How do I avoid snipers on my eBay auctions?

As a buyer the one thing that bothers me is the really low opening price, but a high reserve. I just leave the auction rather than worry with it.

Personally I always use snipe tools to bid on auctions 3 seconds before the close. As a buyer, the last thing you want to do is get into a bidding war with another buyer. I setup my bids often days in advance and it serves two purposes. 1. It stops you getting carried away bidding more than you would want to just because you want to win and 2. You often get the item cheaper because you have avoided the bidding war in the first place. Is that fair on sellers? Of course it is. It's an auction and that's the risk you take. If you can take it you should be looking elsewhere to sell your goods.

As a buyer, I guess I am considered a sniper. It's really raises the blood pressure. Quite a high. My husband uses a sniper program that puts a bid in during the last few seconds. It's just smart buying. Why bid once during the duration of the auction...just to have someone bid over you...then you have to raise the price again on yourself. I guess a good rule of thumb is to bid your maximum that you want to pay...early or sniper. I have three noobs right now in a bidding war on a bracelet. Gotta love the uneducated.

As a seller, that's the way the game is played. I dont care to see zero bids all week...but I cant fault people for smart bidding...especially when I do the exact same thing!

I also snipe. YOu have to or you won't win anything worth winning. That is the thing. There is no other choice. One way ebay could end this is to give sellers an option (with an additional fee) to add a auction extension. Allow any bidder who have bid in a designated time period to continue bidding. Then, when no additional bids have been made, the auction closes. For example, Bidder 1 bids on an item with 2 minutes left. Bidder 2 ups the bid with 1 minute left. Bidder 3 comes in and tries to snipe at 30 seconds... the auction does not close. Bidder 1 or 2 can come in and bid for 2 more minutes (or whatever designated by seller). When 2 minutes has passed with no additional bids then the auction closes. This is like a real auction. An real live auction will not close while a last minute bidding war is going on. Problem solved. Seller makes more money possibly. Thus ebay makes more in fees by the additional fee for listing with this service and the additional % from the higher sale.

For the first time i think I will snipe as an Ebay buyer.... Those of you Ebay buyers who snipe with 3 seconds remaining in an auction, is there a sniping site you have found to work better than others?

There is a fix I can think of. Why doesn't eBay have a random finish time where the auction will finish *somewhere* in the last hour. For example if an auction is listed to finish at 7:00 pm it might finish at 6:05 or it might go til 6:59.

People would have to bid earlier to be sure their bid would register and snipers would be much less effective.

Hello! I agree so very much with the OP. I stumbled across this while looking for another auction site that does not allow sniping. I have heard they exist and am hoping to find a good one. I have been with eBay as both a buyer and seller since 1998. That is a long time. I have watched it evolve, volunteered for various things over the years and even made true friends that carried over into my everyday life. It has been a wonderful experience but like the OP said, it is not fun any longer. I have a 100% pos feedback and have shipped all over the world. Before the snipers and the sniping software an auction was enjoyable. It was sort of like a competition that brought several strangers together for a brief time. Perhaps I am naive, perhaps I am getting senile, but snipers have taken any joy out of it for me as well as for the bidders who do not like sniping or even know what it is. But that does not seem to concern snipers. Only the win is important. That too makes me sad.

One thing people that snipe fail to realize is on eBay it is the earliest bid that wins an auction in case of a tie.

So I bid $125 on Monday for an item starting @ $2.50
Come the last day the 4 or 5 people that have snipped the auction, must have a higher bid than $125 or the item will go to the bid that was placed the earliest in the day or the week.

Or better yet, why not have the auction automatically extended for ten to thirty minutes from the time the last bid was placed?

Wouldn't THAT solve everything?

And if ebay wanted to be asinine about it, then they could charge a quarter for every bid happening in overtime...

I guess it all just makes sense to ME.

I think the best way to go is to put auction for 1 or 3 days only, not for 7 or 10 days like some people do.
Sniper or not, you will receive your bids within last few hours and don't need to wait and see your bids to be the same every day.
As an additional bonus for putting your item for 1 or 3 days is that you will sell your item faster.

If you are still afraid then you can put a reserve price on your auction. However, that will drive attention out of your auction to similar ones without reserve.

On another position..
I personally love snipers. They actually put the price my item worth and thanks to them I'm always getting a fair value without having to put a reserve price.

I snipe myself when I buy also, because some seller do shill bidding on their auctions (and they think it's fair!) and sniping protects me most of the time from shill bidding.

So, sellers think sniping is unfair??? But it is fair for people to get into emotional bidding and then bid till the item is way over retail price just to win? I think that is unfair to buyers, and I am quite perplexed of how many people still over bid and bid very early. I have been sniping since, I joined ebay in 1999. It seemed like common sense to me. Don't forget that snipers don't always win. We have to put our maximum price, and sometimes we have already been outbid, so we don't get another chance to bid.

Personally, I shop at ebay to get a good price. Otherwise I would go to a known retail store and pay retail prices, and I can actually touch & see my item and have an actual warranty through a reputable company just incase something is wrong with my item.I take the risk by buying on ebay.

If the seller is so scared, put a reserve price. It is the sellers who put $1 starting price just so that people can compete and then pay way more. By the way, I am a seller too, and I am fine with sniping. I just have to be smart on the pricing of my items, thats all!

You don't get bid sniping and last second bids in time limited autions in the real world so why should we put up with it online? I believe if a bid is made, the auction end time should get increased by 5 mins.

Bid sniping is unfair to buyers AND sellers. Most people I know have no idea how to do it and how the person who gesumped them at the last second managed it. In short they are annoyed and frustrated and many aren't geeky or obsessed enough to be able to do it themselves.

For sellers it means you're item has almost certainly sold for less than it might have. That might sound great to you, but that sure as hell doesn't to me. If you'd rather your item sold for £50 istead of £100 then you're away with the fairies my friend.

'The way I figure it, as long as the auction ends with a successful bid that's higher than the reserve, you've accomplished your goal of making money through your eBay sales.'

OMG how nieve can you be! Yes some people just want to make a bit of money, hell some people just want to get rid of something, even if it costs them a bit.

But a vast majority of us aren't rolling in money and when we put something on ebay we go through a lot of effort to make sure our auction is as attractive and informative as possible to make as much money from it as possible.

We're not after success and living with the pixies with a happy smile and skipping everywhere saying 'oooh I had a lovely sucessful auction today!' We're after cash, cold and simple and that's the reason why ebay is around in the first place.

Sellers aren't scared at all. We just want the best price for our auctions. I think the snipe bidders are the ones who are scared, losing their unfair grip on the service and having to do a bit of effort for a change instead of essentially cheating at what used to be an enjoyable experience.

Snipers cut out the competition by not allowing others to bid. Any system that eliminates competition like this is detrimental to the seller. If snipers it didn't give them an advantage, they wouldn't snipe.
It's as simple as that.