I love sniper programs. I almost always use one; I currently use Gixen.com (a free site) right now and am quite happy with it.

The bidder takes them into account when filling in the information the software needs. Maybe I'm not understanding your question. Why would you think the software would need to do this?

well i have never used this program.how does this actually work because it seems it can be helpful to me as i have lost many auctions at the last moment

You tell the sniper program the item you want to bid on and your maximum amount and it "snipes" or bids at the last minute for you. The one I used let you decide how many seconds before the end of the auction you wanted to bid. Then it logged on, made your bid and logged off. I don't use them anymore because I use eBay less than I used to and because most of the newer programs require you to put your username and password into their databases. That makes me uncomfortable, so I don't do it.

You know, I used to use Snipeville, but they disappeared. I am using a Java program now called JBidWatcher. But eBay does something occasionally to break that.

I think from a buyer's perspective, sniping is great, because you never get caught up in the moment, you enter your max bid and then forget about it.

From a seller's perspective, it can hurt a bit, but not much. People will only be willing to bid to a certain price anyway. The only thing that is different is that you lose some of the back and forth bidding between users that can drive the price up.

And, even then, people who are watching to the end will tend to bid with a minute to go, a lot of times... and if everyone puts in their highest bid, the price will STILL go up, until one of them has a higher number :)