Huh? eBay allows you to increase your maximum bid any time, and displays all but highest bid of the current winning bidder which seams reasonable to me.

Make up your own better auction site or go elsewhere if you don't like how eBay does it.

Huh yourself! :P My point was that eBay doesn't operate as a real proxy bid auction. They have this goofy hybrid deal where you bid by proxy, but see the results in real time as if it were a live auction, which leads to the sniping crap that pisses people off.

As far as going elsewhere... I do. I've never purchased something off eBay that wasn't "buy it now" (and even then I've only purchased two things in the 5 or 6 years I've had an eBay account).

Sniping is in no way whatsoever a violation of any ebay rules.

To quote ebay itself (my emphasis added):
"Placing a high bid in the closing seconds of an auction-style listing is called “sniping” within the eBay Community. Sniping is part of the eBay experience, and all bids placed before a listing ends are valid - even if they're placed one second before the listing ends.-

To help avoid disappointment, ensure that the maximum bid you enter on the item page is the highest price that you're willing to pay. The eBay bidding system automatically increases your bid up to the maximum price you specify, so entering a higher maximum may help prevent you from being outbid in the closing seconds of a listing."

(http://pages.ebay.com/help/buy/outbid-ov.html )

The only reason sniping works is because people do not use the ebay bidding system properly, such that they bid the maximum they are willing to pay for the item (plus an anti-sniping dollar and penny). If people would wise up then sniping would mostly go away. People have gotten more aware and sniping is nowhere near as effective as it was 6 years ago. I won $300 items by a penny sniping back then, and turned around and better relisted them to make $50-100 profit. This doen't work so well anymore.

I usually put a buy-it-now option on my auctions (most of them are store listing anyway), but the BIN price is more than I would let it go for. So... often if you use BIN you pay too much. I bought an item a few weeks ago the had a starting bid of $150 and a BIN of $300. I bid $233.33 which is the highest I was willing to pay (note the anti-sniping added change). My bid cancelled the BIN due to no reserve and I ended up getting it for $150 because nobody else bid, so I saved $150 (100%) by not using buy-it-now.

The way to beat snipers is simply to place the highest $$ amount you are absolutely will to pay early on. If you get smoked, so be it. I also bid like that quite often, if I don't think sniping will be needed or know I can get another shot at a similar item later.

Ebay has a lot of screwed-up participants for sure, but you cannot beat the sheer size and searchability of the market. Remaining careful, smart, and avoiding the commercial sales people is the best route. I bet out of ~300+ transactions since 1998 I have only been disappointed 5 times or less.

Hey! I think I am one of those "commercial sales people" you avoid. :mad:

;)

I like how you can offer them a lower price with Buy It Now. The last two things I purchased via Ebay were discounted by roughly 10% through quick, painless, negotiation. Seriously took me 30 seconds to save $20 one time. :)

I doubt you are doing a volume per day that promotes shipping problems/errors, or makes it impossible to offer any kind of support/service. I was thinking more along the lines of this: http://cgi.ebay.com/New-CD-TV-430-Th...QQcmdZViewItem

I'm sure you realized that, but I wanted to clarify for the innocent bystanders....

Actually, I believe Best Offer is only an option if the seller chooses to enable it for a given BIN only item and I don't think it is an option on any of the auction items, BIN or not.

This is true. "Best offer" is only an option on fixed price "auctions" (not really an auction is it?) and store listings.

I rarely enable best-offer myself, because of all the lowball offers that pour in sometimes.

I thought we were talking about a sniping program, a thing that automatically outbids the most recent bidder in the last seconds of the auction. Guess I haven't been paying attention.

A sniping program doesn't automatically outbid the highest bidder. You still specify the amount you are willing to bid, the only difference is that the sniping program waits until 2-5 seconds before the auction closes to place the bid for you. If you aren't the highest bidder you still don't win. I usually just do it myself, but if I'm going to be at work or asleep when the auction ends then I'll use a sniper. I just don't see the point in bidding on something with 5 days left, gives everyone plenty of time to keep driving the price up. If it worked like Scott said (which is how proxy bidding should be done), then sniping wouldn't be an issue. But then people wouldn't go crazy overbidding on items and eBay and Paypal wouldn't make so much money.