Anyone familiar with, or use:

http://www.auctionsniper.com/
or
http://www.bidslayer.com/download.html
or
http://www.ezsniper.com/


Usually, if I find something I want to buy on ebay, I put in my max bid and forget about it until either I win or loose.

However, I notice a lot of the bidding against me is by a single person who puts in multiple bids, and has not purchased much in the past from ebay.

This is usually due to one or two auction pscys coming out.

a. somebody else thinks it is worth more,so I'll bid more or

b. well, I offered x, so I guess I'll try x + $5.

and of course
c. they have no idea the value of the item, either in the real world, or to them.

I usually don't much mind, as there are usually more of the same thing coming down the line, however, this item is serious money by my standards(around $20,000), and I would just a soon not have idiots bumping the bid up for days at a time by $100s.

I use http://www.esnipe.com. Initially it was a bit flaky. Since they recoded the site several years ago (I believe in 2000) it hasn't failed since. Not once, not in literally thousands of bids (my feedback is above 750 and that doesn't count multiple transactions with the same person).

auctionstealer.com works well, 3 free bids per week.

My limited experience was with the free version of Hammersnipe (there is a pay version, too). For times when you get outbid based totally on timing (ie. entering the bid the last 1-3 seconds of the auction), this might be a solution. It bids automatically for you at the end of the auction, based on your criteria.
But, for times when you are outbid based on your max. bid price, there is no program that will help.

This sounds quite reasonable and quite acceptable to me.

MisterNice

You can joing vrane.com at the base level for free. It allows you one snipe at a time - fine for infrequent bidders.

You left out one not uncommon category: The Shill Bidder. More common than many would expect, especially on big-ticket items. Sniping is your best bet. In fact, unless I'm using Buy It Now, I always snipe. Auction Sentry Deluxe is my tool of choice, mainly because I can create chained lists of items: If I lose A, snipe on B, and so on.

another vote for esnipe. I haven't tried any alternatives, but it is very reliable.

The have been using http://www.jbidwatcher.com/

for years now ... and has yet to fail me, unless my bid is too small...


now that I have let the cat out of the bag, don't try to snipe me

Esnipe. Sniping has become the only way to avoid shill bidders and bumping novices.

I've been using bidnip for the last 6 months and have only lost when my bid was too low.....

http://www.bidnip.com

the first five snipes are free

I did sign up for esnipe, which seems to work just fine. This is the item I planned to bid on:

http://offer.ebay.com/ebaymotors/ws/...tem=4614841977

And I believe it illustrates the degree of stupidity on some Items. I'm pretty certain that my bid of $16,500 would have been a very good price. I am also pretty certain that this boat has a maximum value of well under $25000, as in good condition, and fully tested, the boat would have a value of $40,000 max. The needed work on this thing(interior must be stripped as it is solid mold) exceeds $5000, all electronics are gone, and either or both engine and out drive (at $5-10000 a unit) are probably bad.

$31,000 for a boat that needs maybe $40,000 to make it a $40,000 investment.

I'll second the vote for esnipe. I've been using them for years and they're very, very reliable.

So, I have used auctionsniper for a couple of years now. Three free trys to see how you like it. It always worked pretty well, that didn't mean I always won, but it worked fine

Nice for when you want to be somewhere else when the auction closes.

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.