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Old Mar 5, 2006 | 6:46 am
  #18  
slawecki
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Join Date: Dec 2000
Location: south of WAS DC
Posts: 10,131
Originally Posted by fredman
Ok, sniping: one thing to be careful about:

In some instances, if you set up your snipe to bid in, say, the last 5-6 seconds of an auction, you MUST make your bid increment high enough that it actually 'goes thru', and by that I mean, the first two times I sniped an item, I didn't get it, even though I sniped at like 2 seconds before the end of the auction at a higher amount, and the winning bid went thru 5 seconds before mine.

I'm not sure how to explain this real well, but maybe you will get what I am saying: there was a $150 item I wanted, I bid $50 as my limit, and with 8 seconds left a guy bid $65, and I previously set my snipe to bid in 4% increments to out-bid anyone else 'automatically' up until my actual top-end limit, which I programmed in at $75, so it went from 50 to 54, not enough, 54 to 58, 58 to 62, not enough, and for some reason my snipe went thru at $66, and my bid was rejected due to 'not enough of an increment', or some BS reason like that, and by then the item had closed.

All I am saying is, when you set up your snipes, BE SURE to increment as high a dollar amount as you can afford, depending on how bad you want the item.

If you were willing to pay $75, why not put in the snipe at $75? You then have an opportunity to purchase the item at the minimum price of prior bid plus minimum increment(which is not BS). The only advantage your system has is shutting out someone who does not bid high enough to include the minimum increment. In many auctions, the min. increment is 5-10% of the bid. I bid on an item that went for $31100. 40 bids, as min increment was $100. can you imagine how many bids if min is $1?
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