Automatically increasing bid?

[avsupermarket]

Hi!

OK hands-up I _have_ used another sniping tool, AceSniper, mostly because it's built into an excellent application called Prospector. Sadly Prospector is Windows only - thank goodness for VMWare.

Bear with me because it's strangely worded, but, the neat option AceSniper has is to "Automatically increase the final bid amount to the item's Minimum Bid, if the difference between your max bid and the price at the time of bidding is less than one bid increment"

Or put another way; if you set a maximum snipe price of $50 and at the time of placing the bid the system notices the item is sitting at $51 and the bid increment is $0.50 then it will bid up to the current price of $51 for you. Bit of strange one I agree but it _has_ worked for me in the past and resulted in successfully winning auctions.

Clearly the devil is carefully worded in the detail - this isn't an option which would commit you to placing a bid at goodness knows what silly value the price is at bid time, it simply covers you in the case where the maximum bid you enter is _very_ close to the price at bid time (less than a bid increment away and may just win you the auction by bidding a tiny bit higher.

What do people (especially Mario) think?

Regards,

Steve
Cambridge, England.

[Cupid]

Interesting, I can see that it might be popular with some.

Personally, I wouldn't want it to be the default behaviour, and I would not use it. That's because my maximum bid is just that, I really don't want to win if the price goes above that which I'm prepared to bid, even by a few pennies. I do however take into account what the bid increment is in setting my bid amount and sometimes that does mean that my bid is slightly higher than I'm comfortable with.
_________________
Mark

[nochkin]

avsupermarket,

If I want some item for $50, but it sits at $150 then (based on your idea) I may win it for $151. But $151 is three times more than what I want to pay.

If you agree to pay up to $52, then put your max $52, not $50.
That's why your snipe is actually "your maximum bid"

[nochkin]

... otherwise there is no big point of sniping. You can use proxy bidding by putting some high bid amount and let eBay handle it

[Gixen]

[Cupid]

nochkin,

I agree with you.

However, I think what was being suggested was not quite as radical as your $150 example suggests. Only if the current auction price is within one incremant is it suggested that the bid amount be increased, so in your case it would only be increased to a maximum of $51, not $151, if the price went higher than $51 no bid would be placed.
_________________
Mark

[nochkin]

[Guest]

Would it be say if I set my max snipe to $50 and after it sniped the bidding was $50.10 which would be less than the next bid increment meaning the other persons max bid is $50.10 then it would bid the extra increment?

If it is seems like a good idea to make sure you win if you less than a bid increment away from winning.

[nochkin]

[avsupermarket]