How to bid and win for a lower amount - the secret eBay sellers don't want you 2 know

anewman

On low start price auctions with no bids, you can sometimes put other people off bidding by using the following procedure.

Bid, but do not bid your maximum amount yet. Bid the start price. What you do after this is up to you, I recommend leaving some time and increasing your maximum bid by the minimum bid increase. Do this a good few times, and finish with the genuine max amount you wish to bid.

An item with 99p, 7 bids from the same person (hence increasing max bid) is less likely to get competing bids than a 99p item with 1 bid.

If it works, it works by making a potential outbidder believe that you have bid alot more than you have, even though your maximum bid is not displayed. If the potential outbidder feels they have no prospect of outbidding you they may not bother.

Of course it's not a guaranteed method, and it won't work with every auction, but it may sometimes help.

At least the idea is free here to you all and not sold on eBay with the promise of positive feedback for 99p buy it now :rotfl: :rotfl: :rotfl:

Hintza

Tried that years ago, it never worked for me.

tomstickland

It can't do any harm though.

anewman

I suppose the idea of eBay is people bid and see if their bid wins, this relies on people thinking their bid is unlikely to make a dent. It may well work more successfully on higher value items like cars? I came up with the idea when I saw an item I was interested in had 3 bids from the same person. I looked at the start price, and thought there's no chance I'd get it for the price I want, so I left it.

Avoriaz

I don’t agree.

The key to buying success on ebay is:

Bid once

Bid your maximum

Bid late, in the dying seconds of the auction



That works for me.

lewt

yeah i use goofbay........

FloFlo

I would think it just pushes up the price and can turn into an auction battle, much better to bid late - but I rarely follow my own advice, lol.

TKPeters

Proof it doesn't always work; Item number: 280175343100

X reg Rover 75 1.8 Classic SE with TEO (TED?) Number Plate (Car Worth £1600 trade) Auction 99p start & BIN £2650, I bid £500 & currently £1750 with 4 days left ????

anewman

TKPeters wrote: »

Proof it doesn't always work; Item number: 280175343100

X reg Rover 75 1.8 Classic SE with TEO (TED?) Number Plate (Car Worth £1600 trade) Auction 99p start & BIN £2650, I bid £500 & currently £1750 with 4 days left ????

The problem is you didn't bid 99p first, then £1.05, then £1.10, then £1.15, £1.20, £1.30. £1.40, £1.50, and then £500. This would have put the item at 99p with 8 bids. This isn't what bidder 1 on that auction did it seems.

Take for example this finished item

http://offer.ebay.co.uk/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?ViewBids&item=170167905928

it looks like the bidder has bid more than £10 as his maximum bid. If you don't want to pay more than £10, you might not bother trying to outbid him knowing he's increased his max bid 4 times in total. Using my method, the max bids are in fact not genune increases in what you feel like paying to prevent someone else winning, but increases of 5p each time.

FloFlo

But someones got to bid against you each time by the minimum amount or it won't work?

anewman

FloFlo wrote: »

But someones got to bid against you each time by the minimum amount or it won't work?

No the number of bids still increases on the ebay item page, and the first bid stays the same until someone else bids. Consider the example item above, only one bidder, £4.99 start price, 4 bids in total and no other bids. Bidder won the item for the start price. The higher bids would only have been revealed had they been outbid, but throughout the running of the auction it stated it had 4 bids, all by same bidder.

I saw this item and when I looked at it I thought it wasn't worth the effort of bidding as I wouldn't get it for the price I wanted, and the first bidder got it for £4.99. We don't know if he/she added 5p each bid or £10.