E-Bay Letdown

[Warren]

For about a week I was bidding on a set of door handles for my M-37. E-bay said that bidding ends at April 6 2004 at 1647 30 Well to me that would be 4 47 or as I see it around Quarter to Five. Now how can some one out bid me if they bid on the same item at 6 o'
clock Any E-bay experts out there This is my first time at bidding and probably be my last.

[Bill Wincapaw]

E-bay bids end at PDT (Pacific daylight time ) which is 3 hours behind our East coast time, So 4:47pm there is 7:47pm here.
Regards
Bill Wincapaw

[MoparNorm]

..no one should be bidding for a week on e-bay,....unless you want to drive the price way up and pay too much.
MN

[Terry Newton]

We can all tell you are doing some bidding.

Anything else you can think of?

[Warren]

Terry, It seems there are a lot of us out who could use a bit more knowledge when it comes to dealing with the ALMIGHTY E-BAY. Since this was my first time to register and bid I really do think that I should have made an attempt to get more information on bidding. Heck! I received more help from this and Big Electric Forums than I did from E-Bay itself. Go Figure.

[Jeff in N.Tx.]

I have had good luck bidding on E-bay. I wait until about 15min. before the end of the auction. Then I enter my maximum bid. E-bay will then bid for me at whatever the minimum allowable bid is, until I win, or my limit is reached. Of course, you have to decide what your limit is, and not be trying to up it at the last minute.

[MoparNorm]

Exactly, you have to decide how high you will go, before you place your bid, then place it once. Folks that snipe bids or use bidding software cannot be beat by someone using a manual multiple bid technique. You cannot bid, check your bid, refresh the page and bid again and expect to win. These snipe programs can bid 1,000 times in that amount of time. If you bid multiple times all you are doing is bumping up their automatic bids to a higher level, it is a waste of time and runs the bidding up. When it gets right down to it, whoever pays the most first, usually wins.
With a proxy bid the high bid may show at $150, but his real bid is $1,500, if you bid at $200 it will only bump his bid automatically to $210 or whatever the minimum increment is. You can mess with someone this way to find out his limit, but you won't win unless you are willing to go higher. If you go higher too soon, you will trigger a whole bunch of automatic programs that will out bid you. If you see 20,000 hits on an item but only 3 bids you can bet that the bids have been placed and are just waiting until the end to be launched.
MN

[Terry Newton]

Perhaps you speak from experience?

What does software like this run you?

How effective is it against someone else running the same stuff?

[Bill Wincapaw]

I wait and bid during the last 30 seconds, of course that doesn't work if the bid ends when I'm at work. Heres a link to one of many snipe programs forsale....on E-Bay...go figure!

http://cgi.ebay.com/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?ViewItem&category=1506&item=3670145368&rd=1

[MoparNorm]

Originally posted by Terry Newton
Perhaps you speak from experience?

What does software like this run you?

How effective is it against someone else running the same stuff?

I actually don't use it, just know about it. If 15 people using snipe software are all bidding on an item, it will get pretty ugly! The person with the highest bid (earliest bid in case of a tie) will win, just as in an old fashioned aution, it all just happens in a split second! Actually at the speed of light! Which is how fast electricity travels unless you have a slow modem or AOL! ha!ha!
It all comes down to how high you are willing to go, not how fast you bid. A guy with a snipe program who only bids $5 won't win if a guy with $500, bidding the old fashioned way, bids.
MN

[Joe Cimoch]

There are websites that can do the sniping for you lile eSnipe http://www.esnipe.com

I use them when I bid, mainly because I don't have to be tied to the computer. You plug in a maximum bid, and how many seconds before the auction finishes to place the bid. I think the default is 7 seconds.

If you absolutely must have the item up for auction, you should put in a huge maximum bid, but again, wait till the very end to do that.

[Jill Stearnes]

But remember if 2 people are using the software, or service and wanting the same item if one puts in 1000.00 and the other 1100.00 the bid will jump to the highest bid. It does not matter if it is only worth 250.00. You must pay whatever the bidding ends at. I have seen some packs of cd's go for alot of money this way. So be careful. Ebay is great, but it can also get you. My personal hint, is to wait until the last possible (15 seconds) time, and put in your max. Then if you get it great, if not well you tried.

Good luck!!

Jill

[Joe Cimoch]

True, I probably wouldn't bid 1,100 on something worth 250, but if I had to have it , then I might set my max to 300.