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I was not an active eBayer till last week. Prior to this past week, I had bought something from eBay, only via a link sent to me by a nephew in England who wanted the item so bad tht he asked me to buy it.

This last week has got me buying stuff worth close to $150.00 - a steal was a RC Buggy for $ 0.99 + s&h!!! less than a dollar for something that retails around the $70 mark.

Moving on, I had heard about Sniping etc but thought 'why pay money' to bid!??! Right? Wrong! Learnt the hard way.

I have a laptop I love very much, but is gathering dust due to lack of a working motherboard. One came on eBay. Exactly what I wanted. I put a bid in about a day b4 closing. Sitting smugly in my chair just running the clock down and dreaming already of my laptop fired up again. While the browser was refreshing, I got an email from eBay in my mail client. Opened the email and AARRGGHHH!! it was the dreaded 'outbid' email - outbid by $1.00. By the time i realise... 'Auction has ended'.

Outbid by a paltry $1.00 and in the last few seconds of the auction. Got to be a snipe or a manual snipe, but a snipe nonetheless. I needed to become a sniper. Browsed around the web. Looked at the usual suspects and somehow stuck on AS and decided to take my free introductory snipes for a spin.

My first attempt with AS failed. Only because my max bid fell $0.52 short of the winning bid - obviously a snipe too!!

My second attempt with a slightly 'stretched' max bid won. AS works and works well. I've got 2 more snipes lurking awaiting closing. Confident that I should win with AS.

One thing worth pointing out here regarding the lead time. I played the lead time very tight at 3 secs. Prior to setting up the snipe, I synced my PC clock with ebay clock. However the auction bids details shows my autosnipe bid being registered at 6 secs before the end of the auction. So does that mean that a 3 sec lead time shows as a 6 sec real lead time. In which case a 3 sec lead is better than the default 7 secs and the commonly suggested 5 secs?? Anyone have any idea about this?

By the way, I had the 'Instamail' turned off!! Wink

Good to have decided on AS and looking forward to some regular wins and eBay should thank AS for me becoming an active eBayer!!
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Welcome! Also, understand that eBay does NOT show full amount of the winning bid; it merely shows one increment above the second place bidder. So the $1 that you think you were outbid by was probably much more--you have no way of knowing.

If the second place bid was $75 and you bid $150, your winning bid would show as $76, and not $150. The other bidders would never know how much you really bid. Wink
quote:
Originally posted by Smart:
Welcome aboard!
You'll get lots of (differing) advice about lead-times here. Certainly AS does 'adjust' your requested time according to its experience of how long it's taking to place snipes. Most people seem happy using from 5 to 8 seconds which seems to give actual timings of around 8 to 12 or so. Be warned though sometimes in extreme cases snipes go in a minute or two early (and when AS has scheduled maintenance maybe even hours).
Just one more thing. You talk about a slightly 'stretched' bid on your second attempt. My advice is to always bid your absolute maximum. When sniping you won't provoke a bidding war and you might regret not bidding more.
Good luck.


Thanks for the welcome, Smart.

On the lead time, your remarks and also another topic highlighted the significance of eBay servers' downtime and also that of AS servers. Another parameter to keep in mind when bidding - check that the end of the auction doesnt fall within the scheduled 'down' times!!

I understand your view point on the absolute maximum bid. Thanks for the input.


quote:
Originally posted by Chatter:
Welcome! Also, understand that eBay does NOT show full amount of the winning bid; it merely shows one increment above the second place bidder. So the $1 that you think you were outbid by was probably much more--you have no way of knowing.

If the second place bid was $75 and you bid $150, your winning bid would show as $76, and not $150. The other bidders would never know how much you really bid. Wink


Chatter, thanks for the welcome.
Re: Higher bid - i agree, that was an ignorant remark of mine. I forgot eBay's rules of bid increments. Thanks for clarifying it.

Can't wait for auctions, I am sniping to end.

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