eBay sniping app for iOS

November 6, 2012 5:12 PM

iOS sniping app for eBay auctions?

I like to snipe the occasional eBay auction. I am doing most of my computing on my iPad lately, and would like to have a sniping app. Most of the info I can find by googling is out of date by several years, I tried one app, which didn't work at all, but which cost several dollars, and I'd like to not make that mistake again. So: recommendations?

(Don't ask which app I tried. I can't find it again.)

posted by not that girl to computers & internet (8 answers total)

It's not an app, but I've used Gixen very successfully, and it's free.
posted by kimdog at 5:18 PM on November 6, 2012

I am open to non-app options! Thanks, kimdog.
posted by not that girl at 5:21 PM on November 6, 2012

I've used JustSnipe (web), and it worked quite well.

Except I had a problem one time. I had told it I wanted to bid on a whole bunch of items that I thought I wanted. Later that day, I told it to delete 90% of them because I changed my mind. It said they were deleted. However, it bid on them for me anyway.

I emailed the developers and they shrugged it off as a small problem they were having due to "the power outage".

So, JustSnipe is recommended only if you don't plan on making a bunch of tentative entries and then deleting some later -- I wouldn't trust it to really delete them after my experience.

But if you don't change your mind a lot, it works great. Better than the other ones I tried.
posted by bluesky78987 at 5:43 PM on November 6, 2012

It's not free like gixen but I've used auctionsniper.com in the past with great success.

If I remember correctly it took me a couple of tries to get it set up correctly but once I got the hang of it everything went smoothly.
posted by eatcake at 6:20 PM on November 6, 2012

Years ago, a friend turned me onto snip.pl. It's a great tool that I use when I definitely want to win.
posted by starscream at 9:11 PM on November 6, 2012

I used ezsniper.com Works great. 3 free wins, then 10¢ a snipe after. Not an app though :(
posted by wandering_not_lost at 10:57 PM on November 6, 2012

Yeah, I wouldn't use an app for this -- iOS devices aren't really designed around doing scheduled, time-critical activities in the background like sniping. Web services are perfect because they are designed around doing that.
posted by mendel at 1:42 PM on November 7, 2012

Thanks, everybody! I had tunnel vision, thinking that everything on the iPad had to be an app. This is really helpful.
posted by not that girl at 1:49 PM on November 7, 2012