Sniping

[negomi2006]

Hey all, I used to post here a fair bit but haven't for a while....

is Just Snipe still a good free sniper program to use & does your password have to be the same as your ebay password???

Thanks in advance guys 🙂

[the3coopers]

Never heard of Just Snipe (doesn't mean it's no good). But it appears to be a paid service, or gives only a few snipes per week.

Probably the best Sniper service is Gixen. It is fully online, nothing to install so you can use it from any computer, even a smartphone.

Yes, you must provide authorisation to the Sniper to use your account on your behalf. So they need the password. If this concerns you (and there is a slight risk involved), then open a new ID just for Sniping.

.

[negomi2006]

the3coopers - thanks for your reply, I don't usually use a sniping program these days but an auction that I really want is finishing when I will be at work tonight and I don't want to show my hand too early 😉

I have decided to go with Gixen for this one *fingers crossed*

[lane-ends]

I use snip and auctionstealer. I paid for snipe credits on snip years ago, cant remember how nuch but lasted years. Auctionstealer is free for few snipes a week.

[papermoon.lady]

Well, at the beginning I lost a few auctions because I didn't know how they worked. I remember my very first auction - I kept increasing my amount by 50 cents and didn't understand how it was possible that somebody outbid me all the time!

Now I know how it works and I have won some auctions... But always manually up to now. However,I was thinking it would be nice to have a backup just in case my connection drops just in the last few minutes of an auction.

So I was wondering if I bid through Gixen for example and then my Internet connection is fine and I want to bid myself (because after all Gixen can fail too according to their FAQs), if I bid before Gixen (this is likely because Gixen really bids a few seconds before the end of an auction) and bid just 1 dollar more than the Gixen bid, will the Gixen bid be cancelled? Will Gixen consider it an auction that it didn't win?

I prefer to do it myself, but if the Dodo connection drops just before the end of an auction I would kick myself!

[lyndal1838]

If you bid manually as well as the Gixen bid you are bidding against yourself and may well pay far more than necessary for the item.

As an example...if the bid is at $100 and you and Gixen bid around $150  then you  will pay that much instead of $102.50.

Do you really want to risk it?

[papermoon.lady]

No... That's why I had said if I bid for example one dollar more than Gixen. For example the Gixen bid is 99 and I bid 100 manually before it, then when Gixen bids it will think it has been  outbidded and the bid will practically be cancelled?

[***super_nova***]

I do not know about Gixen, but I use Phantom Bidder, and eBay recognises my bids and does not bid against me.  What I mean once I made a manual bid on item that also had BIN (to prevent somebody getting it at the BIN price), then I realised I will be unable to manually bid at the time the auction ends, so I set up Phantom, fully prepared that I will have to pay one increment above my opening bid.  Nobody else bid, and the Phantom did the normal thing placing the 3 bids in the last few seconds, at the starting price.

PhantomBidder gives few free bids, but after that you need to pre-pay.  But the only misses I had over the 8 years were all my fault, like changing my eBay password and not telling Phantom.

[papermoon.lady]

I have just found this thread about Gixen and bidding manually too: http://arhit.gixen.com/forum/viewtopic.php?t=2118&sid=7c5d86b0c34db92b78c9fa3a04bdbbee

It should be fine... 🙂

[the3coopers]

No... That's why I had said if I bid for example one dollar more than Gixen. For example the Gixen bid is 99 and I bid 100 manually before it, then when Gixen bids it will think it has been  outbidded and the bid will practically be cancelled?

If Gixen is set at $99 and you bid $100 before it, then it is EBAY that will reject Gixens' bid. These sniper services don't actually check the prices or anything - they just bid "blind".

In fact, Gixen paid service uses 2 separate eBay logins to place a "double bid" on your behalf. I have mine set for AU at 10 secs then USA at 8 seconds. What happens is that normally my AU bid is the one that "wins", however if it fails then the USA one is my backup.

Sometimes eBay will accept both auto-snipe bids, and they can both be seen as from me in the Bid History. Other times one of the servers returns with a message "Bid is under asking price".