The only way you would end up winning is if the bidder current highest bidder withdrew their bid before the end. Tecnically you can withdraw a bid at any time up until the last 12 hours but there are a limited number of reasons you can select and change of mind is not one of them so it comes down to if you are prepared to lie or not.

You have no guarantee that you would win the other auction for less than you would get the current one for if the highest bidder withdrew so you may end up with neither of them.

You have done the wrong thing bidding on two items at once and should certainly cancel the bid on one of them if you are not going to pay for both if you win both, the bid wothdrawal will go on your record and too many in too short a time and you could be suspended.

My problem lies in reconciling my gross habits with my net income.

Why not use a sniping service that bids on your behalf in the last few seconds of an auction?

New people like yourself tend to nibble bid which doesn't achieve much & you could end up paying more for an item than if you'd waited until the end.

There is no need to bid days in advance of an auction ending.

I'd rather hug a porcupine than answer another "Where is my feedback? " question.

Thanks for your replies, everyone.

There was no nibble bidding. I bid my max amount and was outbid, so I moved on to next item and, again, placed my maximum bid (reading posts in this forum, I am now aware of sniping and have signed up to AuctionStealer). It was then that I realised that the first auction was still live, which is when I started to worry.

If it came to the crunch, I would have paid for both items and just resold one of them (they are exactly the same and, in fact, from the same seller).

Either way, Kannaman25 says that if the seller gave me a second chance on the first option (in the unlikely event that the highest bidder did not pay for some reason) I would not be obligated, so there's no more cause for concern.

Thanks again.

gmartinezursi wrote:

If it came to the crunch, I would have paid for both items and just resold one of them (they are exactly the same and, in fact, from the same seller).

I dunno about Auction Stealer, but with Gixen they have an option called "Group Bidding", which is absolutely perfect for situations like yours.

You add all the (identical) items that you are looking at into the Sniper, and assign them a certain "Group Code". The service then tries to win the first item in the group - if it wins, it cancels all the remaining items in the group. If it doesn't win, then it bids on the second one, then if unsuccessful it tries the third, etc.

This is great for those big sellers who auction the same item every day (or twice a day). You start the Sniping Group and then every day or so you just keep adding new items on as the seller lists them.

I use this type of service very often, and with a really low bid price. Sometimes it takes a month or more to finally win one, but geeze I get them at a good price