There are reasons that many of us who buy on eBay prefer to snipe bid.
It didn't take me long to figure out the advantages when I first
started to buy on eBay.

eBay bidding rules are similar to the reserve bid system that Mike and
Fred Schwimmer used when they had their piano roll auctions.  There is
a set closing time, and you are only obligated to pay the set increment
over the next highest bid.  Mike and Fred were trustworthy and I never
hesitated to place a bid with them for a roll I wanted for $20 or $30.
If I was the only bidder I got the roll for the minimum.  If someone
else bid $15.07 I probably had to pay $15.17.  If someone else bid
$30.01, oh, well...

The problem on eBay is not everyone is as honest as Mike and Fred.
I came in second on a number of auctions with just two bidders, only to
have the seller contact me and offer to sell me the item for my maximum
bid "because the top bidder backed out."  Checking the feedback of the
"top" bidder I discovered the only auctions that bidder ever bid on
were for the very same seller.  It was obvious that it was the seller
shill bidding.

There are also a lot of bidders just looking for items that are under
priced (mostly new bidders).  They'll push the price up a dime or a
dollar at a time sometimes putting in 10 or 20 bids, until they either
have the top bid or decide it's not a bargain anymore.  If I don't put
in an early bid they don't push the price up.

A problem I think eBay may have ended was people who located items they
were interested in by tracking the bids placed by people who frequently
bid on those items.  They didn't have to do their own searches when
they could just track what the people who did their own searches were
bidding on.

A related problem eBay hasn't solved is bid trackers who try to purchase
an item after an auction has ended.  I have won a number of items only
to have people who track my purchases contact the seller and offer them
more money.  They never placed a bid on the item and only found it by
tracking my bidding.

Complaining about snipe bidders is ridiculous.  If you lose out to
a snipe bidder it is only because he or she made a higher bid than
you did.  If you're willing to pay $500 for an item and only bid
$150 the sniper that buys if for $155 didn't cheat you out of anything.
Snipe bidders decide what they're willing to pay and place one bid at
the last minute.  The item goes to the highest bidder period.  If you
had put in a $500 bid to start with you might have won at $175 or lost
to $505.  In all cases the snipe bidder had no control over what you
were willing to bid or pay.  At a live auction you'll never see an
auctioneer turn down a bid just because the bidder didn't place any
of the first 20 bids.

I've never used any kind of snipe bidding program or service.
I've learned how to get a bid in in the last 5 seconds using a slow
telephone connection on a 10 year old laptop purchased at a state
surplus auction.  From my perspective it's progress.  Some of my
earliest memories are going to the local auctions when I was short
enough to see the item up for sale by looking between the legs of the
adults standing in front of me, while dodging the tobacco spit of the
old farmers behind me.  Fifty years later I'm now big enough to see
over some of their shoulders, but I still have to dodge the chew.

Rich Schommer