it's all about how much you want to pay for an item...

That's the main point to me whether it's shopping for a car or something on eBay. If I set a maximum bid at $25 and somebody got it for $25.50, why should I be unhappy?

How is it any more complicated than that???

I think it is a *bit* more complicated because sniping tools essentially turn open auctions into blind auctions where you can't look around the room to see what others are bidding -- you only turn your cards over at the end. I have used sniping tools and don't have a problem with blind auctions. The problem is that you have people participating in auctions with two different "rulebooks". Folks who are playing with an "open" rulebook may be disappointed when they watch their $14.99 bid for a Dell Latitude hard drive carrier sit for 6 days only to find out that the item was won for a $15.49 bid that they never saw (true example from yesterday). If, on the other hand, somebody had sniped $25.49, I'd be out of luck.

The fact that eBay can't control stuff like sniping seems like, well, a fact of life. With all fo the knocks on eBay and some of the opportunities for abuse, I still find it a great utility. Dell didn't have this part listed, so I feel lucky to have found it (and probably for 1/2 what they would have wanted.)