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You will pay whatever the final bid is for you. That means that they came there, saw the current bid as $8 and entered $25. Because you had typed in $100, it automatically outbid that person past their limit and landed you at $26.
Here's how it works . . .
If you type in $100, it will consider that as being the highest you're willing to bid. Everytime somebody bids on the item, your bid will automatically increase by one dollar in order to outbid the person.
So if it starts at $8 and you put in $100 (as the very first bid), it'll show your first bid as being $8. When somebody comes along and bids $9, it'll automatically bid for you and raise it to $10, and so on. However, if it gets to the point that it auto-bids $100 for you and then somebody comes along and bids $101, you'll have to come back and bid again, because it will think $100 is the highest you were willing to go.
Hope that explains is clearly enough. Sounds a little confusing the way I wrote it, I'm sure.
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You will pay whatever the final bid is for you. That means that they came there, saw the current bid as $8 and entered $25. Because you had typed in $100, it automatically outbid that person past their limit and landed you at $26.
Here's how it works . . .
If you type in $100, it will consider that as being the highest you're willing to bid. Everytime somebody bids on the item, your bid will automatically increase by one dollar in order to outbid the person.
So if it starts at $8 and you put in $100 (as the very first bid), it'll show your first bid as being $8. When somebody comes along and bids $9, it'll automatically bid for you and raise it to $10, and so on. However, if it gets to the point that it auto-bids $100 for you and then somebody comes along and bids $101, you'll have to come back and bid again, because it will think $100 is the highest you were willing to go.
Hope that explains is clearly enough. Sounds a little confusing the way I wrote it, I'm sure.
Actually, it doesn't sound confusing.
As a rule I never bid on anything until zero hour- If you have a standing bid of $100.00, someone can keep bidding it up untl you pay more than you probably have to for the item.
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GUYS:
Thanks for all the info. You guys confirmed what I thought about automatic bidding on ebay.
I plan to post my maximum bid for "$100" at under 30 seconds left. Hopefully, no one has a higher automatic bid than mine.
You will be fine. There is a bit of finesse involved in these things.
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I lost my enthusiasm for bidding a few years ago. I had placed a high maximum bid for a CD and was sure I'd get it. After the auction closed and I had lost, the seller contacted me and said he just happened to have a second copy and I could have it for my maximum bid, which he somehow knew.
It seemed pretty obvious that the seller had used a proxy or friend to bid it up and discover my maximum. That struck me as unethical and I didn't reply to his email.
Also, I had heard that some bidders were using some kind of "gunslinger" software that would automatically defeat anyone bidding by hand.
My impressions are years out of date, so current info would be appreciated.
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eBay has a "Second Chance Offer" feature in which a seller can offer extra copies of an item for sale to non-winning bidders at their maximum bid amount (which is obvious since they were all outbid by the eventual winner.) Unless you ended up bidding more than you planned to (and lost anyway), this option allows you to still get the item you want at the highest price you were prepared to pay.
Okay, but it still reeks. Who's to say the second item, if given its own auction, would also reach my maximum bid? With the high boy satisfied, I might get the second item for less than my max. I should have that chance in a fair second auction.
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Posted: |
Nov 3, 2009 - 8:47 PM
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By: |
antipodean
(Member)
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Okay, but it still reeks. Who's to say the second item, if given its own auction, would also reach my maximum bid? With the high boy satisfied, I might get the second item for less than my max. I should have that chance in a fair second auction.
I understand how it could appear. I think the basis for the "Second Chance Option" is for sellers who happen to have multiple items (and didn't want to run a Dutch auction) to offer them to other bidders as a convenience. I've used this before on various occasions, e.g. an item which attracted 4 different bidders ended with the following results:
Bidder A - $12.88 (winning bid - actual high bid could have been more)
Bidder B - $12.38 (high bid)
Bidder C - $11.50 (high bid)
Bidder D - $2.05 (high bid)
Obviously I am contractually obligated to sell to Bidder A, but I also have the option to give the others a Second Chance. Looking at this, I might decide to offer Bidder B and Bidder C (since both are reasonably high values) but not Bidder D, which was more of a speculative try than a serious effort.
If Bidder B or C accept, the transaction is no different from a "Buy It Now: it saves them the hassle of having to bid again, plus the certainty of knowing exactly what they have to pay for (which in any case was their high bid, to begin with.) They might even feel a bit of schadenfraude because they managed to get the item they wanted, without paying the highest price that the winner did.
The deciding factor which applies to both the buyer (before he or she decides to send out Second Chance Offers) and seller (whether to accept the SCO) is whether, if the (identical) item was listed again in a subsequent auction, it would end up selling for higher or lower than the bidded prices this round.
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Okay, but it still reeks. Who's to say the second item, if given its own auction, would also reach my maximum bid? With the high boy satisfied, I might get the second item for less than my max. I should have that chance in a fair second auction.
I understand how it could appear. I think the basis for the "Second Chance Option" is for sellers who happen to have multiple items (and didn't want to run a Dutch auction) to offer them to other bidders as a convenience. I've used this before on various occasions, e.g. an item which attracted 4 different bidders ended with the following results:
Bidder A - $12.88 (winning bid - actual high bid could have been more)
Bidder B - $12.38 (high bid)
Bidder C - $11.50 (high bid)
Bidder D - $2.05 (high bid)
Obviously I am contractually obligated to sell to Bidder A, but I also have the option to give the others a Second Chance. Looking at this, I might decide to offer Bidder B and Bidder C (since both are reasonably high values) but not Bidder D, which was more of a speculative try than a serious effort.
If Bidder B or C accept, the transaction is no different from a "Buy It Now: it saves them the hassle of having to bid again, plus the certainty of knowing exactly what they have to pay for (which in any case was their high bid, to begin with.) They might even feel a bit of schadenfraude because they managed to get the item they wanted, without paying the highest price that the winner did.
The deciding factor which applies to both the buyer (before he or she decides to send out Second Chance Offers) and seller (whether to accept the SCO) is whether, if the (identical) item was listed again in a subsequent auction, it would end up selling for higher or lower than the bidded prices this round.
Perfectly expressed. That's about it.
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I understand how it could appear. I think the basis for the "Second Chance Option" is for sellers who happen to have multiple items (and didn't want to run a Dutch auction) to offer them to other bidders as a convenience.
Or when the original high bidder/winner flakes out and doesn't pay, and the seller would rather offer the item to the next-highest bidder than go through the hassle of relisting the item (I speak from experience because I've been that seller).
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Posted: |
Nov 4, 2009 - 3:23 AM
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By: |
antipodean
(Member)
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SCO was most useful for me when I had many copies of the same item, e.g. a stack of the identical CD title. I would use a $0.01 starting bid to attract watchers and make potential bidders get mentally and emotionally attached to the idea of acquiring the item. (They don't know, of course, that I have more than one copy of the same title.)
That way, I may get two or three bidders who will bid each other up really high, and I would offer SCO to anyone who crosses the "sale threshold", which is an arbitrary amount which I'm happy to sell the item for any bid above this number. I'd put the SCO on a 24-hour period to "push" some urgency to the decision, because anyone who doesn't instantly jump on the offer when they first see it are increasingly unlikely to accept it later (this is from firsthand empirical experience.)
After all, given that each round of auction lasts 5 or 7 days, it's simply efficient business to be able to sell to as many bidders as you can each round.
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Or when the original high bidder/winner flakes out and doesn't pay, and the seller would rather offer the item to the next-highest bidder than go through the hassle of relisting the item (I speak from experience because I've been that seller).
If the top bidder flakes out as you put it, then I was driven to my maximum bid in a dishonest process. That's what you sellers don't get. You're so busy figuring out how best to shear the sheep, you've forgotten that honest bidders deserve an honest auction.
If the winning bid was not real, then the whole process is tainted and my maximum bid is totally irrelevant. There's no reason to think the item should have gone that high.
If the winning bid was real and the item is sold, then a second item should not have its price artificially bumped up by that now-satisfied-and-gone bidder.
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Or when the original high bidder/winner flakes out and doesn't pay, and the seller would rather offer the item to the next-highest bidder than go through the hassle of relisting the item (I speak from experience because I've been that seller).
If the top bidder flakes out as you put it, then I was driven to my maximum bid in a dishonest process. That's what you sellers don't get. You're so busy figuring out how best to shear the sheep, you've forgotten that honest bidders deserve an honest auction.
There's nothing dishonest on the seller's part, if the winning bidder decides not to pay. If anyone is dishonest, it's the person who won the auction and failed to fulfill their obligation to pay for the item. If the seller then decides to give a "second chance" option to the runner-up bidder, the seller is willing to accept a lower price than what the auction originally ended at. If the runner-up bidder is unwilling to pay that price, they shouldn't have bid that amount in the first place. However, unlike the original high bidder/winner, the runner-up is not obligated to pay for the item; it is simply an option presented by the seller, who is seeking to sell the item to the person who was next in line. I've been offered a "second chance" on several occassions, and was grateful for it, because I was bidding for a reason: I wanted to buy the item.
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