Why longer?

[DrTeeth]

I have just signed up for the Mirror service and just wondered something. Why would anybody want a snipe value/offset greater than 3? Surely the shorter the better?

[mario]

It's not - you want the time short enough not to allow manual bidders to change their mind, but early enough to be submitted before other snipers in order to take advantage of ebay bid increment rules. My opinion is that this is actually around 8 seconds in most cases, but opinions differ.

[juangrande]

That's right. Shorter is not always better. If you are competing against other snipers, a longer offset is better for the reason Mario gave. However, if you are competing against a 1-click bidder, shorter is better (as long as it isn't so short that your bid doesn't make it to eBay in time to be recorded before the auction closes).

I prefer to set my Main/Mirror offsets to 4/3 seconds because I've been defeated by 1-click bidders on in the past. Mario's advice is based on analyzing data (and is more reliable advice because of that).
_________________
John

If you don't know where you are going, you will wind up somewhere else.
--- Yogi Berra