For example - if you place a bid for say £100.00 why when the auction ends do you sometimes win the item for £68.23 and other times you seem to pay your maximum bid ie £100.00 even when the last bid was only £42.00 ? Is it something to do with the starting price..or would that mean another bidder put in exactly the same highest bid ie £100.00. Hope that makes sense.
Someone probably bidded just under £100, so as your limit is higher than theirs it automatically bids up in increments, depending on the value and previous bid(if it was whole £ or pence). You can click on bids next to the price on the auction page to see who else was bidding, tho it disguises their usernames it does show you what their highest bid was when someone else out bidded them.
If you are the highest bidder, you pay the lowest value above the second highest bidder. Example: Three bidders 1st bids up to 100, 2nd to 130 and 3rd to 150. The Third bidder would win, but would pay 131, which is the lowest figure above the 2nd highest bidder. Hope that helps
When the auction sits at £42 and you win by bidding £100 but end up paying £100 is because the reserve was set at £100 (you are always told when there is a reserve) - the winning incremental bid, as explained by mattmaccabebrown, above, is how it works with no reserve.
+1 on reserve. Caught me out a few years ago when I bid £1300 for a bike, which was at £1150 reserve not met but soon as it finished, it went to £1300 reserve met.
i forgot to say,ebay will bid up to your max(100) for you,and if it only goes to 68,thats what you will pay.
Unless there is a reserve, as the product isnt sold until the reserve is met and if your highest meets it, its sold
Thanks guys, starting to make a bit more sense. I've just missed out on a few things recently and really pissed to be honest. I've put in my max bid and then lost by £1:00, how annoying is that. Or I leave it til the last 30 seconds and then get into a bidding 'frenzy'.......Is there a secret to this bidding lark or just put in what you want to pay, or how much you think its worth and then just walkaway and if you win, you win ? or look for Buy it Now .....
The bid jumps by a large amount because the bidder before you placed a high maximum bid, say the bid was at £44.50 and you bid £75.00 you then see that the same bidder is still number 1 at £76.50 because you have not exceeded their maximum bid. When you are bidding never bid in round numbers. Think of your maximum bid and then add an odd amount of pence to it. This small amount could guarantee winning. Personally I never show my hand and use a snipe bid in the last 5 seconds (some people hate this!!!). Have a look at Goofbid, it has a snipe tool and also a misspelling search engine. I have got a few bargains because of people not being able to spell.
Dont get carried away with bidding.It can get expensive!Just bid as much as you want,then leave it to run its course.Like you say if you win,you win if not,meh!As for losing by £1,thats the way it goes.If you bid £100 and mateyboy bids £1000,then his bid will beat yours by £1.
Words of Wisdom Watch out for ramping. Friends bidding an item up. Have a look at the sellers history to see if the same bidder keeps appearing on all their items. Ebay are supposed to watch for this but it happens, particularly with automotive items.
Yep its just happened to me again. 15 seconds to go and I bid £60 higher than the highest bid. 5 seconds to go and i'm the highest bidder. Auction finishes and it comes up I lost by £5.00. and under bid history says 'private listing bidders identities protected'.
That sounds like the person who won was using sniping software, they enter their bids into a 3rd party program which can bit on the final second, much quicker than you can manually do it.
