Why do people bid at the last moment?

globalds

Snipping software does all the work ..So all my bids and I only bid one time go in 4 seconds before end of the auction .
This gives me the chance to investigate the competition ..Read up on a few of their previous bids ...see how they win ...Also if it's their first big ticket item etc..And all the time they don't know I exist .

PandaPants_2

I very rarely bid before the last few minutes/hour. I've seen rugby tickets with 5 or 6 days to go already at £800+

Why, oh why would people bid that much with DAYS to go????

tomstickland

JoeyG wrote: »

None of these answers really explain why people bid at the last minute

Your maximum bid should be exactly that - the maximum you are prepared to pay... if you are put out cos someone beat you by 20p then you didnt set your maximum bid correctly at the start

I fail to see what advantage you gain from bidding at the last minute... you will not get it cheaper, you will get it for a little more than the next highest bidder, same as if you bid right from the start... your max bid is never on show so no-one really knows!

It seems pretty obvious to me. If you are prepared to pay £10 for something and put a bid on 7 days before the auction ends, then someone else might come along and bid it up to £10.10.
If you didn't put a bid in then they might bid it up to £4 or whatever.
Then 10s before the end of the auction you put in £10 and win the item for £4.10.

DaveAshton

Wouldn't work on my auctions, I tend to stop them a minute or so before the end time, just to inconvenience snipers and the like. Might cost me a few pence (as in it sells for less than it may have, not that I have to pay to close it...), but at least it's fair on the bidders that use ebay properly, and don't use unfair tactics.

SE

Soubrette

DaveAshton wrote: »

Wouldn't work on my auctions, I tend to stop them a minute or so before the end time, just to inconvenience snipers and the like. Might cost me a few pence (as in it sells for less than it may have, not that I have to pay to close it...), but at least it's fair on the bidders that use ebay properly, and don't use unfair tactics.

SE

I've heard this idea before but I don't agree with it. If everyone put in their maximum bid at the end of an auction then the person prepared to pay the most will win, much more like a real auction than these people who put in their first 'max' then their second 'max' etc etc.

Sou

JoeyG

tomstickland wrote: »

It seems pretty obvious to me. If you are prepared to pay £10 for something and put a bid on 7 days before the auction ends, then someone else might come along and bid it up to £10.10.
If you didn't put a bid in then they might bid it up to £4 or whatever.
Then 10s before the end of the auction you put in £10 and win the item for £4.10.

But assuming the other person has played by the rules, they will have already set their max bid to £10.10 (or £12 or whatever)... so it shouldnt matter if you bid £10 in the last 10s, they will always win.

If they're not playing by the 'rules', they probably wont bother putting in a bid until the last 10s either!

Idiophreak

DaveAshton wrote: »

Wouldn't work on my auctions, I tend to stop them a minute or so before the end time, just to inconvenience snipers and the like. Might cost me a few pence (as in it sells for less than it may have, not that I have to pay to close it...), but at least it's fair on the bidders that use ebay properly, and don't use unfair tactics.

SE

I don't use ebay too much, but I find this is an interesting idea.

Obviously, the value of the item determines the amount you'll lose through closing this minute or so earlier....but I know I've been involved in several auctions where the price has gone up by 40 or 50% in the last couple of minutes and a couple where things have gone up 100-200%, so you may well be losing out on a fair bit of cash by deliberately "inconveniencing" your buyers.

Also, I kinda resent the idea that bidding at the last minute is either "unfair" or "improper" as you seem to suggest.

Everyone has a chance to put their maximum bid in - if they've done this and they're subsequently outbid - I don't really see how that's unfair...it's just how an auction works. Furthermore, you presume that pretty much everyone who's bidding has access to ebay somehow - so they have equal opportunity to bid at the last moment if they see fit. There's nothing unfair about it.

I'd also suggest that the more experienced a buyer is, the more likely they are to bid at the end of an auction (normally because they, themselves, get fed up of being outbid in the last minute - if you can't beat them, join them) - so by excluding last minute bidders, you're probably excluding a lot of "good" customers - that will pay promptly, know how to leave feedback and generally make your job, as the seller, easier.

melliott1963

DaveAshton wrote: »

Wouldn't work on my auctions, I tend to stop them a minute or so before the end time, just to inconvenience snipers and the like. Might cost me a few pence (as in it sells for less than it may have, not that I have to pay to close it...), but at least it's fair on the bidders that use ebay properly, and don't use unfair tactics.

SE

Let me have your eBay Id so I can make a note never to look at any of your items.

I really think you're cutting your nose off to spite you're own face. As has been said, I've see so many auctions where the price rockets in the last minute, that to cut it short could well be halving your profits or even more!

Anyway, please can people stop trying to convince the doubters why it's a good idea to bid at the last minute, so that those of us who do can continue getting our items cheaper.

rchlbentley

I had an item that with just under a minute left was at £40+ and was expecting to go for about £80 ish, and way needless to say last few seconds LITERALLY it jumped to a final price of £120, i was ecstatic.

Definetly cutting off your nose to spite your face.

Idiophreak

rchlbentley wrote: »

I had an item that with just under a minute left was at £40+ and was expecting to go for about £80 ish, and way needless to say last few seconds LITERALLY it jumped to a final price of £120, i was ecstatic.

It's important to remember these days that you don't even need a last-minute bidding war for this to happen.

All it takes is for someone to place a maximum bid early on for (say) £120 and have it knocked up slowly to £40...then just one person comes along at the last second and sticks £115 in and *POW* - £40 jumps to 120 - in one click of the mouse, 1 second from the end of the auction...