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@springyzone wrote:

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@whiznumber6 wrote:

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Different strokes for different folks, I guess...

 

While I certainly might be prepared to pay $250 for an item (and have that as my maximum bid on an item), I don't particularly want to pay that - I'll happily take the option of getting it for $25 if I can. 

 

The chap who puts in a bid early may have $100 as his maximum, but be prepared to go much higher if a bidding war ensues. Placing the $250 bid at the very end catches him unaware, and means I get the item at the next bid over $100 rather than perhaps double that. 

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I used to be like crow & just put in my top bid early, because I don't trust my computer to be up to the exact second with bidding etc.

But I got annoyed one time when a bidder outbid me with small increments-maybe about 15 or more of them?  And took the lead. I shrugged my shoulders and thought no worries, they can have it. 

Went to check the next day (about 24 hours later) & they were still in the lead so thought no more of it. I was shocked a few days later to find I was the winner. That other person had withdrawn their last bid. 

To this day, I believe it was shill bidding or else someone who just wanted to expose my top bid & I can't tell you how annoying I found it. But for that person who withdrew their bid, I would have got it for half the price as there were no other bidders. Half the price wasn't dirt cheap either. My top bid was in the high range which would be okay if a few bidders had been there but felt like scamming if it was shill bidding.

I can't explain it better & I know I had put that in as a top auto bid but it felt like it had been pushed there by unfair means, which I resented.

 

So after that day, I swore never again put myself in that position so now in an auction format, I tend to bid in the last few hours.

 

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I got religion when I was bidding on items from a particular seller, and consistently beating another bidder. The seller put a large number of items up, I put in the same monster bid on all of them within a few minutes of them being listed, and the disgruntled under-bidder (who had by then worked out what my maximum was by nibbling away in $5 increments on one of the items) put in a bid five dollars less than my maximum on every single item about ten seconds before the end of each auction.

I wound up being a couple of thousand dollars in the hole as a result.

(Mind you, I got my own back on the next batch the seller put up - I put in a modest opening bid on each one, just to signal that I was bidding. The other guy assumed I was putting in the same maximum amount as before, and put in his last minute "I don't want the item myself, I just want to make him pay through the nose" bids. From the previous batch, I'd seen how high he was setting his maximum bids, and had programmed a sniper service to put in a bid five dollars or so lower than his maximum a few seconds before each item ended. This time around, HE got all the items - which he may not even have wanted - and at a hugely inflated price. Turnabout is fair play...).

Now I use a sniper service, timed to place the bid seven seconds before the end of the auction. In the almost ten years I've been using it (and probably at least a couple of thousand items), I can only recall missing out on item because the service was down at the time the auction ended.