I just don't get why it should matter if someone comes in with a higher bid 3 days or 3 seconds before close.

So why do you reckon that sniping is based around putting a bid in the last 3 seconds?

Many people are against sniping, but it really does not make sense, even in an auction house the Auctioneer is giving you a fair warning and you can up until that last gavel hit to change your bid amount.

Really? As someone from the auction industry, I'd say sniping is completely opposite what happens in an auction house.

Auction house: Auctioneer stands with gavel raised and someone bids, he/she then looks to underbidder to respond before dropping the hammer and so on.

Sniping: Virtual auctioneer holds up gavel, bid comes in just as hammer is coming down - the end.

Just not a relevant analogy in my opinion.

I take your point that the big difference between a traditional auction process and ebay is that in a traditional auction the auctioneer will ALWAYS keep the auction going if there are still bidders. One doesn't need to be from the auction industry to appreciate this difference.

But it's really immaterial. Ebay has no auctioneer and so that tradition is gone. There is no legal requirement that an "auction" be open ended till the bidding is exhausted. The time for auction close is fixed and from this the sniping phenomenon has developed.

All the important arguments have already been made earlier this thread. I will only add that I like sniping because it prevents unscrupulous sellers from using a second account to bid the proxy all the way up and then, once the phoney bid comes out on top of the honest proxy bid, the seller retracts that last bid, leaving the honest proxy bidder already at the top of his bid.

There was a discussion about this on VDF a few months back.

So long as there are fixed times for auction closing there will always be sniping.

What is worse is that people now have programs to snipe for them now that should not be allowed .if you want to try and steal a item in the last few seconds ok i can see that everyone wants to buy for the least amount ,BUT when you have a program doing it for you you do not have to even turn on your PC and that IMO is wrong..

Mike:

I live in Italy. Italy is 6 hours ahead of the east coast USA and 9 hours ahead of the west coast.

Most auctions generally start and therefore finish between 8 - 11 pm eastern. That's 2 - 5 a.m for me.

Is it really reasonable to assert that if I want to buy something I ought to have to wake up in the middle of the night just to do so?

Also, the snipe programs are helpful when the connection is bad and you can't get a bid in on time before the auction is over (which I have had happen).