Ebay Thing....

Now you have to wait for the days to click by until it ends. Sweet irony would be if he ends up getting sniped on it at the last second by fifty cents :-))

Cheers, Max Bryant

I won a kit the other week that had an opening bid of $8.99 and a Buy-it-now price of $9.99. I decided that with shipping $8.99 was quite enough and bid $9.00. I guess no one else wanted it and I got it for the $8.99.

The same kit could still be had from Squadron but I'd have had to buy something else to make the minimum and Squadron's shipping was a bit higher so it worked out for me.

Bill Banaszak, MFE

Let me see if I have this straight.

You set the minumum opening bid at $29.99, offered a 'Buy It Now' option at $30.00, and wonder why the bidder bid $29.99?

Scott G. Welch

that may have been a mistake on my part, but the bidder risks losing the kit over one cent.... that's the part I can't figure out.

Craig

He probably did it for fun,to see if he could get that one cent off...

Yeah, he could have bid $50 on the kit, but I can think of a few better ways to get some thrills....

Craig

[snip]

I guess you don't understand eBay's "Buy it Now" option.

If the first bidder places a bid equal to or greater than the Buy It Now price, the auction ends *immediately*. He gets it for that price, period.

If the first bidder places a bid less than the Buy it Now price, that option disappears and the auction continues as usual.

Thanks, Wayne, I didn't know that. That tends to make this guy even stranger. Hmmm.

Bill Banaszak, MFE

and even better, the bidding has gone up to $33 now......

Craig

Craig,

Perhaps the bidder didn't understand the 'Buy It Now' option.

Or maybe they saw a one cent range between the minimum bid and the 'Buy It Now' price and bid low just for the hell of it. If I'd seen this, I'd have been tempted to do the same.

Did the $29.99 bidder stay in the game? If so, it's their loss, not yours. If not, maybe they were having a bit of fun at your expense.

Scott G. Welch

I have to admit, I've done that a few times. Once, I got the item in question for a penny less. The other times, I guess I did the seller a favor. I DO know how it works well enough that my initial bid was my only bid. Why do it that way? I guess I was as bewildered as to why the seller set it up that way, as the seller was bewildered at my actions.

Steve

he bid back to $33.00

Craig

*Unless* a reserve price hasn't been met. "Buy It Now" remains until the reserve is met or exceeded. If there is no reserve, "Buy It Now" disappears on the first bid.

-- C.R. Krieger (Shopping for too many car$ lately.)

Better luck next time, eh?

Scott G. Welch

It has to do with bidding high early -- a stategy to use when you really want something, know what it is worth (to you and to the rest of the planet), and believe it will be bid for by many bidders. In a tie, eBay gives precedence to the earlier bid. Since a real tie is relatively rare (though not as rare as you might think), this high bid early only helps you in a few cases, but it does free you from slavishly monitoring an auction.

Here is the scenerio:

Starting bid: $100 Bidding increment: $100 Reserve: $700 but hidden so you don't know what it is. Real World Value of the item: $1000 The highest price you would pay: $900 Your proxy bid max: $900 Current highest bidder: YOU Number of bids: 8 Current price: $600 (reserve not met) Time since last bid: several days (bidding stalled)

You really want this item, but it looks like it won't meet the reserve so you need to bid again. At this point, what you really want to do is sneak up on the reserve. But, since you've already made a max bid by proxy of $900, the lowest bid that eBay will allow you to make is $1000 so now eBay's proxy bidding software kicks in and has your $900 proxy going against your $1000 proxy with the result that the price instantly jumps to $1000 (an increase of $400 and $300 over the reserve.)

If you have "bid high early" and the auction did not see the action you anticipated, your only recourse is to retract your bid (a black mark on your eBay record) and restart the process of slowly incrementing your bid until the reserve is met. But then if someone kicks in at the last minute, you have (a) lost your precedence and (b) do not have a proxy bid in. So you are back to slavishly monitoring.

--S(077

Impossible. If the reserve were $700 and a bid of $900 were made the reserve would be met and the current bid would show as $700.

No, that's wrong. It would say "Current bid $700 (reserve met)".

You can find eBay's explanation of reserve prices here:

Note the last sentence: "If your maximum bid is the first to meet or exceed the reserve price, the effective bid displayed will automatically be raised to the reserve price."

You seem to have everything backwards.

First, if your bid is the first to be greater than or equal to the reserve, the reserve is met and the bid amount increases to the reserve price. Ebay denotes this by stating next to the high bid "(Reserve met)". If this didn't happen there wouldn't be much point in "sneaking up on the reserve" as you wouldn't know when you got there.

Second, if you place an additional bid while you are still the highest bidder you are not bidding against yourself. Ebay is smart enough to realize that you are the same person and doing this does not effect the current bid in any way. There is one exception however, when you initially place your second bid a small flaw in the ebay software makes it look like you just upped your own current bid by one increment on the bid confirmation page (not the one where you confirm your bid but the one after that confirming that you're the high bidder). If you reload the item page by clicking the link on the confirmation page you will see that, in fact the current bid is unchanged but the bid count has advanced. It goes without saying of course that the new bid must be at least one increment higher than the current high bid price or the software will not accept it, so you can't just add a penny.

Third, you cannot lose precedence in proxy bidding. The first person to bid that amount gets the win, period. The reason you cannot lose it is that you have to be the high bidder when the tying bid is placed or you have no precedence. You gain it when you outbid someone else or place the first bid and lose it when you are outbid.

John Benson ------------------------ IPMS El Paso Web Guy

All I can say is: "Try it."

EBay knows it is a fault in their proxy bidding system.

--s(077