I use ebay fairly frequently and sniping has saved me a whole lot of time and money where its relevant to use it (big ticket items only as a guide).
Sure you can easily put in your max bid right at the start of the auction but that imho wouldn't be the clever thing to do for various reasons. And of course if you put in the highest bid out there then certainly it doesn't matter if a snipe comes in during the last 10 seconds if it's less. That's just black and white logic. I wasn't questioning that but the fact that Replicant was making out the people who snipe don't really want an item. That's all.
Not going to go into it in detail (maybe google it if you're going to bid on a big ticket item anytime soon - you could save yourself some dosh) but put simply it's just another way of auto bidding but with sniping you can specify the time when the bid is placed e.g. last 3 to 5 seconds of the auction (which is what seemed to happen in this auction - it's real easy to do a manual bid but if I were about to bid circa $3m for an item I really wanted I don't know if I'd rely on the timing of my laptop and connection versus using a sniper which , for me have worked 100% of the time i.e. placed the bid, I haven't won that much of course). As mentioned the main benefit is that it stops you from exceeding your maximum that you've set yourself and secondly gives the counter bidder no time to respond and raise their bid i.e. you don't get into a bidding war.
Maybe I shouldn't be telling you guys this if you're happy to use the auto bidder though
