[ruzmina2010]

Got my first OUTSNIPED today. Looked it up and here is the interesting thing. If you lose an auction after sniping, it is most likely by one increment than your highest price, even though the 'other' sniper may place a bid much higher than yours.

Also I find that snipies should be set very early to avoid paying more at the auction than you would otherwise.... has happened to me a couple of times

Thanks Mario for this service!

[mario]

Mark, you are of course right, I was wrong on my reply above... it was very late when I replied.

Since the increment is 0.50, the current price would jump to 5.50, and 7.03 bid would have been accepted and won. Bid increment applies to the current high bid, not maximum bid.

[Cupid]

Jeremy,

The following is based on the fact that the bid increment in that range is $0.50.

Yes, Mario is correct if the auction price is raised to within 1 bid increment of your bid of $7.03 by the earlier bid of $7 (anything more than $6.53). Then eBay will reject your bid because it is not at least one bid increment above the current auction price when Gixen wants to place the bid for you.

Whether that happens depends on what the actual high bid that is showing as $5 is, it might be $5 or it might be higher, usually you can not tell what it is. If it is more than $7 then it is actually that bid that will win for up to one bid increment more than $7 so up to $7.50.

If that currently showing bid is only $5 then when the $7 is placed the auction price will only rise to $5.5... then, since $7.03 is more than one bid increment more than that eBay will accept it and since it is also more than the $7 bid placed a second earlier then it will actually win at your maximum price of $7.03 which is less than one bid increment more than the next highest bid of $7.

So it is a little more complicated than your example demonstrates because you do not know what the actual high bid that has already been placed might be.

In the long run, over many auctions, I find that the strategy of having the bid placed late enough to avoid anyone else reacting to it but before other snipers is the most effective.

What is certain from the example you gave is that having your bid placed earlier will give you a better chance that your bid will be accepted and so also give you more chance of winning, and at least causing the eventual winner to have to pay up to $7.53 for it as opposed to only $7.50 if your bid is rejected.

[mario]

Yes, that's absolutely what would happen, your bid would be too low.

[Jeremy]

Cupid- Quick question about sniping.

Let's say I and another user are sniping a very low value item and let's say the high bid shows at $5. The other user snipes the auction at $7 and I at $7.03. Say the other user's snipe is received slightly before mine (like 1 second) does that mean that the other user wins the auction and I get the "bid under asking price" notification?

[AndyT]

Some great explainations by cupid of how ebay bidding works.

[Cupid]

Yes, it is always worth remembering that eBay auctions are not always the cheapest place to buy things.

[mape123]

Yup...it's been difficult to take losing by one increment but I'm finally coming to terms with the concept of a maximum price to bid. I now accept that if I decide I won't pay more than x and I get beat by x + one increment...so be it. There's no telling how much higher the competition was willing to go.

I always do my homework and it's been amusing to see people bid more than the price an item can be found for in a store or elsewhere on line. Gixen helps me by forcing me to stay below that price.

Thanks for the comments.

[Sumflow]

mape123 wrote:

I should adjust my snipe.

Adjusting the snipe later has nothing to do with it. The first highest bid wins.

[Sumflow]

[Cupid]

If someone decides that they are going to bid more than you at any time before the auction ends you are not going to win. If the other person had scheduled their bid to happen before yours then you would have got an 'Outbid' status instead of an 'Outsniped' one but the end result would be the same in terms of price and eventual winner. All you can do when someone is prepared to pay more than you and back that up with a bid is make sure that they pay a little bit more than you were prepared to do.

I advise people only to schedule their bids late enough to prevent others reacting to them, not as late as is possible, because that way you gain the advantage of the first bid rule (if two high bids of the same amount are received by eBay then the first to be placed wins) and even more significantly the bid increment rule (a bid must be at least one bid increment above the current auction price or it is rejected by eBay).

If you have different offsets for the Main and Mirror most of the time the server with the larger offset will successfully place the bid (in your example the Main server) and the other one will not be able to place a bid because eBay already has one of that amount when it (the Mirror in your example) comes to try to place it, eBay does not allow a second bid of the same amount to be placed at a later time. So only when the server with a larger offset fails to place the bid will you get your bid placed at the later time.

[mape123]

Thanks Mark...great explanation. However, in order for this to not happen again, it seems like I should adjust my snipe to happen less than 6 seconds before the end, but you advise against this. But it obviously worked for somebody else, if they outsniped me. Would a strategy of keeping the main offset at 6 sec but changing the mirror offset to 3 sec work?

[Cupid]

"bid under asking price" means that by the time Gixen came to place your bid the price was already too high and so eBay would not accept your bid.

"outsniped" means that your bid was successfully placed and you were winning at that time, but then a later bid was placed that was higher than yours and won the auction. It means someone scheduled a higher bid for a later time than yours. It does not mean that they were able to react to your bid just that they decided beforehand that their bid would be higher than yours and closer to the end of the auction.

"outbid" means that your bid was placed but that another bidder had previously entered a higher amount than yours when they placed their bid.

[mape123]

Gixen has worked flawlessly for me for almost a year...even when I lost. However, for the first time I just saw that I was "outsniped." I read previous posts but I don't quite understand...what's the difference between "bid under asking price" and "outsniped"?
Thanks.