Call me crazy. Call me greedy. Call me un-American (although, I am not exactly sure how this label would apply here). But I have to ask the question: Why in the world do some people avoid using auction sniping services and opt to bid on eBay in the traditional, manual fashion?

I have to admit, I wasn’t one of the first guys to use a sniping program, but my lord, it’s 2007 (eBay’s been around for more than 10 years now) and we all know that the best way to win an eBay auction is to bid at the end of the sale. That said, I see the same yahoos bidding manually and all they are essentially doing is jacking up the price of the item they are interested and probably not winning it in the end.

For those of you who still have never used one, don’t worry, you are anonymous here, so we can’t make fun of you, sniping services automatically put a bid on an eBay auction for you when there are only a few seconds left, as opposed to the bidder having to place the bid way too early, or manually wait and place the bid when only a few seconds are left.

Early on, most sniping services charged a fee to use their programs, but now there are services you can use at no charge, such as gavelsnipe.com. That’s the one I use and it has always worked flawlessly.

The funny thing about my blog today was that it was supposed to be a review of eBay’s new feature called “eBay countdown.” This new “bell” out of eBay’s recently added “bells and whistles” is a pop-up window that comes up when you are tracking at least one item (At least I think that’s what it is. The details on the site were a bit vague). The little countdown feature is kind of sharp and slick, but who the heck needs this? Just use an auction sniper.