Thank you in advance spam bidder!

[icecube57]

To the person that bidded up the auction on Ebay USA of 4 Bosch Fat packs for 99 Cents. Who probably frequents this site. Thank you for blowing the price through the freakin roof. I would have did a group buy with you to keep the price down.

Has anyone considered doing a group buy with ebay seller Max Tool. Maybe he can discount his pack even more from 45$ a pack if we get a solid enough group of people to buy.... LOL Fat CHANCE!

 

[spinningmagnets]

$0.99 is a common ploy these days. The phantom bidder was probably the seller. Starting with a too-low initial price is a gambit to get a lot of bidders logging on and putting in low bids, which then get bid up.

If you honestly though someone was selling Bosch fatpacks for $1, it was never going to happen. No harm/no foul, better luck next time. Just my opinion...

 

[icecube57]

i would have paid about 150 for them. I shoulda tried to snipe it in the end.

 

[mikefish]

last 4 things i tried to bid on, were sniped hard core in the last few seconds.

only "buy it now" works for me anymore.

too many shit heads on Ebay now a days.

 

[gogo]

Those last second bidders were probably using http://www.phantombidder.com/. You can specify how many seconds before the end of the auction your bid is placed. You can use a batch function that will quit bidding after you win an item in the batch. You only pay when you win an auction (about $0.50). I'll never bid any other way again on eBay.

 

[dragonfire]

i am using a Bosch "exo2 electric screwdriver with one of these batteries since 2005, the tool has been sitting o standby chaarging for months and has been in a box with no charge for more than a year and still works like a charm and holds medium-range capacity quite well. good battery, and the maximum torque of this tool is really outstanding form all the noname electric tools i had in before for that task.

 

[dragonfire]

only "buy it now" works for me anymore.

too many shit heads on Ebay now a days.

this is ho i sell my hobby stuff on ebay, far too many deadbeat bidders on regular auctions.

 

[dogman dan]

Any ebay seller without multiple internet adresses to bid up his own auctions is a fool. The only stuff I ever buy from ebay is bought on my own low high bid limit, or a reasonable buy it now price.

 

[torker]

Actually the seller can put the start price at .99 and then "phantom bid" on his own product. He just sets a minimum and when you bid it looks like someone else bid higher everytime until his "set" price is reached. Pissed me off the first time it happened to me. So I did some research. It's actually an Ebay tool. If you can call it that..

 

[dogman dan]

Unbelievably, I just won an auction for a crankset I wanted on ebay. Placed one bid, with about a half hour left and won it at a good but not unfairly cheap price. I about fell out of the chair in amazement I wish more vendors would just post a buy it now price, allow offers and be done with it. The whole acution thing is getting totally bogus. Why post a 100 first bid when the reserve is 1000 etc?

 

[vanilla ice]

If everybody bid honestly with the highest amount they are happy paying in the first place, nobody would come out unhappy. You get outbid, oh wells it was more than you were willing to pay anyway. None of the games would be necessary. Unfortunately as you all know that is not how people operate on ebay.

 

[TylerDurden]

Why post a 100 first bid when the reserve is 1000 etc?

It's a method of fishing: Watching the bidders' point-of-entry and falloff is valuable information. If the reserve is not met, the seller knows who the highest bidder was and can contact them, or re-list with lower reserve, hoping for a more favorable market (perhaps a competing item is sold by then, etc.).

 

[swbluto]

Gixen.com is the only way to snipe on eBay. I tend to use buy-it-now for low value items or buy-it-nows from sellers that don't realize the market value of their item, but the high value stuff that clearly is cheaper with bidding (Based on the eBay sales history of that product)? Sniping all the way, baby.

Oh, and besides, Gixen.com is free. You just get the typical "upgrade to a better service" ad right after you log in with the free account, which you don't have to upgrade. As long as you're not a high volume bidder, the free service is good enough.

 

[swbluto]

If everybody bid honestly with the highest amount they are happy paying in the first place, nobody would come out unhappy. You get outbid, oh wells it was more than you were willing to pay anyway. None of the games would be necessary. Unfortunately as you all know that is not how people operate on ebay.

I definitely agree with that. Even on ebay, they tell you it's a "proxy bid", meaning it'll automatically bid up to your maximum. The bad thing about bidding your highest way early, though, is that you get those types that have to buy it no matter the cost and so they might easily top your bid it whereas you would have won at a lower price if you bid later on (After that fanatic has bid). Taking this logic to its optimum, clearly sniping is the best bidding strategy as you leave no time for the fanatics to crazily react to your bid.

I was a seller on eBay once, and so I only saw this "crazed buyer" type only once in a while (Maybe 1 out of 10 auctions), but it definitely happens.

 

[jag]

The bad thing about bidding your highest way early, though, is that you get those types that have to buy it no matter the cost and so they might easily top your bid it whereas you would have won at a lower price if you bid later on (After that fanatic has bid). Taking this logic to its optimum, clearly sniping is the best bidding strategy as you leave no time for the fanatics to crazily react to your bid.

I was a seller on eBay once, and so I only saw this "crazed buyer" type only once in a while (Maybe 1 out of 10 auctions), but it definitely happens.

That type of behaviour seems to be part of human psychology. I see an auction for something I want with a low current bid. I bid, wait, maybe top it again, all while the price stays low over several days. During these days I get attached to the idea of getting the thing. Then come the final minutes; someone bids it up. Being already attached to the item it is difficult to resist not going over the price I initially thought the item was worth.

Like many advice, best is to set your high price well in advance and not deviate from it. Having a robot do the bidding might help to keep your head cool.

Some weeks ago I was looking at the combo pack 2x LiMn 36V Bosch fatpack, charger and hammer drill. A Canadian dealer listed them for start bid of $1. I got in bidding; they would get bid up into the $150 by various people on the last day. However in the final seconds there was always a bid of just below $200. This repeated for 5-6 auctions (maybe more; I stopped watching). The final bid was always exactly the same on the cent and a something really odd like $196.37. I suspect the dealer wanted to see if by psychology he could get someone to go over $200 when with only seconds left the bidders had little time for rational thought.

 

[dogman dan]

Never buy from that seller, ignore all his auctions in future.

 

[Gregte]

You don't get a 'deal' on ebay unless you are buying some odd thing that nobody else wants, nor should you expect to.

ebay is a plcae to buy and sell to a large ,worldwide clientel. It is not a place to expect to get unbelievable bargains.

If you don't like being outbid then bid higher than everyone else. Place the highest amount you are willing to pay. If some else outbids you at the last second, they deserve to win it. They were willing to pay more than you.

 

[markz]

Gixen is a help, I added it to my Firefox Mozilla add-ons. I did not need to use it though.
Last 5 seconds, just upped it by $4.

I will try Gixen next time, seems legit. I was scrambling to find a good sniper but will test it out some other time.

 

[Alan B]

What makes Gixen better than any other sniper? There are many.

 

[markz]

I have no clue, but I did read that they have a "mirror" site (Their premium site for $6USD/yr with no ads), that does 2 bids acting as one. Another thing I read is you can have multiple bids in a "Group" from different sellers or the same seller and when one bid is won the other bids dont activate. I assume that is the lowest bid of the items in that group.

When I duckduckgo'd (googled) ebay snipe or ebay sniper, Gixen came up on the first page. That really doesnt mean anything as people all the time can get their website to first page, it doesnt mean its any good or virus free. The bonus and what sold it for me was its just an add-on to Mozilla Firefox so its a more trustworthy program then Joe Blow's program from internet search. Plus they got the free version and a cheap bought version. I've been known to be more charitable these years and give to those sorts of freeware programs, as long as its a fair CHEAP price.

 

[Lurkin]

Meanwhile, if you actually win it and pay on the spot with paypal, the sale can still be frustrated by the seller. They just don't send the goods and honor the refund if the final price is too low. I have had this happen several times with Asian sellers until I finally cottoned on to why the goods were not being received consistently and the refunds were unchallenged. Crazy.