Knowing people bid snipe by bidding one cent over whole dollars, would you consistently bid two cents over if it meant you would win more of your auctions?

One cent is negligible. If you asked me if I would have paid $10.01 instead of $10.00, I'd probably say "Sure". $10.02? $10.03? Like, where does the line get drawn?

And then you come at it from the other way. Let's say I'd pay $10, but not $11. But what about $10.50? $10.25? Or we can go down by pennies again.

I agree, put in your limit and walk away. If you get overbid, even by a cent, don't sweat it. That's the game. But I can see why people get frustrated when they lose an auction by one cent.

The 'nibblers' will invariably show up and bid small amounts until they exceed your maximum bid, while not revealing theirs.

Before: Buyer pays £100, seller receives £100, seller later billed £5 fee, ends up with £95.

After: Buyer pays £100, eBay pockets £5 "buyer protection fee", seller receives £95. The seller gets to keep every penny of what eBay already skimmed their cut from.

Nice:

> You won't pay final value fees or regulatory operating fees

Of course, they will likely find some other way to extract their fees.

It would be nice, however, if the final value fee went away for US non-professional sellers.

There does seem to be no indication (at least on the page you linked) of how they define "private seller", which also opens up the possibility of them defining it so narrowly that, say, only five UK residents ever qualify.

And this probably appears to work enough times in the snipers favor to trick them into thinking it is a winning strategy, whereas they likely would have won the same auctions in the end by just bidding that 'minimum' as their maximum bid. But as they can't easily (i.e., without expense) A/B test their strategy, they get no feedback that sniping isn't really helping them like they think it is helping them.