OT: Tool for sniping over at ebay

[Ragnarok-X]

Im looking for a decent free tool in order to do some sniping on ebay. Any suggestions ?

[Saber Cherry]

You won't get anything free on ebay. But you can probably do some limited sniping with a home-made blowgun. And as catching poison jungle tree frogs is not easy in Germany, try dipping the darts in Tabasco sauce... not lethal, but it should still sting!

[Fyron]

Thats a rather shady tactic, not appropriate for discussion in a place like this.

[shinigami]

Bull. Sniping is an accepted part of life on Ebay.

BidNoble - http://www.bidnobble.com/
esniper, console based - http://esniper.sourceforge.net/
frontend for above - http://www.es-f.com/

[Randallw]

I don't use Ebay myself, although I used to sell stuff on it at work. There's a mechanism that can ignore any bids in the last 5 minutes. Though having said that it would seem to me that just puts the end of the auction forward 5 minutes.

As much as I would dearly love to get some things, such as an original copy of Reich Star, I am sadly too paranoid to ever trust some stranger with money. I once had a PayPal account I used to buy a book from an author once, but after that I was warned not to trust it and never renewed.

"I am the type who is liable to snipe you
With two seconds left to go, whoa"

Ebay song (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HYokLWfqbaU)

[narf poit chez BOOM]

I just never trust an Amazon or E-Bay seller with less than a 95% rating or too few sales.

95% is 1 in 20 - a perfectly reasonable mistake rate. In another five percent you reach 1 in 10, which is too high.

[Fyron]

shinigami said:
Bull. Sniping is an accepted part of life on Ebay.


Murder and thievery are "accepted parts of life" too. But just like Ebay, society has created methods for trying to deal with them in a preventative manner. If sniping auctions was a good thing, every auction site known to man wouldn't have invested time and money in developing anti-sniping features (extending auction time if a bid is placed within the last 5 minutes, the auto-bid feature on Ebay where it will place incrementally raising bids for you up to a set limit when you are out bid, etc.).

Can a moderator please delete the shady links that were posted? Its like posting links to sites detailing how to create trojans and spam bot networks... not a good thing for polite society.

[shinigami]

Murder and thievery are "accepted parts of life" too.


You're comparing apples and oranges.

But just like Ebay, society has created methods for trying to deal with them in a preventative manner.


Untrue. Ebay does not care if people snipe or not.

the auto-bid feature on Ebay where it will place incrementally raising bids for you up to a set limit when you are out bid


Ah yes, the proxy bidding system, aka, the original sniping tool for bidders. If people use it properly then all the supposedly evil sniping software in the world wouldn't make a difference. Remember, the highest bid wins not the last.

Can a moderator please delete the shady links that were posted? Its like posting links to sites detailing how to create trojans and spam bot networks... not a good thing for polite society.


That is just your opinion, sir, and 18,000+ posts doesn't necessarily make it more right than someone else's.

[narf poit chez BOOM]

In this case, I agree with Fyron, pretty much - Using electronic tools to bid takes all skill out of it. If I'm going to snipe, I'm going to do it myself.

[Atrocities]

I will ask the Forum Admin to make a call on locking this thread.

[Mindi]

I'm leaving this thread and any references up. Although I understand that there are lots of opinions on the subject, until ebay does something to shut down electronic sniping, it's going to be done and by not coming out against it they have made it acceptable. I've sniped on items (although I do it the old fashioned way and wait until the last few seconds to bid without the aid of electronic tools) and I have been sniped on.......heck I even had someone send me a rather hateful email because they were pissed I bid in the final 10 seconds of the auction (which I promptly ignored, he was a newbie so he would learn soon enough that this is common practice).

From one of the ebay help pages:

Last-minute bidding
Placing a high bid in the closing seconds of an auction-style listing is called “sniping” within the eBay Community. Sniping is part of the eBay experience, and all bids placed before a listing ends are valid - even if they're placed one second before the listing ends.

To help avoid disappointment, ensure that the maximum bid you enter on the item page is the highest price that you're willing to pay. The eBay bidding system automatically increases your bid up to the maximum price you specify, so entering a higher maximum may help prevent you from being outbid in the closing seconds of a listing.

Tip: Did you know that during the last 15 minutes of a listing a “Refresh” link will appear on the item page? When seconds count, using this link will make it much faster for you to see the most important information at the top of the page: current bid price, bid history, time left, and high bidder. Reference (http://pages.ebay.com/help/buy/outbid-ov.html)

Ergo, they practically encourage the practice of sniping. On another page (Reference near the bottom of the page (http://pages.ebay.com/help/tp/programs-investigations.html)) of their help section it specifically says they do not investigate bid sniping, so again, it seems they don't care. They want you to use the proxy bidding system instead to make you put in the top price you are willing to pay. If someone bids you out in the last few seconds by putting in .01 over what you wanted to pay, then that's considered your tough luck, you should have put in a higher bid. Remember, ebay takes a piece of the final value, they want the price to be driven up. They really could care less how that happens. As they put in the ebay glossary for sniping sniping, "Any bid, placed before the listing ends, is allowed on eBay."

[Ragnarok-X]

Wow. I think some ppl in here have a wrong impression about moral and good/bad. Under no circumstances would i ever think that sniping is illegal or bad. Its just the way it works. If you want to save money, you use it. You can always snipe the hard way (entering the bid manually) but when you arent around, a tool like that is good.

I absolutly dont get what is wrong about it.

[shinigami]

Looking back over my last post I realized that my final comment could very well be taken as an attack on Fyron. That is most certainly not my intent. I view Fyron as an (extremely) important member of the Space Empires community and respect all he has done to improve the games, I just (obviously) disagree with him on this point. http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/wink.gif

Fyron, if you saw my previous post as an attack on you, I apologize.

[narf poit chez BOOM]

Electronic sniping is not immoral; it's lazy and removes skill from the game.

[Hugh Manatee]

e-bay isn't a game...

[narf poit chez BOOM]

Of course it is. You have a goal, competitors and a playing field.

[Atrocities]

I dislike ebay.

[Mindi]

If you think of it like a real auction, an electronic tool for sniping is just like having someone bid for you at an auction house. All sorts of people bid at auctions and a lot of people use firms to buy the pieces for them if they can't be at or don't want to go to the auction themselves.

My father-in-law owns a small auction house and trust me, he could care less who is bidding at the last minute or how they are bidding, as long as the price is going up and the bidder is good for the money. Ebay is the same way. If the item is that important to you, you either place your bid for the absolute maximum amount you are willing to pay and they will proxy bid for you, or you are there when the auction is winding up and bid how you see fit. If it's allowed at a regular auction, I don't see why it wouldn't be allowed at online auctions.

The only people who get screwed from sniping is people who put in bids early and assume because no one else is actively bidding against them right then that no one wants the item but them, so they put in a low maximum bid. Truthfully, if you put in the highest amount you want to go and you lose the item to someone else who bids higher in the last seconds (no matter what method) then you would have lost it anyway even if they put in their bid 5 minutes earlier.

So you still wouldn't have gotten the bargain you thought you would have. To think otherwise is only fooling yourself.

[Fyron]

Real auctions don't tend to have arbitrary time stamps cutting off each item, do they? As long as people are still bidding, it continues. And you are all there when the auction is taking place, over a short, concise time period. This is unlike Ebay, where the auction is on-going for many hours or days until some point in time, which often ends up in the middle of the night or some other period where you can't be there to have a final "bidding war" with the other bidders. This is where the whole sniping thing comes in... Sure you can set up an auto-bid value, but its just not the same as being able to decide whether you want to continue bidding past that point or not. Scarcity of said item makes a big difference, naturally. Treating online auction sites like a live auction is inherently flawed.

Automatic sniping agents are not really analogous to hiring someone to go to the auction for you. A better analogy would be a null-sound field that prevents everyone else from being able to talk. http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/wink.gif

[Randallw]

I think Ebay has a mechanism whereby you make a bid of what you want to pay but you also make a bid of the maximum you are willing to pay, that way if someone outbids you near the end it will automatically up your bid for you.

[Baron Munchausen]

Randallw said:
I think Ebay has a mechanism whereby you make a bid of what you want to pay but you also make a bid of the maximum you are willing to pay, that way if someone outbids you near the end it will automatically up your bid for you.



Yes, and that is the key reason for sniping. If you enter a price and are automatically outbid, you have time to 'think' or maybe simply 'adjust' would be more accurate - it's an emotional process more than intellectual. You consider whether the item is worth more to you, or maybe just consider whether you will stand for being outbid, and often go back to bid again. In order to prevent others having time to decide they want something badly enough to outbid you, many will wait until the last possible moment and only then place their bid. It seems quite likely to me that sniping really does result in lower prices due to the way it reduces competition. Since this works against the seller's interest in getting the highest possible price for the item, I can also see why sellers try to find ways to penalize or completely prevent sniping. http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/happy.gif

[Atrocities]

I prefer Craig's List.

[Mindi]

Although my analogy isn't exact, if you give an agency a maximum bid you are willing to pay and someone bids over that, if the agent doesn't have you on the phone while they are bidding for you and can ask you if you want to up your bid, you will lose the item as the agency isn't going to risk eating the price of the item if you didn't want to go higher. If an item is that important to you then you place your high bid accordingly. It's as simple as that and that's the way ebay wants it to work.

Now if you think someone is bidding just to drive up the price at then end of an auction to make you reach your high bid amount, that IS against ebay rules (see Shill Bidding).

The problem is with ebay that you used to be able to get a lot of great deals because people weren't always camped out for the end of the auction, so if you were there you might get a great bargain. But ebay has become so popular and with the use of proxy bidding that the true bargains to be had are getting few and far between. Especially once you add in the S&H that some ebayers are charging.

[Atrocities]

I recently posted some items on Cragslist.com for sale in my area. Since then I have sold the items but the scam emails keep rolling in.

Most are form messages used to asway concern while expressing "sincere and abundant interest" in the item I am selling. They comment on how they will issue me a check on "any United States Bank" and that craigslist "will garantees the sale."

Any who I got sick of these obviously low brow attempts to con me, so I opted to play their game back.

I opted to open my own yahoo.com account, being as how 99% of the scam mail comes from their. (chriswalker 1@yahoo.com chriswalker 2@yahoo.com etc.)

This is the message I sent them.


Due to excessive fraud complaint reports to our office we have placed you under investigation and has tracked you through through your internet protocols through yahoo.com. You are being advised of this action in accordance to Federal and International Law. At this time an international, federal, and local arrest warrant has been issued for your immediate arrest and extradition to Washington DC for Federal prosecution for internet fraud, wire service fraud, mail fraud, and violation of Revised International Commerce Statutes (RICS). Do Not attempt to run, you will only be captured tired.

Trooper Bill Conrad
Federal Investigation Agency (FIA)
District of Malaboo
Washington DC



Since this is a bogus agency, I have committed no violation of any law.