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Hack 22 Automatic Sniping
Use eSnipe to snipe without actually having to
be there when the auction ends.
Sniping
is an effective way to increase your odds of winning an auction while
simultaneously lowering the final price you pay (see [Hack #21]). But there are significant
drawbacks to sniping that limit its practical usefulness:
You have to be in front of your computer, ready to bid, at the exact
time the auction ends.
It's nearly impossible to snipe two or more auctions
ending at the same time.
If your computer crashes or your Internet connection goes down
moments before you snipe, you lose.
You can easily forget to bid, or even become distracted moments
before bidding time. (I can't tell you how many
times I've been distracted by a doorbell ring or a
good song on the radio, only to turn around and find that
I've missed my two-minute sniping window.)
The solution, of course, is to simply bid early, and then return to
the auction after it's over to find that
you've been outbid by 4 cents. Fortunately, there is
a better way.
A number of sniping
services
are available that will automatically place a bid for you at a
specified time, typically a few minutes or seconds before the end of
an auction. Some sniping services are simply standalone programs that
run on your computer, but these suffer some of the same limitations
as sniping manuallynamely, that your home computer be turned
on and connected to the Internet at the right time. The better
services are web-based, like eBay itself, and operate whether or not
your computer is powered up.
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The best sniping service available by far is
eSnipe
(www.esnipe.com).
It's extremely easy to use, very reliable, and best
of all, it works. Just log into eSnipe with your eBay user ID and
password, and you're ready to go. To set up a snipe,
specify the auction number, the amount to bid, and the buffer time
(number of seconds before the end of the auction), as shown in Figure 3-1.
Figure 3-1. Automatic sniping tools like eSnipe bid for you at the last minute
eSnipe will bid for you at the specified time and then send you an
email to let you know whether or not the snipe was successful.
Naturally, if you were outbid or if your bid wasn't
high enough, eSnipe will fail.
3.4.1 The Catch
There are two drawbacks to using
eSnipe.
First, it's not free. New users are granted a free
trial period, but thereafter eSnipe charges 1% of the final price of
the auction, with a minimum fee of 25 cents and a maximum fee of
$10.00.[2] The fees are
pretty small, though, and probably pay for themselves with the money
saved by sniping. eSnipe fees are paid by purchasing
"BidPoints," which are available at
a discount if purchased in bulk.
[2] The fees are per auction; sniping three $2
auctions will cost you 75 cents. The exception is that all foreign
auctions have a flat fee of $1 since eSnipe isn't
able to do an accurate currency conversion on the fly. Naturally, all
quoted prices are subject to change.
The second catch is that eSnipe is not smart. It
can't read your mind or the minds of the other
bidders, nor can it make decisions for you. For instance, if you
enter a snipe bid of $54.03 and the price at the time of sniping is
$53.99, then eBay will refuse your bid even though
it's higher than the highest bid (see [Hack #25]). If you sniped the auction
manually [Hack #21], then
you'd be able to make the call on the spot and raise
your bid by the required 96 cents. See Where Sniping Can Go Terribly Wrong for another case.
Where Sniping Can Go Terribly Wrong
Although sniping usually has good results, there are circumstances
under which automatic
sniping can actually make things worse.
Here's a case in point.
I saw a set of Go stones (used in Go, an ancient board game somewhat
like chess, but with black and white stones on a 19 x 19
grid) for auction with an opening bid of $45, so I set up an
automated sniping service to bid about $50 for me, seven seconds
before the end of the auction. I then promptly forgot about it; that
is, until I received an email from the service shortly after the end
of the auction.
It appeared that the seller had extended the auction another three
days and lowered the price to $40. This happened sometime after I
placed my snipe bid, so I was none the wiser until it was too late.
Not wanting a bid retraction to show up in my feedback profile, I let
the bid stand. And since the price had been lowered and I was the
only bidder, I felt like I was in a good position.
Then, another bidder came along and bid repeatedly until my $50 bid
had been trounced, something that wouldn't have
happened if my bid had not yet been placed (or if I had retracted the
errant snipe). Since my bid was placed early, the other bidder felt
compelled to outbid me, thus raising the price of the set over what I
was willing to pay.
I ended up losing the auction, and the other bidder ended up
paying too
much, all because of what can go wrong with sniping. Had I sniped
manually, I would've known to postpone my bid. Or,
had I simply bid at the time I entered my snipe bid, the seller
wouldn't have been able to extend the auction in the
first place.
3.4.2 Put eSnipe on Your Toolbar
If you find yourself using
eSnipe more frequently, you
may want to streamline the bid entry process. Instead of opening up
eSnipe, logging in, and then typing or pasting the auction number
into the form, you can use eSnipe's SnipeIt feature.
Start by clicking SnipeIt! on eSnipe's toolbar and
following the prompts on screen. Eventually, you'll
be given a link that you can drag onto your
browser's Links toolbar. (The link is the same for
all supported platforms and browsers, but the screenshots in the
instructions are different.)
To snipe an auction, navigate to the auction page on eBay and click
the SnipeIt
link on your
Links toolbar. A small window will
appear with all information filled in for you; just specify a bid
amount and press "Place eBay Bid with
eSnipe."
3.4.3 See Also
See [Hack #21] for the old-school
approach to sniping.
See [Hack #23] if you want to bid on
several auctions but win only one.
