What I found, and although my auctions were years ago I still see it as a trend, is experienced bidders will quite often come in with an early bid (hence kicking things off, letting the seller and other potential bidders know there is interest). Place their first bid for .99c then immediately place another bid. The amount of that second bid no-one knows, all you can see is the 2 bids have been placed. My opinion is they do this to intimidate other bidders. Not always of course, some would be just rethinking and upping their maximum bid, but I had some annoying buyers who would do this with every auction. It's not against policy, well within their rights to do it, but a few were obviously just throwing darts hoping for a bullseye, with the second bid ultimately showing as low also. Before I get shot down in flames, I accept they can do that and low start price auctions are a risk anyway, I found it intimidated other buyers, particularly buyers not so experienced with the auction process. So much so I finished up weiting a little bit about it at the top of every description, advising new bidders to not be put off by it. I also weeded out a few serial offenders and blocked them. I'm not old fashioned but a little bit old school as far as playing fair, not using dirty tricks (again I'll probably be shot down for that) to win auctions. To add, those same people also end up being non payers because if they only win one item or can't combine postage for whatever reason they're still paying more than they want to pay.
Anyway, in reply to your comment, maybe try coming in earlier with your maximum bid. The amount doesn't matter but at least it kicks the auction off? Still not a guarantee the auction won't be ended but worth a try maybe. I recently bought a game for my son and went straight in with a price I thought would win it. Bidding qent over and I upped my bid a few times, paid a bit more than I could have bought one bin but a trusted seller so I was happy with my winning bid. I have ended auctions before but only if there's an issue with it. I auctioned some stamps where I thought I had identified the watermark correctly, I hadn't, some messages came in saying I hadn't, so pulled the auction to prevent misleading buyers. Then I had a flood of new messages 'Why did you pull the auction?'. Turned out the stamps were more valuable than I realised, they didn't care I had it wrong haha but sometimes messaging the seller to ask why can pay off. I sold bin to one of those people who messaged me
