I hate seeing people bid at the beginning because it just inflates the price.


With respect, I totally disagree.

When people bid throughout the auction, there is time to reflect on how much you are willing to pay, and whether to up your bid when necessary. This means that the final price is reflective of how much someone is willing to pay for it. That is the *entire* point of an auction, and necessary for the auction process to be attractive to sellers, and hence to get the supply of items that buyers want. That's not 'price inflation', just supply and demand.

Price inflation is more likely to occur at the end of the auction, when someone who's been winning for 5 days suddenly gets outbid with 5 minutes left in a flurry of bids. There is no time to determine what the real interest level is, and irrational bids get made to try and regain control.

Re: esnipe:
What happens when everyone uses esnipe for the same auction? I assume that the highest bid would win. But what happens if 2 or more people both put down the same highest bid amount through esnipe? Who wins. I'm guessing whoever bid first. Sound familiar???

Eventually everyone will have to resort to esnipe to stand a chance of winning, and in the long run, if everyone used esnipe for every item, the process would end up being near identical to ebays standard bidding process, so what's the point? Except of course, to pay that extra 1% esnipe tax.

I have no problem with manual sniping. If you're prepared to pay attention to your auctions, and make the effort, then fair play to you. I have to make the same effort to protect my bids, and if I don't, then that's my problem. But automated sniping is lazy, cowardly, and ultimately pointless IMO.