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

precipice

Avoriaz wrote: »

Say an item starts at £5. Even if you bid £20, you will get it for £5 if no one else bids. If you are willing to pay £20, then bid £20. Don’t bid £10, lose out to someone who bids £12 and then regret not bidding £13 or £15 or £20. That is just daft. Always bid the maximum that you are prepared to pay.

_except_ on Dutch auctions, where:

"eBay doesn't place proxy bids in Multiple Item Auctions
In a Multiple Item Auction, eBay places the bid you enter, rather than the lowest amount required for you to remain the high bidder. This means that if you're the only bidder, you'll pay the amount you bid per item, not the lowest amount necessary to win the auction (i.e. the starting price)."

I've been caught out by that. Very annoying.

P.

greeneye

precipice wrote: »

_except_ on Dutch auctions, where:

"eBay doesn't place proxy bids in Multiple Item Auctions
In a Multiple Item Auction, eBay places the bid you enter, rather than the lowest amount required for you to remain the high bidder. This means that if you're the only bidder, you'll pay the amount you bid per item, not the lowest amount necessary to win the auction (i.e. the starting price)."

I've been caught out by that. Very annoying.

P.

Aha, this has happened to me before - I thought it was down to the sniping software I was using - it certainly is blinkin annoying and should be made clear on dutch auction pages.
When I posted it on here thinking it was something to do with my snipe software no one had an answer - so it's obviously not widely known.

Avoriaz

precipice wrote: »

_except_ on Dutch auctions, where:.."eBay doesn't place proxy bids in Multiple Item Auctions
…I've been caught out by that. Very annoying. .

I didn’t know that so thanks for pointing it out.

I've never bid on a Dutch Auction. I usually only buy items on standard auctions.

Can you submit multiple bids on a Dutch auction or will your highest bid always count? In other words, if the starting price is £5, and I bid £5, and then later bid £10, will my £10 bid override my £5 bid even if no one else bids?

codger

moomin_white wrote: »

wow! some posters on here really know how to make you feel welcome!

thing is with bidding late, especially if there are no other bids yet - people are often tempted to bid low because they think no one else is going to bid. That is what i trying to get at.

moomin: apologies -- it was certainly not my intention to make you feel unwelcome! :beer:

As you've already seen, this whole question of "lateness" is something of an irrelevance: the fate of bidders who bid low is pretty much going to be the same regardless of timing.

Unless they build some "headroom" to their bid to allow it to be automatically increased to their self-imposed maximum -- by eBay proxy, or snipe engine -- then they're doing themselves no favours.

I'm still surprised, after all these years, that I often win items for half the maximum I was prepared to go to.

Explanation, obviously, is that my "valuation" was higher than anyone else's.

But I also think, when I look at an item's bidding history, that there's another possibility: the bidding behaviour of eBayers who haven't grasped that a theoretical maximum bid remains exactly that unless and until rival bids push it to the point that it literally "maxes out".

It's that failure to grasp this which makes me wonder if so many of the competing bids I see in a bidding history are not so much reflections of a bidder's personal valuation, as one-offs placed by an eBayer more nervous of the bidding process than anything else.

Anyway. Welcome to MSE!