Unbelievable. Someone who would call sniping 'cheating' is probably jealous, frustrated, and self-righteous. That may sound harsh but think about it. They are probably frustrated because if they had known a higher bid would come in after their's, then they would have bid higher to begin with. Look at the bidding history of auctions. Oft times the high bidder will bounce back and forth between two or three people. They only want to bid just barely enough to go over and be the current high bidder. When a sniper comes in, we don't give them a chance to come back and go pennies over.
So in their mind our bidding wasn't 'fair'. They didn't get a chance to bid again. This is where self-righteous comes in. If they bid early so should every one else. Every one should bid the same way - their way. And possibly they are also jealous, because if they knew how to snipe, then maybe they would.
I love sniping. More than once I've enjoyed an evil chuckle at taking something away from someone at the last moment - even those who bid manually within the last minute or two. If I really want to win something, I first determine how much I really want to spend, and ask myself how would I feel if I lost by 50 cents or a buck, and I then go higher. "GO BIG OR GO HOME," he roared, "LOSER."
I think my best advice is "Know thine enemy." I always look at the bid history of a currently running auction. I then click on the feedback number of the high bidders. This gives me a list of the auctions they have already won. I then look at the bidding history of every item still accessable. More often than not this will tell me tons about the type of eBayer this person is. I learn if they bid early and no gets over them later; or if they frequently bid late and try to win at the last minute; or if they bid lots, having the high bid, losing it, and then getting it back again by pennies.
I have a number of auctions of my own, ending this holiday Monday, (something else I've learned - the best times to end an auction. But as a buyer - I'll go for the item that ends Tuesday at noon, not the same thing ending Sunday after dinner!!) (Plus + Don't sell hockey cards if it's not winter! Fool. I'll certainly buy hockey cards in the summer, but I won't sell. I got a Guy LaFleur rookie card, book value $150 US, for less than $30 Canadian including shipping. The seller had to mention I got the card for way less than it's value, and I didn't have the hardness of heart to mention, Idiot. We're having a heat wave and a drought, and you want to sell hockey cards..........)
Anyways.....I have ten auctions ending this Monday. Five of them have bids already, but would I like to see some sniping? Let me think.......Duh....Yeah!
But HEY....here's the reason I actually logged in tonight......is there not some way of promoting Auction Sniper on my auctions? Are we allowed to include a link that will tell our buyers what we already know? Or does eBay forbid it? I've jumped around the various pages here and can't find what I thought I once saw, but didn't pay attention to, because then I was only buying.