wots a snipe on ebay?

Question

i dont understand this as ive just put on a bid and snipe is in their name what does it mean

Answer 1

If it's not the wading bird, it might be something like this, which I found in an entry on Wikipedia:

Auction sniping is the process of watching a timed online auction (such as on eBay or Yahoo!), and placing a winning bid at the last possible moment (often seconds before the end of the auction), giving the other bidders no time to outbid the sniper. Some bidders do this manually, and others use software designed for the purpose. A bid sniper is a person or software agent who performs auction sniping.

There are also online sniping services, where the software agent is run from a website rather than the sniper's own computer. This decreases the failure rate of the snipe, because the website is expected to have more reliable servers that might be quicker to react.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Auction_sniping

Answer 2

Outbidding the current highbidder at the very last moment so as not to allow the other person time to enter a new bid. People who do this are irritating beyond belief.

Answer 3

Bidding once and bidding high - right in the dying seconds of the auction. I do it all the time, usually at about 3 seconds from auction end.