That's the main reason I went to all the effort of buying a domain name and building a website - so people can proxy bid themselves, so that item winners are (mostly) determined by the highest price one is willing to pay, rather than being determined by when each person happens to be awake and available so they can attempt to snipe and counter-snipe in the last 15 minutes.
This post has been edited by Superlatanium: May 13 2017, 17:41
Proxy bids guarantee that you pay only the smallest necessary minimum bid above the other person, and sometimes even less. If you have a well-defined secret maximum bid you know you're willing to pay for a certain item, there's no downside at all to proxy bidding.
If my proxy bids are 1m, 1.4m and 2m, and someone gives 1.5m as your final bid, I'll end up paying 2m (proxy) instead of 1.55m (manual). Or am I wrong?