The Hoover Bag Cleaner Revisited!

[camelotshadow]

Never used the auto snipe
just the refresh & wait to the last few seconds
& take a big breath...

I don't like to bid early as it breeds interest & increases the bids...

Just human nature to want what another wants
even if you really don't

 

[charles~richard]

What do y'all do when an auction is closing at, like, 3:45 in morning?? Sit there all night and wait for it to close?!

Auctions from other countries, as well as those listed by night owls like me, can show up at any time of the day or night. "Auto-snipers" eliminate the need to sit there and wait.

And what do you do if your computer crashes, or your DSL service slows down or freezes up?! (Surely you're not going to tell me you're sniping with a dial-up account??!)

Personally, I'd much rather use an auto-sniper.

I =used= to sit here and wait, and would even go to the extent of having the same listing open in four browser windows, loaded to the "bid now" page, ready to "click, click, click, click" one right after the other in the last few seconds of an auction's close. I hate to confess a dirty trick like that, but it did work. But sitting around waiting for auctions to end that I was interested in got old pretty quick.

PLUS, auto-bidding removes anything "personal" from the procedure. What I mean is, if you are sitting around watching an auction, you know who else has been bidding. And it may cause a greater twinge of guilt to press the BID button at the last second when you see a couple of your hopeful buddies have placed bids. Placing a snipe command early on and then NOT watching the auction every 5 minutes takes away that element of wilfully and deliberately bidding against friends.

But "to each his own".......

 

[camelotshadow]

true
I opt out of those set the alarm clock
& get up & bid bleary eyed bid.

LOL

Guess, will have to look into the autobid
but up til now
I figure
If its not worth the trouble then
maybe I don't need it.

You have a good auto bid prog that works?
Don't you have to give thema few $?

 

[charles~richard]

I use esnipe.com. There is a very small fee to use it, but it's really just chump change.

Their front page has a lot of good info about sniping and good reasons to do it. See link.



http://www.esnipe.com

 

[lux1521]

My tools for ebay bidding:

1) Pentium 4 Powered PC with Windows XP
2) Firefox Browser
3) Dial-Up Connection (Not Kidding!!!)
4) Clock With Second Hand
5) Clever Human Brain

This configuration works for me most of the time. I'd like to think the 5th item on that list is what makes it all work, but it might just be a good bit of luck. Items 4 and 5 are what make item number 3 usable for sniping.

 

[charles~richard]

"This configuration works for me most of the time."

Well, as I said, "To each his own." Again, I'd personally rather not have to sit here and wait for the last seconds of an auction. Too nerve wracking for one thing; and, besides, I usually have many other things I should be doing ... like sleeping, in the case of late-night-enders!

 

[dial-a-nap]

I use auctionsniper.com and have had very good luck with it. Of course, I don't win every auction - some bids are inevitably higher than my bid. A twinge of guilt passes through me once in a while when I see my snipe-bid raised the final price for someone else, but it would have regardless and I rarely pay attention anymore - if I get it, I'm glad; if not, maybe next time. It's better to not be too emotional about bidding on ebay or real estate, but that's easy to say! If it's something that you really want, why not use all available tools to make it happen? If ebay allows it, then it's fair bidding. I remember setting an alarm clock to crawl out of bed and place a bid in the last seconds of an auction ending at 3 A.M. as well and got a rush out of the "sport" but also was quite pleased when that whole process was automated by these bidding services.

Best of luck on the bag cleaner, that is fascinating!

 

[mattl]

I second auctionsniper.com been using them for years. Not too costly.

Let me tell a story on myself and use it as a waring. A couple of months ago I was in the market for a Blu Ray player. The prices on new one are astronomical and I did not want to pay that and was bidding on "defective" units that I felt I could fix. Anyway the was one going for $20 for some reason, I sniped it at $35 and checked in before the auction was over. I saw it was getting close to my $35 max, so I upped the bid to $50. An hour before the auction closed I checked in again and it was $48 or there abouts. I went in to change my bid and found I couldn't! Auctionsniper locks your bid in 2 hours out, according to them it's to protect the system and making sure your bid gets placed, what ever. I was really frustrated and lost the auction. I complained to Auctionsniper and on it's forum, then someone posted a response and I had a "DUH" moment- they asked why I didn't just make a bid on eBay!

The lesson is don't rely on technology too much. I was so used to using the sniper that I didn't even think I could place a bid since I already had.

BTW the auction closed at $56 - I would have kept bidding, and a few days later I got a MUCH better "Defective" Blu Ray player for $140, that simply had a firmware upgrade disk stuck in the mechanism, easy fix. These (non-defective) are now going for $350 - $400+ now. I guess timing is everything.

 

[charles~richard]

"Oh well"

So went the Bag Cleaner auction -- "BUST."

I really would have thought that something this rare and practically impossible to find would have elicited more aggressive bidding, but I guess not.

Ironically, the high bidder was not too far from my reserve --- again, just covering what I had invested in it. Had a few more people bid on it, I'd be packing it up to ship tomorrow instead of packing it up to store in the garage again.

Maybe I should have listed it with no reserve; I dunno, maybe more people would have bid. But who's to say. On the other hand, had I not done so, and had there not been any more bids, I'd have ended up selling it for a good bit less than I paid for it, and I certainly cannot afford to do that.

Well, as I said, back to the garage with it, maybe to be listed again sometime.