Sabbet, the other bidder was also a sniper--though he may or may not have been an AS member--but I can assure you that his max bid was not merely $2.50 above yours. The $2.50 was all he needed to win. His max could have been $40,$50 or even $100. You have no way of knowing his max and he has no way of knowing yours. The point is that you had the high bid until he bid higher. This is how eBay's proxy bidding works: it bids up to your max, but only as much as you need to become the high bidder. It does not bid past that.
The other sniper does NOT know how much your bid is. If you place a high bid, even one with five seconds remaining, your true max is not automatically revealed, only the amount necessary to make you the high bidder. For example, if the item is currently going for $26.50, and your snipe is for $35, your last-minute bid would simply raise the price to $27.50, not $35. If someone else puts in another last-minute bid for $30, then you would still win, but for $31. But if that other sniper placed a bid for $50, then there is no way you can win, since his snipe would raise the winning bid to $36, one increment above your snipe. That sniper had no way of knowing that you bid $35; he simply placed a snipe for a higher amount, and would have done so, regardless of whether or not you bid. The only difference would be in the precise amount paid by the winning sniper.
So, most of the time these are other snipers who were simply willing to pay more than you did. But people who do not understand how proxy bidding works see their own $35 snipe and the winning $36 bid and mistakenly conclude that the other member was responding to the AS snipe, outbidding it by a mere dollar. This misunderstanding is widespread on eBay, as well.
This all points back to the same thing. Decide your max well in advance, then bid that at the very last second, through AS. If you win, great--and you will win most of the time, unless you are bidding pittances. But when you do lose, it is usually because someone else was willing to pay more than you were.
