You are high bidder on an auction; you go to bed 30 minutes before the auction ends, confident you are the proud owner of the item and wake up the next morning to discover someone else came in seconds before the end of the auction and outbid you.

You have been sniped!

Sniping is an online-auction cultural phenomenon and is accepted by buyers and sellers alike, although not everybody likes it. Why do people snipe? The idea is to win the item at the lowest possible price. By waiting until the last minute, they avoid a bidding war, and hope that theirs will be the last bid received before the clock runs out.

Resourceful companies have developed tools to help snipers: "sniping" software will automatically snipe auctions for you, to ensure that YOU are the auction winner.

Sniping software comes in all flavors. You can get shareware programs, paid programs or subscription-based services; programs you load on your computer or services that will place the snipe bid for you. The advantage to the latter is that these services have high-speed connections that allow them to place bids just seconds before the end of an auction.

Esnipe http://www.esnipe.com has been around since 1999, and came under new ownership in early 2001. The fee-based service uses high-speed dedicated servers to place snipe bids for members, and they offer 24-hour support. Snipers pay 25 cents for auction wins up to $24.99. For auction wins of $25-$1,000 in US$, the fee is 1%, rounded down to the nearest penny. And for auction wins of $1,000 and over in US$, the fee is a flat $10.

AuctionStealer http://www.auctionstealer.com claims it snipes auctions in as little as 3 seconds before end of auction. It supports eBay.com and many of its international sites, and has plans to support Yahoo Auctions, Bidville and Auctionweiser in the future. The service is free; the company says it generates money through banner advertising on the site.

AuctionBlitz is a brand new service http://www.auctionblitz.com. You can see some screen shots here: http://www.auctionblitz.com/help/whatis.asp (keep clicking on the "Next Topic" box at the bottom right-hand side for more help).

One interesting AuctionBlitz feature is Bid Bin. This allows the user to set up similar auction items so if you don't win the first auction it continues to bid on your alternative auctions until an item is won. For example, you want to pay up to $30 for a Winnie-the-Pooh bear. But there are multiple Poohs for sale ending at different times. You can tell the program which auctions to bid on; if you don't win your first Pooh, the system will bid on the second Pooh auction. But if you DO win the first Pooh, the system stops bidding for you. A representative told me that the software can't bid on the second item until it knows the result of the first bid, so there is no way you would end up with multiple copies of the same item. AuctionBlitz offers a free 30-day trial to first-time users. After that, it costs $13.99/year. You can also try it for 6 months for $8.99.

Bidnapper http://www.bidnapper.com is also new, having started in June of 2001. Bidnapper has something called contingency bidding that works like AuctionBlitz' Bid Bin feature, but is limited to two items. It also has a feature called The Shadow that "prowls for auctions with bidders that share your tastes and interests."

New users may take advantage of Bidnapper's free trial of three (3) winning snipes before choosing a service option. You can purchase 12 winning snipes for $9.95, or, you may subscribe to unlimited service for 3 months at $14.95; 6 months at $19.95; or 12 months at $29.95. Beta testers and users who sign up before September 30, 2001, are entitled to one extra month of free service when they subscribe to 3, 6 or 12 months of unlimited service.

"We find snipers to be enthusiastic, knowledgeable buyers that are looking for more control over the bidding process and price," said Taylor Abercrombie of Bidnapper. "Obviously we are biased in our opinion, but we feel that each bidder should be free to develop their own bidding style."

Note: Amherst Robots http://www.vrane.com also has sniping tools available, but failed to reply to our recent inquiries about them.

Because sniping services do the bidding for you, you must hand over your auction user ID and password. eBay recommends you never hand this private information over to anyone, and you are taking a risk by doing so. AuctionBytes does not endorse or guarantee the reputation of any of the services mentioned in this article. Use your common sense whenever you deal with third parties.

If you have experiences that you'd like to share about any of these services, or ones that weren't mentioned, go to http://www.auctionbytes.com/forum/phpBB/index.php and let us know.

In the meantime, "Happy Sniping!"