Confused about AS

Read this link on proxy bidding

proxy bidding on ebay

While you are reading that, I'll tell you what is wrong with bidding with Ebay proxy bidding. You are in a bidding war as you just saw with the item you were talking about. Up,up goes the price! With AS, you submit to AS the max you want to pay for an item and then BOOM, you surprise the other biders at the last moment! Much, much better avoiding the bidding war and will save you big bucks!!

And think how the other person feels - they have a bid in which may be suffient to win, lets say $100, and the auction is sitting at $50. You've come along and bid a few times against them and they are now going to pay $60 for the item if nothing else happens.

If they had left a snipe at $100 then when you arrived it would have been sitting at some lower price and you would have bid a few times until you got it to $50 (as there must have been a bid below that to make it get to $50 for them) - and you leave it alone expecting to win at $50 - their snipe arrives and they get it for $52.50 - and they've saved themselves the few dollars that you cost them in the earlier scenario.

I snipe to stop people picking away at my bids. I don't expect to get it cheap, but sometimes I do, I don't expect to be run to the absolute limit of my snipe, but sometimes I am. Sometimes I put in a snipe expecting to get outbid because I know some people will pay more (maybe I have the items and this is just a duplicate) and sometimes I put in a strong bid and am pretty much expecting to win, and hoping that it will be a good way below my snipe but prepared for it to be at my max - and if I really really want it I put in my max plus an increment and a further part of an increment because I really don't want to loose it and have somebeody else buy it for my max just because of a timing or increment issue.

John Sl, do you mean you place a bid and a proxy and a snipe? Wow! That is security, but aren't you doing just what you are trying to avoid.. BIDDING WAR?

No Mrs M. I mean nothing of the sort.

I only use AS.

I was describing the scenario based on Johmel's original description but from the point of view of the other bidder (the chap who left the proxy bid that confused poor Johmel).

Then I was comparing the period before I used to snipe and after I began sniping. (I started in 2000 with some local software and ran it on an always-on PC).

I absolutely agree you never want to get into any bidding war - you decide on your price based on how much you want the item and you give it to AS and let AS do the work.

The only decision you make, and it's worth spending a bit of time on, is how much to put into AS as a bid - you only get one bite at it - make it right (and that includes understanding how proxy bids work for the proxies left by others on the item and includes understanding bid increments).


I bid on many items - most (say 98%) of my bids are for common items and I just put in a low bid based on the reasoning that I will probably not win the item but if I do it's at a good price - I get a few of these perhaps 10% of what I submit to AS - but that's a success in my eyes because I didn't want the others at the prices they sold for (most of the time my price is exceeded before AS even kicks in).

But occasionally I see an item I really want and that I know is scarce/rare/desireable etc. Then I give AS a price which I am reasonably confident won't be beaten. And these items I do tend to watch over time. But I never bid through Ebay - sometimes I reconsider my bid and submit a change through AS so that the final snipe will be lower or higher than I started with.

Sorry for the confusion ..... the reason my post history is so low is that I can't write short posts. !!!

John SL, we tolerate long posts!