I am always amazed at eBay users who fail to understand that eBay is not a "live" gavel auction, with all the bidders in the same room (or on the phone), and the bidding continues until there is only one bidder left.

That is the auction format most of us are familiar with, so we try to force that format onto eBay.

In reality, eBay is a "fixed ending time" , or "silent" auction, much more similar to the way public and civic and charity auctions are conducted. In fact, much more merchandise and services are auctioned via fixed ending time auction than gavel auctions.

On eBay, I know exactly when an auction will end. I place my bid, for the highest amount I am willing to pay, via a sniping service (or snipe manually if convenient), and I know that when the auction has ended, eBay will compare all bids and determine the winner.

And the winner is the HIGHEST bid, not the LAST bid.

Imagine a concrete contractor bidding $1,000,000.00 on a large sidewalk project for a city. Bids are open for 30 days, and he places his bid at noon of day two. At 12:59 on the 30th day, another contractor submits a bid of $999,999.00 and wins. Does the first contractor have any basis for being upset? "I would have bid more if I had known that $@#%^&*@ was going to slip in at the last second!" Foolishness and sour grapes. The same rules apply to everyone.

As a sniper, I have raised the final bid price for the seller countless times, whether I win or not.

Not once has my snipe bid lowered a price, and if, as a seller, you want me to PRETEND that this is a gavel auction and I have to expose my interest early on and possibly get into a bidding war, you need to rethink selling on eBay.