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On eBay, sniping (the act of bidding on auctions at the very last minute) has become the normal mode of operation for many buyers.  A sniper will use an automated program to swoop in within the last few seconds of the auction to place a bid.  The practice has been debated on the web many times and certainly eBay could stop the practice quite easily but the fact remains that it still exists and depending on your bidding habits you may want to jump on the bandwagon.

The gixen.com website allows you to jump on the sniping bandwagon and it is absolutely free.   They do offer a subscription “mirror” service which will virtually guarantee that your bid will be placed but in my test the bid was placed just fine and while I didn’t win (more on that later) I found Gixen to be one of the easiest sniping services that I have tried.

Basically you go to their site, enter your eBay credentials, enter the item number to bid on and your bid and you are done.  It is that simple.  You can then forget about remembering to place your bid… Gixen will do it for you within seconds of the auction close.

A couple of things to keep in mind with eBay bidding and snipe tools…

1. eBay will auto-bid up to the bidders maximum so waiting until the last few seconds of an auction to bid really is no guarantee that some previous bidder has NOT entered a higher maximum bid than your maximum snipe bid.  Remember is isn’t the last bid that wins it is the highest bid and you should absolutely make sure that you always bid the maximum that you are willing to pay.  (Keep those shipping charges in mind too!)
2. Snipe tools may sometimes encounter eBay dialogs or pop-ups that they were not programmed to handle.  If you absolutely positively want to bid on an item you should do it manually.  I have read in a few places now that eBay is asking people to update passwords when they login.  A snipe tool isn’t going to be able to bid if this happens. 
3. Keep in mind the eBay bidding rules… Snipe tools have to follow them as well.  You can’t expect it to place a snipe bid for you if your snipe bid amount is lower than the current bid, or if your snipe bid is not higher than eBay’s next bid increment.  (Remember eBay requires your minimum bid to be at least one increment above the current bid and this increment depends on what the current bid amount is at the time you place your bid.)
4. Set it and forget it… at least until you win.  Remember you are responsible for all bidding even if you happen to forget that you place a snipe request and then later find a better deal but forget to cancel the snipe.  If you win the auction you need to pay for the item!

While Gixen is a great tool and increasing in popularity every day, sniping really is a phenomenon that is tied to bidder preference and education.  As I state above… eBay will auto bid up to a bidder’s maximum bid amount.  The idea behind a snipe is that you are going to swoop in at the end and place your bid before some previous bidder has time to re-bid for a higher amount.  You are basically gambling that the previous bidders either don’t know how eBay’s bidding works, or that they decide at the very end as the bidding activity increases that they should increase their bid.  

I think eBay is doing a much better job now at trying to get people to enter their maximum bid and explaining how the bidding process works.  You see it in their email, on the item pages, bidding pages, etc…  So the real value of Gixen is to keep that bidder from having time to re-think their maximum and with more and more people using sniping tools my recommendation to you snipers is to make sure you’ve done your homework and know what the absolute maximum is that you will pay.

How I use sniping (Gixen) in my eBay bidding…

• Manually bid (not my maximum) on an item to get a feel where the current bids are in price and to get it into MyeBay screen so that I get notifications when I am outbid, etc… I will usually manually bid in small increments until I am the highest bidder.
• Watch the bidding history.  Does the previous bidder jump in and outbid me?  Are there more than 1 or 2 people bidding on the item.
• Set my snipe with the maximum that I will pay based on what I know about the item, research I have done on others that are on the site, activity from the bidders, etc…  I always place my MAXIMUM bid into Gixen because you don’t get a second chance.

If it is a good day you win the item… On a bad day another sniper may jump in at the end with a higher maximum than yours… In the case of my Gixen test today I didn’t win because my maximum wasn’t high enough.

Overall Gixen has been working flawlessly.  I would put it in my recommend column as long as you use it understanding how eBay places bids.

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