Gavelsnipe failed me.
 

I know this has happened to others, but a card I was bidding on, and had set a healthy snipe on was lost about two hours ago. I then received a message from Gavelsnipe saying eBay was currently blocking all bids from Gavelsnipe and please do t use them on suctions you hoped to win. That message would have been handy before the auction ended, not afterwards.

Well, I’ve always said I would get all of Howe’s cards back, but this one was tough to take as my snipe was quite a bit higher than what it sold for and in my imagination, that Heine would be in its way to me now.

Sorry to vent but if you’re using Gavelsnipe right now, you might want to check in to this.

While I understand the desire to get cards as cheaply as possible, this right here is the MAJOR DISADVANTAGE to sniping!!! In the future Ed, might I suggest using GIXEN....or even a combination of the two. They are both free. Gixen has never failed me. Not saying they never fail....but it is miniscule.

If it is something you want badly enough, there is no harm in setting different ones up. Don't worry....you won't be bidding against yourself. Not as long as you have them both coming through the same Ebay account.

This has been the case with Gavelsnipe for more than a month now. They have had this message in big red letters at the top of their website for weeks now. I stopped using the service after being burned 5 or 6 times in one week.

Others ?
 

A bit off topic but does anyone know if eBay is declaring "War" on all snipe services ?? I can see them doing just that. I use Bidnapper and have always been pleased with their service but have not used them in many months. So I am not up to date with what is going on. If they fight the use of sniping many collecting live will be impacted.....we will be sitting, at odd hours, with a stop watch to manually snipe . So....anybody else have a surprise in bidding with another service?

It has been happening with Gavelsnipe for several months.

Gixen has just changed their policy as well. You're entitled to 4 free snipe wins per month; anything after that and they demand you pay their annual subscription rate of $6 (recurring) or $8 (one time payment).

What's wrong with, you know, actually putting in a bid in advance of what you are willing to pay. As long as you don't feel you will go over the number; lock in your bid and either win or lose.

Venting is good :). It relieves stress.

If and when I can't live without something I usually set a snipe and also manually bid.

I will never understand why ebay doesn't switch to a dynamic ending (or soft close if that's a term you're more familiar with) They leave a LOT of money on the table and I stopped doing auctions for the most part after a series of expensive sales resulted in under-bidders messaging me offering me more than the winning bid for the item.

They tried it for a while, it didn't work.

When? I have been on since 1998 and never saw it. I know for some big clients they did simulcast auctions but it was never available for ebay only auctions that I'm aware of. With technology today I don't even understand how it could "not work." If there's a bid the auction keeps going.

I honestly don't remember exactly when it was. I think it was around 6-7 years ago and didn't last very long because people hated it.

Anybody else remember this failed eBay experiment?

EDIT: Done a google search and didn't find anything, maybe I am misremembering them extending auctions if a bid was placed in the last minute of the regular time.

I’ve been selling on eBay for 20 years, they have never had extended bidding. I would really hate this as a buyer but would love it as a seller. I would be torn if they did this. :D

100% same. It would prevent me from sniping stuff cheap, but it would totally help out with giving my own stuff away. So for that, I vote for extended bidding.

Hi Ed,

I just got back from a quick vacation (my son got married last Saturday and the wife and I took a few days away in Portsmouth, NH). I was the winner of the Howe McCormick Heine Wagner (the only reason that I was bidding on it was that this was the last Red Sox player that I needed for the T206 set). The card was waiting for me when I arrived home and is yours, as I love your collection and the story behind it!! Just let me know your mailing address and I'll send it out tomorrow morning.

Best,

Steve

Auctionsniper has never failed me. They do charge more than others, but I like the reliability.

Steve, thanks so much.
 

PM sent.

Ed

That is a nice gesture.

There has never been extended bidding on ebay. Not sure why ? Should be 30 seconds added after the last bid . This would be more money for the seller , which means more money for ebay ! They are too dumb. I talked with them years ago about this. Not good for the buyer.

Agreed! It’s great seeing stuff like this happen.

+ 2

Yes
 

This

Very nice gesture.


Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

In my hey day of rabid collecting I would very often lock in spots. If something went for more I usually didn't go back to it. (unless I couldn't live without it, of course :))

FWIW I had used Gavelsnipe for years and started encountering same/similar problems with not going through months ago.

Switched to Gixen, no issues since

Another victim of GavelSnipe not going thru due to CAPCHA.
I have not used this i a long time, saw something last night (from PWCC)
Knew if i had a shot, it needed a snipe.
Well, I would of beaten the winning bid if it went thru 'supposingly' if not the others would of topped it maybe.
Defintelty looking at other methods of sniping next time.

GIXEN just completed their successful interface with eBay.

It has failed me one single time, in about 850 - 900 instances. Very reliable, and worth a try, if you're seeking alternative options.

My recollection as well
 

Been selling and buying since 1998

why, oh why?

I dont know why, i saw a card, about what i was looking for (psa 2)
I guess i could always wait to see REA has in store.

I signed up for Gixen now, it was simple to do. So, next time is shame on me.

A month or two ago I lost 4 items because Gavel Snipe failed to execute.
This past Tuesday I won 8 items of 32:rolleyes:, a result of signing up with Gixen.

Anyone here tried https://www.auctionsniper.com/ ?
Is that currently working on eBay?

JFYI ... I too was having problems off & on with Gavelsnipe for about a year (CAPCHA) so after posting here & then seeing this thread I recently signed up for Gixen. I've only used it once so far but it worked on eBay a couple days ago. FWIW.

I used auctionsniper for years but then found all of the free services. I don't know anything about them any longer but they used to charge for wins. I still use gavelsnipe for now.

Thanks, Leon -- been using GavelSnipe for eons but their recent difficulties in sniping eBay auctions
had us looking for a free/cheap alternative. AuctionSniper does appear to charge (a nominal pittance)
for winning snipes, but what we were wondering was whether they, too, were now having their snipe attempts
blocked by eBay.
Gixen is probably the better way to go (for now), but we managed to win a couple auctions last night
with manual snipes anyway...

Does anyone know how instantaneous these sniping programs are?

I don't utilize any of them, so in bidding the traditional way on ebay, I used to manually 'snipe' at the ten seconds left mark, then I moved to 4 seconds, and last night I threw in a bid on the downside of 3 seconds. It always seems to take a (mind numbingly anxious) second or two for my bid to catch and go through, so I have to be careful how long I wait to jump in. (The goal, obviously, is to get my bid in just as the auction closes, in order to shut out other bidders.) The question is, if someone is using a sniping service, does it even matter how long I (or other people) wait to pull the trigger, or is it moot, since their electro-bid (just coined that phrase) will be a nearly instantaneous, split second hit??

From Gavelsnipe's FAQ

GavelSnipe has a user defined snipe time that defaults to 20 seconds prior to the auction end. GavelSnipe allows a user setting as low as 5 seconds prior to the auction end.

Thank you, that's good to know. I wrongly assumed it was something like 1/100 of a second.

Has anyone been using GavelSnipe lately? Have there been successes or are there continued failures?

What are peoples latest experiences?

I've been using Gixen the rare times I snipe. Nary a complaint.

I've used Gavelsnipe several times in the last couple of weeks.

No issues and won a couple of cards.

Has worked fine for me lately.

sniping
 

How is sniping different than just hitting the bid button a few seconds before the auction ends with a max bid ( other than not having to be there and physically hit the button ) ?

Was just thinking the same thing . . .

If I know I will bid up to say $1500 for something on eBay and not a penny more, why not just wait until their is 10 seconds left and enter my max bid? Never got the sniping thing. if others are willing to pay more I wont get it.

Comes in handy if you forget about an auction or are not in a position to make that last second bid.

Sure, I get that. Don't have to hang over an auction. But, isn't that 90% of the fun?

Which was my situation.

Playing golf in the Rocky Mountains today was also a lot of fun.

90% of the fun is WINNING an auction! :)

The other 10% is sales tax :)

Here is what is happening to me, and it's been pretty consistent lately.

Anyone have any thoughts? The "Captcha" thing is it.

Thanks in advance...

Attachment 407392

Bob, have you changed your ebay password within the last 4 or 5 months? I've heard that if you have changed it that gavelsnipe may not work ever again.

Dan is spot on. I moved to Gixen. No issues.

Jeff

It has been said that eBay sends Captchas to accounts with weaker passwords since they're most likely to be taken over by bots (computer software) to commandeer auction bids. So you may want to upgrade your eBay account password to something with 16 characters including capital letters, numbers, and special characters. Then update it in your sniping program.

There is a new fraudulent bidding system being employed now to counteract true bidding on eBay, that guys on Blowout have been mentioning has been happening in cards more lately.

Say there's an item worth $400 and the bid is currently at $100. A guy that wants it under value will have one account bid $1000, which will set the new viewable max bid at $105. A secondary account will bid $1010 and then the max bid will show as $1010. Then seconds before the auction ends, the last bid will be rescinded and the first account will win at $105. This is probably subverting the bids of sniping tools because they're watching to see if your listed $400 bid will currently win, which it will not because the bid's at $1010.

https://www.blowoutforums.com/showthread.php?t=1389651

You can not rescind your bid on ebay with less than 12 hours to go unless you placed it within one hour of rescinding. Does blowout have any links to auctions in which this has happened?

Yep, I've seen a few. Linked from this most recent thread about "bid shielding" tactics.
https://www.blowoutforums.com/showthread.php?t=1389651

Oh, I see I already posted that thread. Did you read it?

Sorry, didn't see the link. Wow...the criminal mind knows no bounds. Ebay could remedy this by not allowing any retractions in the final 24 hours and/or extend bidding by 5 minutes on any lot that gets a bid in the final minute or so.

As usual, thanks to all for their input. Robert and Dan's suggestion of Gixen worked extremely well. I signed up for it, and went the paid subscription route for all of six bucks.

Last night I used it for the first time, and won 34 auctions in a set I am building. Worked flawlessly, and I am very pleased.

Thanks again...

Gavelsnipe failed on my last three ebay snipes, yesterday and the day before. After many years I have now switched to Gixen as others suggested. Hopefully their success percentage will be much better.

As an afterthought. If a bidder placed a snipe with both gavelsnipe and gixen as an insurance bid, I assume that you would not be bidding against yourself as they are both under the same Ebay user ID. I have often bid manually with a Gavelsnipe bid in place on an item and only got it for the highest amount needed to win, even though the Gavelsnipe max and the manually entered max bid were both higher than the winning bid.....

Correct....you can't bid against yourself. So while your bids will appear "stacked" the money should look identical to one another.

+1 for Gixen - switched over a month ago and haven't had one issue.

Beware the Gixen phone app-it is quite wonky on the Android platform for me. Works fine on my PC but the app has been a nightmare.

Won't be a problem....I use my phone to make calls and receive calls, nothing else....can't imagine operating daily on it, versus my laptop :)

Yep, failed me last night. It may have something to do with ebay's forced changeover to managed payments that happened just a few days ago. Ebay ended over 500 of my listings. Coins, Tokens, Postcards... They are the worst run publicly traded company on the internet.

My wife says gavelsnipe is where old white guys steal toys from kids LOL. This all because her and my son lost a bid on some Ghostbusters toys. They watched with excitement and celebrated their win when they were the high bidder until the screen refreshed.

3 strikes and out!
 

+1 Like you, I had 3 Gavelsnipe failures over the weekend after nearly a year since that last Capcha episode. I still don't comprehend why eBay discourages bidding this way. On one of Gavelsnipe's misfires, eBay's action cost the seller at least $50.

+1 for Gixen.

I've been using it for a while now and it works great. They have an android app too that makes it really easy to setup a bid for items in my watched list.

I had two Gavelsnipe failures tonight. Both items were under $50, so it's not a huge deal. But my bids were higher than the winner on each item.

I guess I have to make the switch to Gixen.

I’ve been pleased with bidnapper.

Twelve Years Plus
 

.. I've used " EZSniper" since Hector was a pup ; it's click-simple and they snipe at just the last split second and they have saved me literally truly thousands of dollars because back in the bidding by clicking days I had the impulse control of a mobile home kitchen grease fire ...
..

I switched to Gixen this past week and successfully sniped 2 auctions.

Gavelsnipe doesn't seem to be working for me at all anymore. Had about 3 snipes in a row that got rejected for "Bid blocked by Ebay CAPTCHA", and the last couple didn't even register in the history. Just disappeared as if they never even existed.

Guess I'll have to check out one of the other recommended tools.

I missed a few auctions this week because I was working late, and a couple because I set my phone down and forgot to check. I really should look into one of these services.

I gave up on Gavelsnipe and went with Gixen about a month ago. I now wish I had done it sooner.

Same. Gixen is 100% for me, but I have heard that the phone app is hit or miss so if you do use Gixen I'd suggest using the website on a computer.

Sometimes the auction ends well past when I go to bed and it would be nice to have the snipe option.


Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

So did I. Last two Gavelsnipes failed so I signed up with Gixen. At least Gavelsnipe was nice enough to tell me my bids were blocked by Ebay.

Sign up for Gixen, they do not have the Capcha problems that Gavelsnipe does. Gavelsnipe is useless now...I'm not even sure they ever really even tried to fix the problem.

I did sign up for Gixen a couple weeks ago. So far so good.

I just had a Gavelsnipe fail last week. The Gavelsnipe site said that I was outbid, but the price on Gavelsnipe was way below my snipe. When I checked on ebay, there had been no bids at all on my item.

It was not a high-dollar purchase ($25) and the seller nicely relisted it at a buy-it-now price for me, but this was my second Gavelsnipe failure in a couple of months, so I just signed up for Gixen.