Greg,
I thoroughly agree with your suggestion regarding sniper bidding on eBay. To bid any earlier is simply an invitation to unnecessarily drive the up the price of a given item, and therefore, I use automated sniping software almost exclusively. There is, however, an exception that I can think of that might be worthy of note. In those instances where an item is of particular interest and where I intend to tender what will likely be a winning bid, and there are only twenty-four hours or less left on the auction in question where no bids whatsoever have yet been placed, I find it appropriate to enter a minimum "tag" bid so as to preclude the seller from legitimately canceling said auction prior to its logical conclusion (...something which they can easily do without repercussion if there are no bids down yet - in fact, a seller can even change out their entire descriptive text, pictures, or pretty much anything else they want if there are no bids). Of course, I maintain almost a dozen different eBay ids so that my own "tag" bids are not easily detected as a tip-off with respect to my intention of following up with a sledgehammer bid within the final seconds.
Robert "professional eBay junkie" Broderick ...the Frozen Flatlands of South Dakota
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<snip> ... Or, you may have been shilled. This is precisely why you shouldn't bid at all until the last two seconds of the auction IMO, in most cases.
Greg "just another eBay junkie" Parker Ann Arbor, Michigan.