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.
As
slawecki says, this makes no sense. Just snipe your max of $75 in one bid. Then you wouldn't have run out of time or whatever happened to you at $66. What your max is and how you get there by increments and what you win the item for are not related so far as I can see; it all depends only on what the other guy does, except as below.
One problem that occurs sometimes is that you outbid somebody by a hair, but not by enough to cover the increment. Say you snipe $102.05 at 4 seconds. But somebody else snipes $102.00 at 5 seconds. You are higher, but lose anyway. But if you'd sniped at 6 seconds, you'd have won.
So you might snipe a couple seconds earlier than other programs do to avoid this, if your sniper allows it. Or just bump your max up by a couple dollars.
www.bidnapper.com has always worked perfectly for me, but it does cost $45 a year or so.