mysterious double bid

[zhenka22]

Ok here's a strange situation!

I was watching an item and planned to bid last second. There was zero bids, starting price was $100 and I decided to bid $120 just in case of a snipe. I bid with 3 secs to go, there was no bids at that point. I won the item, and I remember seeing $100. Later I was going to pay when I noticed that the winning fee came up as $120.

I went into the bid history and it has the first bid as $119 by z***2 with my exact rating and %. So looks like I somehow outbid myself. Today I looked again and now the first mystery bid has gone up to (79) whilst Ive stayed on (78) transactions. So I went into his bidding history and it doesnt quiet correlate to my history. To add to this, the bid history says that he bid 1 minute after I did even though I bid 3 seconds before the auction ended???

So, either ebay has glitched up OR someone with almost exactly my username, rating and % (ridiculously unlikely) tried to snipe exactly $1 under my max bid???

**bleep**?

Would love for someone to clear this up for me

looking forward to your thoughts 🙂

[bsal6160]

Firstly, the other bidder most likely doesnt have a name like your yours, its a random generate id that ebay use to show another bidder is bidding.

Your max bid amount was higher than theirs and that is why it pushed up your final winning bid.

Their max bid may have been $120 but you where first in with the bid so therefore you won.

sorry i couldnt make it a bit clearer.

[zelly888]

You are totally incorrect as they bid 7 seconds before the auction ended and you bid a minute before it ended

[lyndal1838]

There is nothing mysterious at all about the bidding.

You placed your $120 bid with 1minute and 2 seconds to go.  The $119 bid was placed 7 seconds before the end of the auction, thus forcing your bid to the highest amount.

There is nothing to suggest that the underbidder has an ID anything like yours....ebay randomly generates a hidden ID using 2 of the letter/numbers in the original ID.  The only real coincidence is that they have generated the same 2 letters for 2 IDs that have bid on the same auction.  The fact that you both had the same feedback number is probably worth a lottery ticket if you could find the other bidder.

[lyndal1838]

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@bsal6160 wrote:

Their max bid may have been $120 but you where first in with the bid so therefore you won.

sorry i couldnt make it a bit clearer.

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bsal, if the second bidder had entered an amount of $120 then that is the amount that would show in the bidding history.  The OP would still have been the winner because they placed the amount first.

The amount of the bid is always shown exactly....ebay does not alter anything.

[zhenka22]

Just to respond to the timing of the bid comment, thats an erronous recording by eBay, I placed the bid with 3 seconds left on the auction, there were no other bids at that point and no bids could have been made a minute later.

I concede that someone could also have a name starting with z and ending with 2, but are you guys saying that a name can be randomly generated? Im pretty sure the real first and last character is used.

Either way, at the least the times of the bids have been messed up by ebay here...

[*crikey*mate*]

nah, I can say the first and last character of an ID aren't always used. I think though that once your ID has a code generated for it that you keep that code. I'm pretty sure it's the same all the time.

[lyndal1838]

The "hidden" IDs are randomly generated by ebay.  Originally they were supposed to be the first and last letters on your ID but it did not always end up being that....it was just any random letters of your ID.

It also changes over time....I believe it was worked out as changing every 6 weeks.

I doubt that anyone bothers to check out what letters are being used for their IDs now.....does anyone here regularly log out of ebay and check what others are seeing in a bidding history?  I know I don't bother any more.....I just accept that it is changing regularly as it always has.

[silversterio2]

You can see your full user ID on the bidding history page when you're logged on to eBay.

If you log out and have a look, you'll see that your disguised ID shows as a***2

[phorum_junkie*]

You may have placed your bid at the exact time you say you did but that does not mean it was placed at that exact time, there could have been a slight delay with your isp's servers or ebays which can add a few seconds on to the time between making and registering the bid. If I snipe I always do it at least 2 minutes before the end time as it is very easy for an extremely late bid not to make it in time because of a technical hitch.