A lot of people think ebay is like a real auction, where you bid, get outbid, rebid, etc. It's not- no real auction has a time limit. The best way to do ebay is to know how much you are willing to pay, bid it, and forget it. No one will know your maximum bid unless it gets beat.
I don't know why people are hating on snipers. The only people hurt by snipers are the sellers. If you, as a buyer, bid your max as you should, and lose to someone else, then someone else was willing to pay more, end of story, you should be fine with this, whether they bid at the last second or not.
The problem is, and this is why I started sniping, the whole "validation" thing. If people see someone else bid on something, it validates their own desire, and thier percieved value increases, so they bid more. Also if they get outbid, they will start to think, "oh maybe it is worth more that I thought" and bid higher. This is how real auctions work to the sellers advantage. You see it in ebay too, where people will bid back and forth, driving the price up beyond their original bid... Sniping short-circuits that whole mess. I'll admit there is some entertainmant value to that, but I usually just want the best price.
BTW, most sniping is done automatically. I use Auction Sniper. You pay a small fee, but after countless times watching yahoos rebid a dozen or more times until they've exceeded your maximum, its worth it. Again, sniping would not be necessary if everyone (a) understood how ebay bidding works , and (b) just bid the maximum you are willing to pay.Thats all snipers are doing, just bidding the max they are willing to pay. You could say, although it sounds a little patronizing, they are protecting buyers from themselves....