markus_UK

Yo all ...

Ok, I'm new to ebay and do not know all the tricks. ..

Anyway, I bid on an item I know would not be required by many - it was a specific piece of radiation monitoring equipment for which only a few of us would want (or have any idea was it was).

I put a bid in on Friday (the only bid) .... then 10 seconds before the bid closed this Sunday evening, somone came in with a higher bid ....

Its got to be a bot ...seriously, I do not believe someone was sitting there clicking the mouse ready to out bid me ...

Am I missing something here ... ??

cheers

MArk

Account deleted by request

probably www.auctionsniper.com or something similar.


chopper.

RON

'Am I missing something here ... ??'

Yes,
Someone else wanted it, if you're sneaky on ebay, you wait til the last minute to bid!!!

djuk

You're quite right - although on particular ones I have sat there ready to click at the last minute People generally use bid-sniping applications which do just that, wait until the closing seconds and fire in with a bid

David

StickyMicky

LMAO

i do this all the time mate, synchronise the watch and everything
works 75% of the time

thats auctions for you

unclebuck

LOL - I just did the same thing myself - put a bid in with less than a minute left. job done.

http://cgi.ebay.co.uk/ws/eBayISAPI.d...MEWN%3AIT&rd=1

If I see something I fancy I will watch it and see how the bidding shapes up. You sometimes get a last minute rush. If there is - walk away. If not - you can pounce successfully.

UB

Spoon

That's simply called "leading the bidders into a false sense of security".

I often do it, make a note of it's closing time then bang, in goes a bid just when somebody thought there was no interest.

You might think because of the low early bids that there is very little interest but don't be fooled, we are there.

Must go, an item closes in 3mins, 24, 23, 22....

unclebuck

I just put a reminder in my phone. 5 mins before time up.

UB

StickyMicky

honestly tho, i sell goods on there now, and there all on 10 day auctions and even the buy it now ones dont go until the last day

my last one, i had 7 people watching a buy it now auction until the last day and then sumbody bought it

strange world lol

Freak

i never bid on something until the last ten seconds- ocassionally last 5.

yes i do sit there waiting.

I also sell a lot- and a lot of people do this- nothing for ages, then a frenzy in the last few mins.

ALi-B

iTrader: (1)

The last minute of auctions can go quite mental...having broadband and pressing F5 ever 2 seconds is a must if you *Really* want something

Even for crap you wouldn't expect to sell....for example I put in a bid for a Borg-Warner 65 autobox, didn't even know if it worked! (probably not). I put in a courtesy bid of £20 as there were no bids and I did tell the seller I was interested.

Then bam, 1 week later and 1 minute left someones outbid me, and we're on a bid war going up to £60. I let him win it for that much - sucker! £20 to £60 in 60 seconds for some manky old gearbox!

Hammy Hamster

I'm no expert, but I thought that you could put your highest bid in and the system would keep bidding for you, until your limit was reached.

Is that not the case?

markus_UK

Ok ..thanks peeps fior the info and advice ...

Just tell me this please (as I am a novice to ebay)..

The starting price was £150

My bid (max bid) was £190

The chap bid £195 in the last 10 seconds ...

As far as I understand, whilst he would have known that I was the highest bidder, he did not know what the max bid was ?! Is that right.

cheers

Mark

Taff107

But all he had to do was put £200 as his maximum bid. E bay automatically takes his bid as the highest.

CrisPDuk

Depends what you're looking at, if it is a common item, you can just put in the max you are prepared to pay, and leave it till the auction has closed - I do this quite often, as it prevents 'bidding fever' taking over - Or if it is something quite rare that you really want, view it once, make a note of it's finish time and don't view it again until five minutes before, then, as stated above, don't bid until the last 10s or so. If somebody has put a proxy in you're screwed, but most times they haven't. And as Ali-B says Broadband and F5 are a definite advantage at the moment

dba

Treat Ebay like any other auction,bid what you think the item is worth and the MAXIMUM you are prepared to pay,then if you lose,you wont be disappointed.It sounds to me that you put to low a bid in,Auctionsniper will bid the max that someone else believes it worth,so it shouldn't matter one jot whether they did that at the end or at the beginning,the issue here could be you bid lower than you were prepared to pay.

ps the guy probably didn't bid £195,he could have bid anything but the increments were £5,so his bid was higher so it took him £5 over yours

Freak

yeah
like the time i had to re bid with 2 secs or soemthing daft left
i was logged in and meant to type 51.50
mis typed and it went in as 5110!!!

But as the previous maximum had only been 49.00, i got it for 50 quid.

If you bid before the end of the auction all you are doing it putting the price up ( from a buyers point of view)
From a sellers point of view- BID BID BID

Paulo P

iTrader: (42)

I never bid until the last day on ebay and I often won't submit a bit until the last 5 minutes I see no point in bidding early because it pushes the bids up

^Qwerty^

The other week I bid on an item and in the last minute I was outbid, so I left it. Mine was the first bid, the person who "won" the item was the second. Within five minutes of the end of auction, I received an email from the seller with a chance to buy the item at the price I'd gone to, as the buyer who won had pulled out.

That had scam written all over it. Either the seller or one of his mates was trying to push the price up, expecting me to outbid them. Can't prove anything which is a shame. C%nts.

Jerome

The more I hear about ebay, the more I'm put off using it.

Surely if someone wins an auction, they have to pay for it?

Hammy Hamster

But surely you still only bid what you think a thing is worth, otherwise you will end up bidding more as 'bidding fever' takes over.

Maybe I'm just of a different mind set. I'd just put in what I am prepared to pay and leave it at that, until the end of the auction.

Spoon

They should do and it indeed can be investigated by Ebay if they don't.

The problem with the above when it's a friend falsely pushing up the bid is that the seller isn't going to report it as he is in on it.

What it needs is the guy who is then offered the goods as the "second choice" to report the "winning bidder" to Ebay. They can they see from a glance if the seller and "winning bidder" live nearby to each other etc and take it from there.

TelBoy

There are people - even self-admitted ones here on SN, who deliberately get involved in the last minute frenzy, to drive the price higher, without ANY intention of buying the item, JUST for the buzz of it, to "narrowly escape" being the last bidder.

*That* in my opinion, is human nature at its very worst.

Spoon

Yup, a different mind-set.

Even though you think an item is worth X pounds, why pay that when a little time watching it's progress may well save you pounds?

Spoon

If you have no intention of buying something then why? How daft is that? Go and have a bowl of Farleys Rusks instead, gives a similar buzz.

TelBoy

Exactly, it's almost deranged behaviour. We all enjoy excitement, but doing it at the expense of somebody who genuinely wants an item is just sheer bloody-mindedness...

Hammy Hamster

How could doing that "save you pounds"? You've already decided what you think an item is worth. Why hang around waiting to pay more?

Spoon

Of course if your winning bid (albeit £'s above the other bids) wins the item but you don't actually have to pay that much,(merely maybe £5 more than the last bid), then it doesn't apply.

jbryant

Because some other muppet may be willing to pay over the odds and outbid you. End result is that you lose the purchase for what would have been a good price.

Bid in the last minute, and there's less chance that such a person won't have a chance to react as they're new to the scene and don't realise that many buyers employ this method (self included).

Joolz

stevencotton

You've answered your own flawed argument!