blonde poker forum

Probably sounds a stupid question but is it best just to wait to the very last seconds to make a bid for something?

The item has no bids yet and a day to run?

Any Ebay experts out there?

May aswell wait. You also have the option to enter a max price so you wont get outbid if your max price is higher than others, it stops somebody doing a ninja bid at the last sec also if you are willing to pay more.

http://www.goofbid.com/ has what's called an eBay sniper (there are others). It bids on your behalf with (say) 30 seconds to go.

It does really work- in theory we'd all put our best price in and that would be that, but in reality if you put a high bid in with an day to go people always get overexcited and out bid you, which they don't get a chance to do if you "snipe" at the end.

Watch any auction and all the bids will come in at the last 30 seconds.

This is a foolproof method and it stops you from getting caught up in the moment and bidding more than you intended too.

Personally I always try to contact the seller and arrange a private sale if I can.

I'm currently on the look out for some free hardcore and a garden shed.

Quite so, quite so.

Note: I didn't say free hardcore in a garden shed.

No need to say it somethings are just implied.

Just watch the item and bid last minute ( if you will be in at the time). Research the item and see how much similar items have gone for.

Then you could just follow what ebay pretty much advocate nowadays and then claim the item never arrived or was damaged and get a refund ;tk; ( I don't approve of this by the way, but is the main reason I rarely sell on ebay nowadays)

People generally don't bid until the last few minutes.  When selling it's quite common to have tonnes of watchers but no bids, then it goes crazy in the last few minutes.

Cheers, a couple of people have bid on the item but it ends at 9am tomorrow which may be good time for me.

I will be in work so will just bid in the last minute.

Thanks for the tips.

My old man synchronises a watch with the auction, and sticks his bid in with a couple seconds to go... Funny to watch, and even better when he mistimes it :D

I don't get why people don't let the automatic bidder do it though.

its fun when two or more folk use sniping software though :)

Have you tried gumtree?

The old man's coup seems to work (most of the time)

I don't pay all that much attention, so don't know exactly how it all works...

Lol.

This thread is doing my head in. Everyone seems to be suggesting fancy techniques for doing exactly what the software is designed to do automatically.

If you bid before the last few seconds Red you are just pushing the price up.

Your max bid is £10 and you are winning with a bid of £5 with 1 day to go.

a) I bid £7, then £9 and then £11 with one day to go. You receive the email to say you have been outbid and now have 24 hours to come back and increase your bid.
Then I get the email to say i have been outbid and there is still time for me to reconsider.

b) I wait till there is 5 seconds left you are still winning with your £5 bid, i place a bid for £25 and win the item for £11. You dont see the email until after the item has finished.

If everyone actually entered there highest bid it wouldnt matter but in reality people go back and up their max bids to win back items they have been outbid on.

Hope that helps make sense of it?

But aren't you using the auto-bid thingy in that scenario, otherwise how could you bid £25 and win it for £11?

If you actually put in your actual maximum bid then there's no benefit.

Most people actually decide to bid "a bit" higher so this works better.

I wonder how often it actually helps anyway, sniping is only going to be needed anyway if the item you're after is a particularly good bargain or particularly popular - most things on ebay probably don't have a huge amount of people after them to start with.

the software does not work

infact on occasions i have tried it i have ended up paying more

More than what?

I think i ended up doing it old skool, just put in my max bid about 15 seconds before the end.
I got it! And at a great price.

Cheers all (I think).