Frugal Joe

In what seems to be a growing trend, more and more people turn to sniping programs when they submit bids on eBay. It’s easier than you think and it’s perfectly legal.

Most of us are probably familiar with the advice not to bid too early on an eBay auction. The earlier everybody starts to bid on an item, the higher the price will go. In fact, sometimes early bidding may turn into a bidding war. The result is that nobody wins in the end - well, nobody except the seller. If you have common sense, you are better off waiting until near the end of the auction before you place your first bid. That’s when most of the action takes places. Of course, if you want the item badly, you are well advised to monitor the bid history even before that.

When you are watching an auction closely, you might get a false sense of security and start believing that you stand a really good chance of winning the item. Unfortunately, the excitement that builds up in the process can also lead to a major disappointment.

Losing a bid on eBay can be an incredibly frustrating experience. This is especially true if you are outbid at the last minute, or even the last second. You might then blame yourself for putting as much time and energy into the auction as you did. More often than not, however, you ma be asking yourself how the other person managed to pull it off. You had been watching the auction closely. And yet someone else just happened to snipe that item away from you under your very watchful eyes. Your skepticism is likely to grow when you see the same scenario unfold more than once.

You might be surprised to find out that many times, the winning bidder did just that - they sniped the item. Of course, in eBay jargon, sniping has come to mean something very specific. Experienced snipers don’t sit in front of their computers waiting to enter a last minute bid. They use computerized programs to do the bidding for them. There is more than one way to accomplish this feat. Those who have the requisite technical skills are able to program the necessary scripts themselves. More commonly, however, snipers rely on third-party software or services. The sniping programs will monitor other bids and execute your bid at the last second and do so much faster than you ever could. Although eBay doesn’t like the practice, it’s perfectly legal.

To use a third-party sniping service, you’ll be forced to sacrifice some of your privacy because you have to provide your eBay username and password. At the same time, the companies that offer this kind of service would be foolish to exploit their customers’ information because that would just destroy their business. That knowledge may or may not provide with a measure of assurance.

If you’re curious about sniping services, you can do a quick Google search. The ones at the top of the search results are usually the major players in the business. Most of the sniping services offer free trials, so you can give it a try next time you’re bidding on an eBay item.

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