I'm looking for eBay bid sniping software that will run on WinXP, preferably freeware if possible. After a bit of Googling around I can see there's lots out there but I've become somewhat nervous of grabbing something and plugging in my eBay logon credentials.

Can anyone here suggest/recommend something based upon 1st or 3rd party experiences please?

I do have an account with Bidnapper.com but that costs (I think) $1.50 per successful snipe. It's good but for cheap things it's not always cost effective.

Hissssss.... snipe yourself and keep it fair. Its part of the fun for me - placing my one and only bid with as little time as possible remaining.

I mostly agree with you. The thing is, I often don't get to place my bid because I'm away from my PC when the auction closes.

I suppose that both myself and the seller miss out when that happens!

I use esnipe. It's not free, but it's usually cheaper than $1.50.

Is sniping in the last few seconds really that much more effective than sniping in the last few minutes? Surely sniping is a countermeasure only against the sort of naive bidder who won't themselves be sniping?

Having said that, I can see that these things are convenient if you can't be hanging around Ebay at the right moment. I'm sure I would've won that PCGA-CRWD2 if I hadn't been round at a friend's house watching the extended DVD of Return Of The King with a geet big subwoofer.

Peter

Yes I believe so. People are stupid and get caught up in an auction and believe it to be a 'going going gone' auction instead of a 'sealed bid' auction. Many people bid with a few minutes to go and then sit and hit refresh until the last few seconds and then they bid higher if someone outbids them. By bidding with 5 seconds to go I remove the idiots

Unfortunatley there are too many naive bidders

I use HammerSnipe, it doesn't install locally it’s a web-based app. They do free 10 second sniping, and for a small fee, 1-3 second snipe. I've never had any account problem in the 2+ years I’ve been using it.

I can recommend http://www.jbidwatcher.com/]JBidWatcher. It's a Java app that runs on your local machine. It doesn't cost anything, but means your computer has to be up and logged into when the bid is to be placed. I've used it with some success a few times.

This isn't so much a reply to Peter's post... Speaking for myself here, I try and figure out the most I'd happily pay for an item and snipe at that amount. Occasionally, when I think I've got the auction all to myself, I've placed my bid a few minutes early only to find that I'm subsequently outbid. Sometimes I'll go on to place more bids and that just tells me that I'm either (stupidly) too caught up in the "excitement" of the auction or that upon reflection, I in fact valued the item higher than my initial bid.

Only a few moments ago I found myself placing a second bid for £20 after placing a losing bid of £15 that automatically lost to an earlier proxy bid; in the end I won the auction at £16. I saw this same item from the same seller sell last week for £32 - I was very lucky this time and the seller sold for an extra £1, we both won I suppose but upon reflection I really should have bid £20 to start with!

When its me bidding, I think that a proxy would save me money but that's probably owing to one of two possible scenarios:
1. I place my bid too low, I lose the auction and end up spending nothing.
2. The other bidder placed their sniped/proxied bid too low like I usually do and lost the auction to me.

It wasn't until reading the for/against arguments on this forum that realised that sniping is acceptable and I can see how it benefits the seller too so I'm now comfortable with all of this.

Thanks Rob, Oliver and Bitt for your recommendations and suggestions.

I think that I will "spend" my remaining bids with Bidnapper and move on from there - esnipe is very fairly priced, especially for low priced items and I can see me using that to queue bids when I'm at work too. I'm pleasantly surprised at how cheap it is.

Hammertap appears to be based upon a monthly/3-monthly (and so on) subscription and that doesn't work too well well for me (please feel free to correct me if I'm wrong on this). Also, I think that for the times I'd use it, eSnipe would work out cheaper. As an example, tonight I bid on a set of wiper blades at £6.50 or thereabouts and a keyring at £2.75.

Of course, jBidwatcher is the one I'll try and use if I spot the auction at home and I know my PC will be running, these days it runs almost 24/7!