[Fwirt]

This was my belief for many years, but then I tried sniping (with the same prices I was putting as my maximum bid before!) and my success rate skyrocketed and the prices I was paying dropped.

It seems that despite repeated reminders and explanations, there are three groups of people using eBay "incorrectly" that make the sniping strategy viable: 1) People who do not understand proxy bidding and think that they "need" to repeatedly bid in increments. 2) People who are irrational about their price ceiling and are willing to bid above their price ceiling because they want to "win". 3) People who want to drive up the price either to deprive others of a good deal, or to drive up the price on behalf of the seller by starting a bidding war with the two above groups.

From a sellers perspective it is common to deal with buyers who won't pay because they paid "more than they wanted", although this is against the eBay ToS and a bid is a contract to purchase the item, because there are few consequences for not doing so.

For some reason, auctions with more bidders seem to attract more bidders, whereas auctions with zero bids seem to go unnoticed. I wonder if this has to do with eBay's search ranking algorithm or some other irrational behavior that I don't understand. At any rate, bidding with 5 or less seconds left to go seems to defeat the above behaviors. I find it distasteful and irrational but it works so I put up with it.

eBay's reputation and trust network is really what makes it a viable product at this point. Given how unreliable Facebook Marketplace buyers are and how many scams are present, I would hesitate to conduct any major transactions beyond a local area.

[JohnFen]

> For some reason, auctions with more bidders seem to attract more bidders, whereas auctions with zero bids seem to go unnoticed.

Huh. I'm a "buy it now" guy and filter out the auctions, but maybe I should start looking for zero bid auctions too.

[cm2187]

Auctions are 90% bad deals because you often end up with someone getting over excited and bidding more than the next buy me now price for the same product. But 10% of the time you get lucky, particularly if auctions end at odd time of the day. So I find it's worth throwing some bids, knowing that you should almost always lose. Ebay is best when you are not in a hurry and happy to wait for the right bargain.

[dlcarrier]

Ebay has filters to display sold listings, so when you're looking to buy something, check out the closed auctions and see what they're going for. If the prices are similar, you might as well buy from fixed-price listings, but if auction prices are lower, you can save a lot by being patient.

You can also save searches for a fixed-priced listing below a specified value, and enable alerts, so that if someone lists something that's priced to sell, you can get it quickly.

[K0balt]

Slightly misspelled or otherwise poorly listed items, and check auctions for “ending soonest” at awkward hours.

[lazylizard]

another group..

i am looking for a bargain not a bidding war. i dont know what is my price ceiling but i know i will only increment twice. if someone outbids me instantly twice in a row i dont want the thing anymore.

[tempestn]

The instant outbidding is likely automatic due to you not having reached the previous bidder's entered bid.