keep getting sniped!

ma_gardiner · Guest

Hi

Was really excited to find the Gixen site and have tried to use it several times over past month. However, I have only had one successful win out of around a dozen and in several cases I have loaded up my bid, only to be oout sniped by around 11 seconds...

Seems a bit of a waste of time under those circumstances... Any others find this?

What is performing better then??

Cheers

mario · Site Admin Joined: 03 Oct 2006 Posts: 7201

Sniping can't do miracles - you still need to have the highest bid in order to win...

Guest · Posted: Tue Nov 07, 2006 4:54 am Post subject:

...yes I appreciate that, but in the last case my bid showed up in the bidders list a full 11 seconds before the eventual winner who outbid me by half a euro !! (50cents)... Surely his sniping software was last in??

mario · Site Admin Joined: 03 Oct 2006 Posts: 7201

11 or 1 second makes no difference for the outcome, however I am surprised that Gixen would submit your bid this early (11 seconds). By its design this should never be more than 5 seconds before the end.

Can you give me the item number, or your user id, and I'll take a look?

Gixen · Advertisements

Guest · Posted: Wed Nov 08, 2006 1:17 pm Post subject:

Hi

Yes thanks... the item nos was 160045457726

mario · Site Admin Joined: 03 Oct 2006 Posts: 7201

And how is this 11 seconds?

End time is Nov-06-06 09:33:43 PST.
Bid is submitted at Nov-06-06 09:33:40 PST.

This is 3 seconds before the end of the auction.

And the winner did not use sniping software at all, it was a (normal) ebay proxy bid.

jfsebastian · Guest

Any chance of reducing the snipe speed even further - to say less than 3 secs. I only ask as I keep on getting sniped by the same guy, and he always comes in exactly 3 secs prior to the auction end.

Thanks for the great app anyway.

mario · Site Admin Joined: 03 Oct 2006 Posts: 7201

Well, this would not help you. Sniping helps you against regular bidders, as they don't have time to react, but it doesn't help you at all against other snipers.

In fact, the optimal time to place a bid is late enough not to leave enough time to manual bidders to react, but early enough to be the first among all the snipers. This is due to advantage ebay bid increments give to earlier bidder.

So I claim that optimal time is probably even earlier than 5 seconds, probably even 7 or 8. It doesn't matter there are snipers submitting bids after your bid, as if they bid high enough to win, this means that if the order was the other way around your bid would not even be accepted by ebay.

jfsebastian · Guest

[i]"It doesn't matter there are snipers submitting bids after your bid, as if they bid high enough to win, this means that if the order was the other way around your bid would not even be accepted by ebay."
[/i]
This is true - I just wish there was some way I could stop him. He's inflating the market for these particualr items, and money seems to be no object for him. This item appears about once a week, and over the last four months he's bought more than 90% of them, sometimes at ridiculously high prices!

mario · Site Admin Joined: 03 Oct 2006 Posts: 7201

There is nothing you can do about it, as long as he is ready to bid higher than you.

jfsebastian · Guest

Hi there,

OK It just happened again, but this is genuinely weird...

Ebay ref 250090436134

My Gixen bid was 36.62, time of auction end : 15.21.19.

Price of item 30 seconds before end of auction : 27.50

Two individuals bid near the end. One -a losing bid- at 15.21.07 of 35.69, the second -the winner- at 15.21.02, of 36.69. I was unable to make a bid whatsoever...

These items go for a wide variety of prices depending on condition, history etc, yet the first sniped bid was -rather improbably- just a little under a pound below mine, making my bid redundant, and the second snipe an easy winner - by a measly 7 bleedin'' pence!!!! Coincidence? Just unbelievably bad luck on my part?? Hmmmm....

My question is - Is there ANY way either or both of these two bidders could have known what gixen was going to bid on my behalf BEFORE it actually did so, and hence coordinate their bids accordingly?

or....

Have I been watching too many conspiracy theory documentaries lately?

mario · Site Admin Joined: 03 Oct 2006 Posts: 7201

No, Gixen is not part of the conspiracy against you jfsebastian. Very Happy

The fact this auction was won by only 7 cents above your maximum bid does not mean you would have won had you bid 7 cents higher.

EBay would accept your bid in that case, as it would have been above the minimum increment required, but you don't really know what the winning bidder's maximum was. If he wins all the time as you say, I would guess his maximum bid was much higher than 36.69.

If you are fighting this one guy all the time, I'm not convinced sniping helps you here at all. If you bid manually ahead of time, at least the ebay increment rule will be on your side, not his.

jfsebastian · Guest

No doubt you're right about the winners max bid - as I said before, money seems to be no object to him -god I hate this guy! I was more disturbed by the uncannily close proximity of the other, losing bid to my own.