Want to level the playing field?
Written: Mar 04 '07 (Updated Mar 04 '07)
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| Full Review |
Pros: It’s free and you can use it on 3 auctions a week
Cons: a little more lead time than the free service, limited to 3 a week
Bottom line: A good alternative for auctions that you want but not enough to purchase a snipe
Many thanks to the category lead, Joubert, for adding this to the database.
Have you ever bid on an Ebay auction only to lose to someone who outbid you with 5-10 seconds left on an auction? Chances are, that person was using a snipe service, like AuctionStealer.com, to place a bid at the end of the auction, late enough so no one else could increase a bid that late.
The fact is, snipe services do work, and they minimize the amount that the winning bidder pays. Ebay pooh-poohs this, because they are about maximizing income for them and the sellers and the sellers make more when someone bids big and early and the other bidders keep bidding incrementally to see how high the earlier bidder is willing to go.
Now, what snipe services do is prevent another bidder from responding to your bid when it happens. If your high bid is less than someone else’s high bid, you will lose. So, when sniping, you have to bid the highest you are willing to pay. Even then, you win some and you lose some. However, if your snipe is higher than anyone else’s bid (by the bidding increment), you will not lose.
AuctionStealer.com is a snipe service. Like other such services, they charge for placing a bid very close to the end (3 -7 seconds). Unlike other services, they have a free service, which will place bids at 10 – 20 seconds before the end of an auction for up to 3 bids per week. This is not a time limited service. However, any entered bid that is not canceled will count as part of the 3.
Sign up is very easy. You register with your email address and password, then enter your Ebay user name and password. As a free user, you enter the auction number into the page. Then, it invokes a second page which shows the item and has a box with which to enter your maximum bid.
With the free service, the bidder has to monitor the auction and make sure that the high bid does not become less than the current bid on the auction. The paid-for service provides automatic email notification if this happens.
Other advantages of the paid-for service, not available to the free service, include:
- an ability to specify 3, 5 or 7 seconds before auction end as snipe timing
- bid groups. This is a way to do contingent bids. For example, if the same item is up twice, you can set it to bid one the second if you do not win the first.
- a snipe button on your IE or Firefox toolbar to facilitate the bidding process
- an advanced bidding engine that increases the bid placement success rate (that’s actually placing a bid if it is high enough to be the high bid) of 99.9% as compared to a promised 97%.
The free service has these additional features, which are also present for the paid-for
- entirely a web-based service. You do not have to be online at auction end. Your computer does not have to be on at auction end.
- Bid on multiple auctions (up to 3 a week)
- Email notification of auction result.
- Cancel bid anytime
- View past results.
Now, I have used this service for years for items that I want but not enough to purchase a snipe. In the last 60 days, I have won 8 auctions with this service and lost none. On 7 of the auctions, there were at least one other bidder.
The following are the charges for the paid-for service:
Subscription (they charge your paypal account automatically)
$8.99 for 1 month
$19.99 for 3 months
$34.99 for 6 months
One-time payment (you pay them by Paypal or clickbank)
$11.99 for 1 month
$29.99 for 3 months
$49.99 for 6 months
$79.99 for a year
Payments by check or money order
$59.99 for 6 months
$89.99 for a year
Single auction
$2 by paypal
The site reports authentication by Hackersafe and Trust-e.
I recommend the free service enthusiastically. I do not recommend the paid-for service as www.auctionsniper.com, is acceptably accurate and much less expensive unless you are bidding on hundreds of items.
Thanks for reading. God bless!
Please check out my related reviews:
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Music123.com
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Walmart.com
Recommended:
Yes
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