Advice would be appreciated. Have looked in ebay help section but it just wants you to to place the highest bid you're prepared to go, and then it seems to go straight to you highest bid. 
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@merfar2107 wrote:Advice would be appreciated. Have looked in ebay help section but it just wants you to to place the highest bid you're prepared to go, and then it seems to go straight to you highest bid.
No, it doesn't.
If something is listed for example as an auction starting at eg $30 and you'd be prepared to pay much more for it eg $80, you can safely put in $80 as your bid and it will only come up as one bid for $30.
No one will know if $30 is actually what you typed in or if you had a higher amount.
If a second bidder comes along and types in eg $35, they will see that automatically, they have been outbid & your bid will then show as the next increment up. Not sure how much that is, maybe $36?
That's why you type in the highest amount you're willing to go up to, because the ebay system will do that auto bidding for you when you aren't there.
It doesn't mean you will necessarily win though, depends on what other bidders are willing to go up to.
Of course if you came into that $30 auction & someone was already showing as a bidder, then you typed in $80, it could go straight up to $80 but only if that other bidder had also put a high auto bid earlier of close to that amount.
You're definitely safe to put in your max bid amount without fear that it will show unless bidding goes that high. My only caution to you would be that some people might bid up & up which of course will push your auto bid up & up in response. Then they might simply cancel their latest bid, leaving you with the inflated price. They're not supposed to but for sure they sometimes do. Personally, I usually try to leave any auto bid till the last few hours of an auction when they can't do that.
@springyzone wrote:My only caution to you would be that some people might bid up & up which of course will push your auto bid up & up in response. Then they might simply cancel their latest bid, leaving you with the inflated price. They're not supposed to but for sure they sometimes do. Personally, I usually try to leave any auto bid till the last few hours of an auction when they can't do that.
Springy, some bidders are very aware of being able to retract bids with no penalty, the screenshot below is from an auction on my watchlist finishing in a couple of hours. It's too late for the bidder to retract now, but their bidding history is pretty shabby.
Sheesh, and I thought I was pretty indecisive when it came to purchases! 
But there's no need to bid at all till you decide. Can't understand some people.
