adding insult to injury, you frequently will pay too much for the items that you do win. It is literally like tipping your hand in poker, allowing the other players to know your hand before having to place their bets. Whether the "idiots" are really stupid or just irrationally exuberant about the bidding process makes no difference, the net effect is that they act as unwitting shills for sellers. This is great for sellers and for eBay, but it's Not So Good for the buyer.

As an aside, when I am really keen to get a good buy on an item and I am willing to put a little time into the process in order to get a good price, I will use a feature on the sniping service I frequent called "Bid Groups." This is a system where I can schedule a (usually low-ball) bid on several very similar auctions and my sniping service will stop bidding after the first auction I win. Using this I usually lose five or six auctions in a row only to get a killer price on the one I win. As always, it's important to normalize the prices by taking into account shipping costs in the total price of each item because the $10 item with $20 shipping may not be a better deal than an identical item for $29 with $1 shipping, especially since sellers with sleazy, predatory shipping policies are best avoided.

"The strategy of sniping would require that he actually be present to bid on the item at the last minute. Now if there were some sort of automated software (and there probably is) that would snipe for you, that'd be a different story. But if it means extra work to snipe, then that's a tradeoff."

Khallow, I prominently mentioned two such services (eSnipe and AuctionSniper) in the post from which you selectively quoted, so I'm not sure if I understand your concern. I've been using eSnipe for the past six years and have found it to be extraordinarily reliable and indispensable as a sniping tool (an AUTOMATED sniping tool). Take a moment to check out one of the many FULLY AUTOMATED sniping services for yourself.

And even if one were to manually snipe (although I'll never understand people who don't do research....c'mon people, "GOOGLE: ebay snipe"), while it would certainly be more time-consuming and inconvenient, the original poster didn't mention those criteria, but rather the 'fact' that a proxy bidder would win more auctions at a lower price than a sniper. That was my point of contention. Quite frankly, it's in my best interest that less people use sniping services, but my whole point in replying to the O.P. was its egregious misstatement of facts and erroneous conclusions (two things that drive me batty).

The problem with this solution is that a bidding war becomes a stamina war. Who will stay at their computer longest to increment the bid by a single increment every 10 minutes?

This has been tried in the past (especially on Yahoo auctions) and it's simply not popular).

Sniping simply changes the auction to a sealed bid auction. When it comes to bidding, just bid what you want to pay, then see if you won.

Full disclosure--I worked for a sniping service for 6 months. I don't work there now, but would never seriously bid without such a service

it also guarantees I'll pay the maximum amount I'm willing to pay.

No it doesn't. To use the same example, if you willing to pay $100 on an item and your max bid is currently listed as $50, you will have to pay $50. Plus, incremental bidding takes more time than just entering in your max (or using Auction Sniper.)

I'll also grant that sniping is inconvenient. A lot of things I bid on have non-US timezone ending times, and I'm on dialup. A recipe for frustrating late nights indeed!

Automated snipers solve that problem. They will bid for you at the last minute (within 10 seconds of the end of the auction). I use Auction Sniper. All you do is enter in the item number and it will place a last minute bid for you automatically. If you don't win, you don't pay.

Because other people tend to base what they are willing to pay on what you are willing to pay.

This is exactly it. I never really thought about it before, but have only recently realized the advantage of auction sniping. Lots of people just put a bid in just higher than the existing people, and sniping at the last minute solves the problem of them comming back later. I've won a lot more auctions recently this way.

Anyway, I know that this client works really well, and I'm not going back. :-)

I've been playing with auction sniping clients recently. They work really well when you don't want to be "one-upped" when bidding on auctions. Pretty cool.

Maybe they'd only work with an object of this magnatude if you throw a pack of "wonder diet pills" in with it.