I am new and just wondering if 5 seconds is the norm for sniping?

rsmiller40

A lot of people use 5 seconds and usually do get their bids in on time. I prefer 8. When the auction ends during e-Bay's busiest times, such as on the hour, half hour, or quarter hour, or particularly on Sunday nights, you'll need to leave a longer lead time to get your bid in. During those times e-Bay's circuits get overloaded with so many bids and yours may not get in on time without a longer lead time. The same thing would happen if you sniped it manually.
Sunday nights amount to mass insanity because of so many auctions ending at or near the same time. For auctions ending on Sunday nights on the hour, half hour, or quarter hour, I usually leave a lead time of 35 to 40 seconds just to be safe. And with anything ending on a Sunday evening I usually leave at least 20 seconds if it's not on the hour, half hour, or quarter hour.
AS's software will attempt to compensate for the busier times by moving your bidding time up if they detect that it may not get there on time due to e-bay's being overloaded, but there is no guarantee it actually will get there on time. Their track record is very good and much better than a person could do manually. So if you put in a bid to go in at, say, 10 seconds and you see AS placed it at 14, it was because their software detected that e-Bay was busier and your bid may not have made it otherwise. It's actually doing you a favor.

Thank you. So, if I have an auction ending around 2am Monday , I should leave extra time of around 30 sec? I guess I am assumoing you count this as Sunday night closing.

rsmiller40

Actually, I meant 35 sec. Another , maybe dumb question. Let's say I had an ebay proxy bid of 10.00, I placed a sniper of 11.00 max. Would the sniper overbid my 10.00?

rsmiller40

At 2am there probably won't be a lot of auctions ending, so a shorter lead time would probably be safe. I say probably, because nothing is guaranteed with e-Bay. E-Bay has also been known to go down during the early morning hours for maintenance.
If you put in a snipe of $11.00 on an item that's sitting at $10.00, the $11.00 bid could win provided that someone else doesn't outbid you. If it's sitting at $10.00 you have no way of knowing what the proxy bidder's max is. Chances are good it's higher than the $10.00 shown on the screen. If the proxy bidder's max IS $10.00 another sniper could still come along and also bid the same amount as you (or more), and if both your bids are equal and his/her bid gets there first, that's the bid that e-Bay will honor. When sniping, always bid the max you are willing to pay. E-Bay will only charge you one increment above the next highest bid if you win. In other words, you won't end up paying your max unless that's what it takes to win.

No, what I meant was what if I do two thoings..I put a proxy bid of 10.00 on something and I also use sniper and my max is over 10.00. If at the end 10.00 was the highest bid, would I outbid myself with sniper if my sniper bid was higher than my proxy?

rsmiller40

No, you won't outbid yourself. However, even if nobody else bids and you win the auction for $10.00, AS will still charge you for the snipe because you used its software.

Thanks so much! You were are big help.

rsmiller40

Glad to help with what little I know. Most of us who post on this board are just AS users who try to help each other out. And someone else may well come along and suggest slightly different lead times. You don't want to leave too long of a lead time because then someone else will have a chance to come back in and outbid you. That would defeat the purpose of sniping. On an auction ending at 2am, I personally would probably do something closer to 8 to 10 seconds, but it's always your choice.

Hmmm... well, this is a very important auction that I am bidding on. What if I set the sniper at maybe 10 sec. and also proxie bid it at maybe 100.00 less than the sniper? LOl, as you can tell, this sniper thing does make me a little nervous!

rsmiller40

AS does have a very high rate of placing the bids. So far it's failed to bid for me once, and then it wasn't AS's fault, it was because e-bay's servers went down. So I've learned to trust AS to do a better job of it than what I can.
I can relate to Very Important Auctions. But whatever it is eventually does come up again, believe it or not. At one point (the auction mentioned above) I was worried because the item was a CD released only in Europe for a short time and it's out of print. (I'm in the USA.) It took 3-4 months, but the item did come up again. And AS sniped it for me. So even if you do miss out this time, things eventually do come up again. And a lot of the time, the second time around is at a better price! (That may not help your case of the jitters much, ) If you do both proxy bidding and sniping, you may well drive up the price because others who may be watching will see your interest and bid higher. Sniping keeps your cards hidden, so to speak, so that you can come in at the last minute and bid without driving up the price with a bidding war or letting proxy bidders know you're interested so they should bid higher.
My best advice would be to set the AS bid at the highest you are willing to pay and let it do the rest. There are no guarantees in life, but that should give you your best chance.

That is probably good advise. I set the snip as you sugested at 10 seconds and as high as I can go. This is a pretty big item for a very special person that is ill, so I hope it works. You were a great deal of help. Much appreciated!

rsmiller40

TO FORDFALCON
Thank you for the GREAT advise! I used it exactly as you said and won the aucton. Just got back from a 2300 mile trip to get the boat. Thanks again for giving me your time.

rsmiller40

Way to go, Rsmiller 40!!! Have a great time in your boat!
--Christine

Fordfalcons, I waited to be sure you got that message before I weighed in with congratulations for rsmiller40 and a vote of thanks to you for a fine job.

Thank you, Steve. Much appreciated.

yup bump up those sunday lead times I lost again to not in time errrr

How much lead time did you allow, pervinpatty? It's a hit-or-miss proposition on Sundays -- sometimes the extra lead isn't necessary and you're dangling out there with extra seconds added to your snipe. Other times you're very glad you allowed for the "Sunday Lag."

I allow 8 sec. what's funny both my snipes said not in time, but I did win one of them, so who knows. A helpful way to establish a jam time I noticed is if it takes forever to refresh or load pages, generally my snipes don't make it in time. A good clue to a busy server so I adjust my time

Yeah, I saw your writeup on that. Wonder how that happened? Anyway, on Sundays I always allow at least 15 seconds for my bids. I figure than any lag in eBay's servers is going to affect proxy bidders as well as snipers so I think the gamble of bidding a touch too early is worthwhile. The tests you suggest for judging eBay lag time are excellent and should be standard practice for any sniper during eBay's busy times.