Reply to "Auction Sniper Blocked My Bids"

quote:

Originally posted by region2:
Simple - if I manually snipe and I miss it's my fault. If I set up a snipe on any service and it fails it's probably their fault but, whatever happened, I don't have the item. At least with the former I have some control over my destiny and we have all had a missed snipe at some time or another to remind us that these services are fallible.

I see. So, as I suspected, you don’t have any actual experience in this. Just some theory you whipped up, which at one time (6 years ago), “might” have been valid, but instead of looking at this service in the light of it’s recent performance, you stick with your obsolete view, which again, is NOT founded on ANY first hand experience, recent or old.

Since I already posted on this topic in another thread, I’ll just clip out portions of that text to, in your words, “Let the reader decide...”.

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quote:

Originally posted by region2:
Top Tip 1. Never use a sniping service for must-haves.

This advice is also based on the dated defense against not-in-times. Now, a must-have probably has an element of rarity to it. After all, if it’s something that is auctioned on ebay on a daily bases, it might be a must-have, but how vital is it that one must have it today instead of tomorrow? There are some (few) cases where a must-have “might” not be rare, but these mostly like fall in “that rarely occurs”.

The rarity of an item would “tend” (not always) to place more demand on the item. The greater the demand, the greater the bidding and the greater the chance of bidding wars and nibblers. To avoid this, it is even MORE important to snipe the auction instead of using a proxy bid. Yes, there is a chance of power failures, ebay crashes, server problems, et al, but with the improvements in the Internet, ebay, AS, communications, et al, these issues are more rare than a rare auction on ebay. But, there’s a very real chance that by placing a proxy bid on a “rare” auction instead of sniping it, one will either be out bided or up bided. The benefits of sniping even a must-have far outweigh the risk.