Originally Posted by barry123400

Any bid posted until just before auction ends tends to drive price upward unless absolutly nobody wants the item. I have pretty well restricted my use of ebay now as had I kept "winning" may eventually have gone to the poorhouse.. Also the question of credibility of vendors comes to mind. Outright fraud seems to be growing at greater than linear rate as well. Too bad. The sniper makes sense even though I felt it a little unethical in some ways. But perhaps thats only because I lost to people using it. Fake bids alone may ruin the ebay site yet. As bonehead mentioned using your credit card is about the only protection you really have. With even that you have to watch the time limit.