The Ultimate eBay Tool
September 29th, 2006 by Grant in: Frugal LivingAndy posted a comment on my recent eBay shopping experience revealing to me that there is more to eBay than just entering a maximum bid value and hoping no one comes along at the last minute and beats you by mere pennies.
Introducing eBay sniping.
Sniping is really a method of having a program automate your bidding. As I mentioned in my previous post, with two days to go I placed a bid for a set of sun visors for my wife’s Honda Accord. In reality, I just jacked up the price on myself, allowing others to see that I’m interested in the same product they are forces both of us into a bidding war that neither of us want to be a part of.
If you automate your bidding, you effectively place the bid at the last possible second to avoid entering a long, drawn out auction.
The program I found was AuctionSniper. You enter the maximum bid you want to enter for a particular item on eBay, and the program takes care of the rest, entering your bid as the last seconds of the auction come to a close. This undermines your competitor as you capitalize on sneaking your bid in at the last possible second.
If items are available from multiple sellers, you can implement a group bid in which the bid is placed against a group of items, and when you win on one item, it quits bidding on the rest.
While I didn’t take advantage of this new “technology” in the online auction world, you can bet that if I had, I’d have probably saved about $10 on a pair of replacement sun visors I paid $25 for.
Of course I still made out like a bandit compared to dealing directly with Honda!
Thanks for the tip, Andy!
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October 4th, 2006 at 2:26 pm
Interesting. I wonder what happens if two or more buyers use the same tool to “snipe” for the same item. There will be a “race-condition” in the last few seconds.
October 4th, 2006 at 6:26 pm
That’s a fine question! The Snipe method really takes the “auction” out of it, doesn’t it?
-Grant
October 4th, 2006 at 11:46 pm
Here’s a good resource for rooting out some of the very best last minute ebay auction bargains. I’ve got it bookmarked and check it frequently when I’m shopping for something, or just for browsing. You never know what neat items you’ll come across that you can snatch up for pennies.