Ebay bidding!!! WTH!!!!!!!!

[mkelley]

Originally Posted by Joram

Just to note, eBay has ways to track bidding and if they even think you are using a snipp tool, your account will be banned for life

I call BS on this.
There are sniper tools, including online services, that are ebay development partners and use ebay's APIs to insulate themselves against system changes that the old screen-scrapers had to continuously update against. Sniping is a legit way of bidding on ebay. It upsets some people, but don't let anyone tell you it's against their rules.

ebay sniper for 11+ years...

[joeVulcan]

Originally Posted by RichLockyer

Bid once - There are morons all over eBay who will sit there and keep renewing their bid every time they are outbid because they MUST be #1 at all times. Items are bid up to well over retail all the time because of these idiots. By bidding once, you are not showing your hand, and the other bidders have no idea that you are interested.

I love these people! I sell a lot on eBay and if I can get a substantial % over the worth of an item because someone hates to loose then yay for me.

Nuclear bidders (those that bid $10k for a $5 pair of sunglasses) to ensure they win are the biggest fools. Listed a BB phone once and it sold for $5,300. needless to say i didn't get paid.

Rich's rules of bidding are good. Try searching ebay misspellings. there are search tools that will find auctions where the seller misspelled the title and no one bids.

[mkelley]

Regarding bidding your max:

It depends if you really got to have it now or not. Most items come up on ebay again and again. In the niche collectible market I play in, sometimes there are generational items (items that come out of major collections when they turn over once in a generation or an estate has an item that they don't know its worth) that require a great bid, but these are far and few between.

Sorry to say, I'm a bottom feeder. I bid a lot at minimum or near-minimum prices for items that have been listed without reserve and with really low (sometimes insanely low) opening bids and cheap or reasonable shipping (love the free shipping option). Certain times of the year ebay activity slows in the categories I watch. It is still possible to score great bargains on ebay if you're not in a rush. The same holds true for motorcycle parts unless they're tough to come by in the first place.

Amazon.com is another good place to look for stuff for the Buy-It-Now minded. I buy Seafoam discounted by the case there, K&N oil filters in bulk. I even bought a set of new Progressive 440HD shocks for my Drifter there (direct from Progressive!) waaaay under retail. Like ebay, you've got to look out for shipping&handling charges. I buy enough supplies, tools, books, etc from amazon that the $80/yr prime membership that gets you free 2-day shipping on stuff from prime merchants is worth it. Much of what I buy is handled direct by Amazon anyway.

[g1nomad]

Originally Posted by RichLockyer

Bid late

All of Rich's tips are right on, BUT one might have YOU burning YOU. Admit it, how many times did you forget to bid on something becuase you were going to wait until the end, and forgot. Then the item sold for less than what you whould have paid. That gets followed up with a big DOH!

Herb

[Streaking Tiger]

I had a friedn lose by 4 cents once, and he came to work muttering obsenities about losing it. So all week long, we would tell each other how we managed to win our Ebay bid by .04 to some sucker. We got a lot of mileage off of that one.

[BrianT]

Alot of people on cragslist dont know what they have and I bought a rare super nintendo game for 3 bucks and it sold for over 100 bucks man knowledge is $$$$$$$$$$$$.

[idmtchris]

Originally Posted by RichLockyer

Bid once
Bid high
Bid late
Bid "odd"

That's the only way to win a popular item.

Bid late - Last 2-5 seconds. Nobody will have a chance to outbid you. Two browser windows open and tiled, one with the bid ready to go (on the 2nd screen where you confirm), and the other on the item... continually refresh, and use a watch with a second hand once you get down to the last 20 seconds

Bid high - Decide ahead of time how much the item is worth to you. Bid that amount. If you are outbid, then it was above your price. If you win, you will pay no more than 1 bid increment above the next lowest bid... so you can bid $100 and still win an item at $15... it's not like a live or silent auction where your bid IS your price.

Bid once - There are morons all over eBay who will sit there and keep renewing their bid every time they are outbid because they MUST be #1 at all times. Items are bid up to well over retail all the time because of these idiots. By bidding once, you are not showing your hand, and the other bidders have no idea that you are interested.

Bid "odd" - WTF is this? If you think an item is worth $70, go ahead and throw in a few extra dollars and cents. People bid $71, or $70.01 all the time. I'll just bump it to some odd number like $77.77. That catches the last minute bidder who might happen to see your bid, and figure that you're bidding $65 or $70, so he'll drop in $71 hoping to snag it.



I've only lost 3 or 4 auctions in the last 9 years by bidding this way, and in every case, the item sold for WAY more than I was willing to pay.

I buy and sell a bit on Ebay and what Rich says is corrrect, I might add though that if there is something I want I will put an initial bid in so that enables me to 1 click bid later, Then I will do the last second bid, which needs to be an auto bid upto the max you are willing to pay. Really watcch shipping costs that how many people get you to pay too much, cuz I can charge anything I want for shipping and handling and it is added on to the final bid.

[RichLockyer]

Originally Posted by g1nomad

All of Rich's tips are right on, BUT one might have YOU burning YOU. Admit it, how many times did you forget to bid on something becuase you were going to wait until the end, and forgot. Then the item sold for less than what you whould have paid. That gets followed up with a big DOH!

I make sure I'll be home when the auction closes, or if not, I make sure I'm close enough to hit a Starbucks.

[rustygunner]

Been using Auction Sniper for years

[CTRider]

Originally Posted by wild_deuce03

Thanks for the tips guys. I've only bought one thing on eBay and that as a "buy it now" item. I've started looking more frequently for some deals on a few thugs I'm looking for.

Joram, I might just take you up on that!

I tend to go for those if the price is reasonable and it's something I really want.

I just hate finding something I've been looking for, then losing out at the last second in an auction when I could have paid a few dollars more and bought it outright.

Of course, if you're going to pull the trigger on those sales, you can't wait and think about it too long since anyone else can buy it that way, too.

In my case, I only go to E-bay when it's an item I can't find anywhere else, so it's worth a small premium to be able to get it.

[Nate]

Originally Posted by g1nomad

All of Rich's tips are right on, BUT one might have YOU burning YOU. Admit it, how many times did you forget to bid on something becuase you were going to wait until the end, and forgot. Then the item sold for less than what you whould have paid. That gets followed up with a big DOH!

I did exactly that to myself on a rare part for my Bayou. I thought I'd be clever and wait until the last possible moment and I was doing something else (typing a reply on this forum, in fact) when I saw I had 10 seconds left. By the time I clicked through the confirmation the bid was submitted on the same second the auction ended and my bid was rejected. It was a new part and went for far less than new price. The fine folks here tell me it is no longer available.

Hoist by my own petard as it were.

Had I bid when I checked it three minutes earlier I likely would have owned it. No other listing for that part, new or used, has appeared since.

[mkelley]

The advantage of using a sniping service to post last-second bids...

[HoopleHead]

That's right Mike. You can bid a week in advance and go to the movies the night the auction closes. It's not unfair to anyone because it simply posts your maximum bid for you in the last few seconds, so it does what Rich recommends, but does it without your attention. Sellers can't complain because if you hadn't bid, the next lower person would have won. And it's no less fair to other bidders than someone bidding manually at the last second.

[hinkleid]

Originally Posted by RichLockyer

+1

Theoretically, you could enter $10,000 as your max bid on a pair of sunglasses and win them for $5.

Of course, entering a high bid of $10,000 on the first day of the auction would pretty much ensure that you end up paying $100 for them because someone would sit there increasing their bid by a buck at a time until they decided that it was too much... then someone else would pick up from there.

I have not bought off ebay in awhile but I would not do this. Many seller have duplicate accounts and bid shill. Bid 10,000 and u may just end up paying 1,000!

[hinkleid]

I am sorry, but I am so pessimistic about eBay. Lots of shady things in the past. Perhaps, they have all cleaned up.

Rule #1 above all else. Always, always, always, always buy your item with a CREDIT card. No PayPal Balance, No Money Orders. Item does not show, it won't cost a dime.

Watch shipping and factor into bid

Watch for newer sellers

Religiously check feedback on sellers you are considering buying something from.

May great people on there trying to make a buck, or trying to make some cash on items sitting around but many scammers there too. Both sellers and buyers.

[MLR1]

If I am looking for an item. I will look at the buy it now first. If it is an auction item. I will usually only buy if I am watching the auction. I decide what is the max I am willing to spend and get my stopwatch ready. When it gets down to the last 2 minutes I will start the watch and get my max bid entered. I will wait at the conformation page and enter at the last 2 to 3 seconds. About 90% of the time, I will win the item. If I don't, I don't get upset, because the item went for more than I was willing to spend anyway.

[wild_deuce03]

Yeah, well even with all this great advice, like a dummy I went and put in my max bid way too early on something. I'm winning and only a couple people had bid but I've a feeling someone is going to come in and sweep it out from under me. There's just a couple minutes left and the suspense is KILLING me!

[wild_deuce03]

WOOO HOOOO!!!! I won! Man it got hectic there for a minute when the bids started coming in!

[Joram]

We are waiting in suspence Deuce



What did you buy ?????

[wild_deuce03]

Originally Posted by Joram

We are waiting in suspence Deuce



What did you buy ?????

Sorry. Got a Corbin Young Guns seat for $147.50. Pretty good deal when it retails for $439. I'll post pics as soon as I get it.