Originally Posted by fredman
Ok, sniping: one thing to be careful about:
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.
While I understand the point of sniping, this approach seems to be taking it too far (i.e., trying to out-snipe the snipers). It makes much more sense to simply not put in any bid at all until the last few seconds, when you bid your actual maximum. I fail to see what you could possibly gain by having software increment your "maximum" bid multiple times in the last few minutes.