Failed Auction

alykatz

aardvaak wrote: »

According to the email/message from ebay I was still winning till within the last minute.

Some people are so competitive they have to win all the time but perhaps their time will come

I have read this thread with great amusement.
It amazes me the level of ignorance some people have when it it comes to bidding on an auction and not winning. They simply cannot seem to grasp that no matter how late or early a bid is the highest bid wins. So simple really it beggars belief that some just cannot grasp the concept.

As for this comment
"Some people are so competitive they have to win all the time but perhaps their time will come,"
well surely at a fundamental level thats what bidding is all about.

glentoran99

aardvaak wrote: »

According to the email/message from ebay I was still winning till within the last minute.

Some people are so competitive they have to win all the time but perhaps their time will come

in that same message it said "you may still loose the item consider increasing your bid" or words to that effect

molerat

I quite often manually snipe at the last minute. Too many people put chance bids in trying to up the price for the hell of it so I save my max bid to the last moment.

tykesi

I've had a dig at the OP earlier in the thread and while I'm not apologising for that I think the OP may genuinely need a bit of help with eBay.

I think the fact that eBay are 'auctions' is confusing aardvark so hopefully this may help him/her.

The typical auction (in an auction house for example) would have all interested parties in a room and indicating they want to bid. They usually do this by putting a hand in the air or something similar. Now each of these bidders will have in their head what their maximum bid is for each item similar to all the bidders on eBay. Each bidder will need to indicate every time they want to increase their bid up to their maximum at which point they can withdraw from the bidding. The person who is willing to go higher and therefore has the highest maximum bid wins.

eBay works in a similar way but also provides the tools to save you having to be sat in front of your computer/phone/tablet putting in multiple bids. If you see something you want to bid on then by all means place a bid but put in the maximum you are prepared to pay. eBay will then so the bidding (putting your hand up in the air) for you up to your maximum bid. Whichever bidder has the highest at the end wins, whether they put that bid in with a week to go, a minute to go or a second to go. Your best bet (as has been said on this thread) is to bid your maximum when you first see it then don’t check back until the auction has finished. If you feel the need to keep going back and upping your highest bid then you have bid the incorrect amount in the first place.

If the item goes for more than you were prepared to pay, great! You’re not going to be out of pocket.

This is complicated by the sniping tools which can be seen as being sneaky but again, so long as you have put in your absolute maximum bid it doesn’t matter if you are beaten by someone who bid with a week left or a second.

I hope this makes sense and helps with your future ebaying aardvark otherwise I fear you’re going to be getting angrier and angrier with it (and the ‘toerags’ who win the auctions) through the fault of nobody but yourself!

soolin

In line with tykesi's post I would also add that it is possible to use a proxy / pre bid even at a B and M auction, and people don't really understand how that works either.

I've seen someone leave a bid of say £50 on an item knowing the auctioneer will bid from the book for them. Items goes in the room for £55 and original bidder then turns up shouting and hollering that it isn't fair as he left a bid and would have gone higher if they had realised it would go for more. Same rules apply though, the highest bid on the table is the one that wins.

Oldfatgrumpy

I do my own sniping, from my armchair where I regularly sit Mon-Fri whilst enjoying my life on benefits (if you can call a small pension paid for over 30yrs in work a benefit), by bidding my maximum when the countdown gets to around 7 seconds. The bid usually registers via domestic wi-fi in the last 2 or 3 seconds. I also bid from my armchair at work when I'm doing 12hr part-time weekend shifts, in the same way but with fewer seconds to spare because the office's hard-wired network is really quick. when deciding how much to bid I ask myself at what price will I feel sick if I don't get it, at what price will I feel really sick if I do get it because I've spent too much, then I split the difference and add a random number of pence more than 50. The number of times I've won something for hundreds of quid for 55p more than the next highest bidder is surprising.

aardvaak

tykesi wrote: »

I don't but I usually stick in the motoring forum and most of your posts in there are nonsense as well.

Well your posts don't make much sense either

aardvaak

fishybusiness wrote: »

Rightly or wrongly I use a snipe tool.

Often early bids raise the final price, seems sensible to bid in the closing seconds.

Not only that, it is easy to set up the item number and the maximum I want to pay, walk away and get on with life, come back and see if I have won.

Note - the maximum I want to pay is still the same as not using a snipe tool. I lose many many auctions as I have not set the bid high enough.

Seems fair play to me.

Seems to be very unfair and cheating

aardvaak

Brooker_Dave wrote: »

Look on the bright side, you now don't have to go on caravan holidays.

How is that good?

Ianp2000

I use snipers a lot and find them invaluable especially for auctions that finish at inconvenient times. I have got a dedicated eBay account that I only use for sniped auctions. It bids in the last 30 seconds of the auction (if you go premium it bids at 10 seconds). It means I do not have to sit in front of my machine at the auction end. It also means you do not end up bidding More Than you want IE you do not get carried away!