Bidding

[salonika-b]

I am so annoyed with the bidding,  buyers wait till the last seconds and  the one putting in an unrealitic high bid   always wins the auction.   There is not enough time for other buyers to get to their highest bid.

It would be better  that all automatic bids put in will run to the amount buyers are willing to pay.  So the seller gets the real value of the item.

What do other Ebayers think?

[davewil1964]

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@salonika-b wrote:

I thought if someone put his highest bid  at $500  and the auction was alowed only after the time it origionally finished  to let automatic bids run its course.  Then the item would have been sold for $500  of course one never know what is put as those last bids.  Which I call unrealistic  because buyers know  there are not enough minutes left to get to those high amounts.  Any way  I got so many good ideas of you members  that I will never complain again.

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If somebody bids $500 and it sells for $350 then the NEXT highest bid would have been $340 or $345. If that bidder was prepared to pay more they would have bid more, especially as last second bids don't allow for second thoughts.

If you wanted $500 for it, you should have run it as a $500 BIN.

As has been said, auctions aren't what they used to be, and are unlikely to ever resurrect on a site gearing more and more towards brand new items from big retailers.

[springyzone]

I'm still not entirely sure what you mean, but the thing is, the automatic ebay system won't take a bid up to eg $500 unless there are previous bids that push it up, and it has to go to $500 to beat them.

I suppose it is like a house auction. Just imagine you could not be there & had an agent or friend bidding for you & you told them beforehand that your absolute max was $500k.

If someone else was bidding but they dropped out at eg $420k, your agent might get the house for you at $430k, he wouldn't feel obliged to keep bidding if his bid at 430k was the highest.

All I know is if you have a price in mind that you expect and really want to get, probably best to start at that price.

If it doesn't sell, you can always reconsider and list it at a cheaper price next time if you want to.

[countessalmirena]

@salonika-b,

Could you perhaps explain what you mean by "unrealistic bid"?

I previously thought you meant that some bidders will put a maximum highest bid that is far, far, far too high for the item... and that other bidders might nibble-bid against that bid, only to be discouraged from further bidding as they sense that the other bidder's maximum is too rich for their blood.

But in that case, you'd be getting a very good price for your item. Nibble-bidding does tend to push up the price in a lot of cases.

Your serious bidders will almost always place their highest bids in the last few seconds of an auction. In that case, the highest bid necessary to defeat the under-bid will be the winning bid, and it will still give you in most cases a good price for your item.

It's the second-highest bid which sets the final price, rather than the highest bid.

If you want to extend the time after the listing time runs out, it would simply put off bidders (or at least quite a few bidders). (At any rate, it's a moot point because eBay auctions don't work that way.)

If you're getting good prices on auction-style listings, you are doing well as auctions have become so much less popular since eBay's early days. There's an interesting dynamic in online auctions - the buyer wants to get something for a price that they perceive as good (or else they just want a very very very very rare item and are willing to go to almost any lengths to get it), and the seller wants to reach at least a minimum price (with the hope of getting much better than that).

I think perhaps buyers are not as excited by the online auction scenario nowadays. There's perhaps a cynical thought along the lines of "If I don't win this, there'll be another one along soon, so it doesn't really matter." Of course there are exceptions...

As you can't set reserves on eBay (except in the very few instances mentioned - "On eBay.com.au, the reserve price feature is only available for auction-style listings of Cars, Motorcycles, and Boats within the Motors categories"), you will need to list the item at a starting price that is the lowest price that you will be happy to accept. The eBay auction landscape really has changed! Don't risk a lower starting price and hope that there'll be a bidding war.

I hope that your future auctions go well!

[salonika-b]

Thank you That was a good read.  I have learnt a lot from all of you  Ebayers.

[brerrabbit585]

While auctions at auction houses and clearing sales don't have a set cut-off time and only end when the auctioneer can't get any more bids, they won't hold up the end for someone who decides they have to go to the toilet or go for a smoke. You have to be there when it's due to end and put your bid in in a timely manner or you miss out. At auctions with a lot of small items, auctioneers won't leave very much time at all between bids and knocking it down because they just can't spend all day on small items.

[beryl_green]

as someone who hasn't been bidding for auction tems for a long while and my methods my now be outlawed, if I ever really wanted an item I used one of the many auction sniper programmes available and put in the highest amount I was prepared to pay and left it to fate.

[chameleon54]

Sniper programmes are still allowed and commonly used on ebay.

[racpai24]

Can u be outbid by a shill bid from seller?
Last night I was outbid 2 mins before close. By $10 more on the winning bid.
The exact same item from the exact same seller is listed again tonight. Is that allowed?

[lyndal1838]

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@racpai24 wrote:
Can u be outbid by a shill bid from seller?
Last night I was outbid 2 mins before close. By $10 more on the winning bid.
The exact same item from the exact same seller is listed again tonight. Is that allowed?

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Yes, you can be outbid by a bid from the seller or someone associated with the seller but the scenario you mention does not sound like a shill bid.

Two minutes is a long time.....you could easily place further bids in that time.   Depending on the amount of the bidding $10 could well be the next increment in line so that in itself is not suspicious.   You have no way of knowing what that highest bid actually was as it does not show until it is outbid.

You have no way of knowing how many items the seller has available for sale.....there is nothing stopping them from selling a number of the same item.

[danny4178]

Theyre using a bidding sniper program... you can get one too, not expensive !