Bidders unsure of the value of an item may incrementally increase their bid until they narrowly exceed the previously hidden maximum, thus placing themselves in a winning position without placing a very high bid. The fact that the maximum bid is revealed when it is outbid introduces the possibility of maximum bid fishing. In proxy bidding, the wise bidder must know in advance the "true" value of an item as a basis for their secret bidding limit. The auctioneer does not disclose the current maximum bid, but the second highest bid is always public. Many online auctions use proxy bidding, an iterative sealed bid auction where winners pay a fixed increment over the second highest bid. In this case, more-informed buyers may delay bidding until the last minutes of the auction to avoid creating competition for their bids, leading to a lower winning bid.Īn analysis of actual winning bids on eBay suggests that winning bidders are more likely to have placed a single bid late in the auction, rather than to have placed multiple incremental bids as the auction progresses.
One economic analysis of sniping suggests that sniping is a rational gain-maximizing (in other words, price-minimizing) strategy for bidders in auctions that fulfill two criteria: Online services claim that their use decreases the failure rate of the snipe, because they have more reliable servers and a faster Internet connection with less variation in latency, allowing the bid to more reliably be placed close to the deadline.Įxperienced bidders on online auctions with fixed ending-times often prefer entering bids late in the auction to avoid bidding wars (multiple rounds of bidders each increasing their maximum bid to temporarily regain "current highest bid" status) or bid chasing (where the presence of an existing bid encourages others to bid on the same item). 1.4 Simultaneous bidding, without potentially winning multiple bids.What is a sniping service?Īuction sniping is the practice, in a timed online auction, of placing a bid likely to exceed the current highest bid (which may be hidden) as late as possible-usually seconds before the end of the auction-giving other bidders no time to outbid the sniper.
And, because we don’t need your eBay login to snipe for you, your privacy is assured. Once your bid is in our database, no one else will ever see it. Is Bidnapper secure? Submitting a bid using Bidnapper is more secure than submitting a bid from your computer. Is auction Sniper safe?Īuction sniping, the practice of bidding in the very last moments of an auction, isn’t the controversial issue it was in the early days of eBay, but it’s still a topic of debate: Some say it’s cheating, but eBay does not forbid sniping or the use of sniping service websites to help you secure an item in the last second … Is bidnapper safe to use?
In short, sniping generally works very well, but it won’t always win, and it won’t always result in you paying less. If someone else has a higher maximum bid, your snipe is defeated immediately. Remember that the maximum bid you enter for your snipe can still be beaten, no matter how late your bid is entered.