I did that just recently on some dash wood I needed. One had a buy it now and one didn't....he ended the auction for a agreed price and is shipping me both.

__________________
Proud owner of ....
1971 280SE W108
1979 300SD W116
1983 300D W123
1975 Ironhead Sportster chopper
1987 GMC 3/4 ton 4X4 Diesel
1989 Honda Civic (Heavily modified)
---------------------
Section 609 MVAC Certified
---------------------
"He who fights with monsters might take care lest he thereby become a monster. And if you gaze for long into an abyss, the abyss gazes also into you." - Friedrich Nietzsche

ok, I registered and set my time to 3 seconds. After reading their FAQ,s I saw that they recommend 5 seconds as a minimum. So I went back and changed it to 5. Would I be better off setting it to 3 or 4, in case others are sniping too? I put in my max, which is just a little over what I really wanted to set as my limit , seeing as how this is the first item I've found that fits what I really want. What do you think?

__________________
'82 300SD - 361K mi - "Blue"

"Good judgement comes from experience. Experience comes from bad judgement."

listen, look, .........and duck.

One wins an auction by having the highest bid, not the one received at the latest time. If someone enters a maximum bid higher than yours, it doesn't matter whether he did so seconds, hours, or days before your bid was placed - the proxy bidding system takes care of it.

Bidding late is done to prevent real live people from having time to "respond" to your bid. Others using "place your max bid at a given time" services will have their bids placed automatically, just as expected, regardless of what you do (short of bidding it up high enough early enough that their bids are too low to be placed).

Now, if your bid were to come in too late to be entered, well, that could ruin your day! Unless someone were to come up with much better information (something better than just anecdotal evidence from winning a handful of auctions), then I guess I'd stick with the recommendations from whatever sniping service I were using.

I have always set my lead time at 3 seconds and have never missed a bid (on probably a dozen or so items). Anything at or under 5 seconds should be safe. I like the idea of sliding in as late as possible... so I set mine at 3 seconds. Always have... no real reason I guess. It's true that the highest $ bid gets the prize, it's also true that the majority of the bidding comes late. The more time you leave for someone to outbid you, the more likely that they will... remember, reason does NOT rule on Ebay. Most bidders will exceed the personal spending limits they set in the heat of the final seconds of an auction. Any bid before the last few mintes of an auction generally just drives the price up for this reason; SOMEONE out there will outbid you for the sake of outbidding you. That said, bidding with 5 seconds left leaves little/no chance for someone to outbid you on a whim... but 3 seconds leaves even less time!

Good luck!

Chris

__________________
1992 300D 2.5T
1980 Euro 300D (sadly, sold)
1998 Jetta TDI, 132K "Rudy"
1974 Triumph TR6
1999 Saab 9-5 wagon (wife's)

I find that bidding during the auction just drives the price up. Sure, the proxy bid will do the work for you, but only works to increase the price you'll pay in the end. If you bid early with your maximum bid and someone tries to outbid you, the price just went up. Most will enter a couple more bids to try to beat you. Even though in the end you had the highest bid, the price you paid is more than if everyone waited to the last second and bid what they originally intended too.

__________________
85 300CD
83 300TD
78 240D (daughter)

That's exactly what I was trying to say; you did a much better job of it! Thanks!

__________________
1992 300D 2.5T
1980 Euro 300D (sadly, sold)
1998 Jetta TDI, 132K "Rudy"
1974 Triumph TR6
1999 Saab 9-5 wagon (wife's)

Knowing when to bid is definitely important. It's also important to know how much to bid. I recommend that you never bid in "round number" amounts like $25, $50, or $100. Because that is what a lot of bidders do, you will often come out ahead to bid slightly higher amounts, like $25.07, $51.13 or $102.57. Ebay amateurs bid early and in nice, round numbers. The experts bid at the last second and in odd amounts.

I always beware of sellers using a statement flaunting their religious convictions. It seems to me they're commercializing their faith. Have been cheated twice and in both instances they were so called Christians. Joe

I like to bid twice. Sometimes letting people know early there are several in the race will discourage people and they go looking for bigger bargains.
Also, if you are on a slow dialup it is hard to get in a bid for sure at less than one minute without risking missing it completely...
Does this ' auctionsnipe' cost money ? I hate to give out my password to my Ebay account as I would be held responsible for missuse...
I have heard of a lot of unhappy paypal users...and huge numbers of sellers won't use them either.
While the highest bid wins... for sure some people do get caught up in the competition... so I let them think they have beat my early proxy bid and come back in as late as I feel safe trying it.
I agree with using a credit card if possible....but I have never typed my card number into my computer... I arrange to call the seller ... that way I have a record of contacting them.... if they can't take a card then I send a US Postal MO.

It seems to me that you are just raising the selling price when you do that. Sort of like you are bidding against yourself. If you do win, you could pay a higher final price because of your earlier bid. The only time bidding early seems to make sense is to kill a "Buy It Now" offer.

Thanks to everyone who gave me advice here. I'm pretty comfortable with a wrench in my hand, but pretty ignorant with other stuff. Fortunately, I came here for advice on buying on E-bay. The result? I won the bid for a pair of gray front seats from a 98 BMW 750iL, for the starting price of $250. They are baby's a$$ smooth leather with full power and heat. Auctionsniper rocks. Even though I put in a max bid a lot higher than the starting bid, apparently nobody else bid on these, and it knew enough to bid the $250 right at the end. The seats are now at home where they will wait for later in this year for action by me. Next project is sailboat and trailer, but these will follow soon after. I'm gonna use these to replace the seats in my SD, which are really in a sorry state.

__________________
'82 300SD - 361K mi - "Blue"

"Good judgement comes from experience. Experience comes from bad judgement."

listen, look, .........and duck.

Glad to hear that the result was the desired one!

Don't take any offense here, but do you know how the eBay "proxy bidding" system works? It is often misunderstood (much to the benefit of those who do understand it.)

I don't know anything about auctionsniper, but at least with eSnipe, the software doesn't do anything to try to figure out how much to bid. It simply tries to register the user's maximum bid with eBay within the desired time frame, with no "smarts" involved in trying to decide how much to bid. It just "bids once, bids your max." - the same way people snipe manually.

The eBay proxy bidding system takes care of it from there. It doesn't matter how high a maximum bid was registered. If there are no other bidders, and no reserve price, then you win the item for the seller's starting price.

Auctionsniper works exactly the same way. If, by chance, the bidding gets above your maximum bid, auctionsniper will not be able to place it, of course.

So if I put in a request to auctionsniper to put in a bid for $367 and it puts in a bid seconds before the end, and I'm the only bidder, and the starting bid was $250, then I win the bid with $250? That's what happened.

__________________
'82 300SD - 361K mi - "Blue"

"Good judgement comes from experience. Experience comes from bad judgement."

listen, look, .........and duck.

Yes. That is the case regardless of whether you place the bid yourself or use a service to place the bid for you. The proxy (automatic) bidding will bid only enough to make you the winning bidder, not to exceed your maximum bid amount. If someone else placed a bid of $300, the proxy will place a bid of $305 for you, to beat the $300 bid. (The minimum "raise" varies with the bid value. It starts at a nickel and increases as the bid level increases.)