Real auto snipe?

[Jeremy]

Hey,

I just added that script thingy that allows you to snipe right from the auction's page and I love it! No more copying and pasting item numbers and switching between windows!

What I have been wondering for quite some time however is if there is a program that will really place auto snipes on your behalf on items which meet predetermined parameters.

For example say at a certain time every day I want the program to place snipes on any and all items with a certain UPC code ending within the next 24 hours where the high bid is below my max and the seller is in the U.S.A.. For such a program to work it would have to recognize the shipping cost and take that into account.

So if this worked the only thing left for me to do would be to scan the list of scheduled snipes looking at titles and searching for undesirable items (for example seller uses a video game's UPC but writes "CASE ONLY" in the title).

So what do you all think? Does such a program exist or could it exist?

Thanks!

[mario]

It could exist, however I consider any automation of what you bid on very risky. There could be something in the description of the item that completely changes valuation.

[Jeremy]

True. And while I realize that this would be of extremely limited utility to most people it could be of very high utility to some resellers like me.

With video games there really isn't a lot the seller could say in the listing that would change the valuation significantly. They could say that they are selling an empty case and not the game itself but most list that info in the title.

They may say that the game is very scratched but works or scratched and they don't know if it works, or scratched and it doesn't work but in most cases a disc repair machine will take care of these problems (and in cases where it didn't one would just accept the small lossage as long as the seller was specific about the condition in the listing).

They may say that they have the disc only and will ship it in a plain case or cd sleeve which does lower the value of the item but it wouldn't be the end of the world to end up winning some such items for prices which are very far below the average selling price of the game since they could still be sold for a small profit.

I still think this could be extremely useful to people like me who could place extremely low auto snipe bids on hundreds (or eventually thousands) of individual items with a fairly uniform cost without having to plow through search after search after search. You would just scan the results (ideally they would show up in list results by title not by whatever is ending soonest regardless of title and would show the picture also, how about a snapshot of the seller's description field as well?)) looking for mistakes.

The person who uses the program could pay a very small % of each win instead of a small annual fee and it would be worth it due to the enormous time saved. This would probably be most useful to resellers of used media, but there may be some other categories where it would be useful as well.

Just a thought...