paulr

the highest bid on an item is£50,i'm prepared to pay £150,if i bid £150 does it go up to 150 or to 55?

davegtt

if u bid £150 then it'll show the next bid at £55 then if some1 bids £60 it'll automatically put your bid up to £65 until finally u hit £150

Paulo P

iTrader: (42)

Dave's got it spot on If I were in that postion though I'd bid £150.55 so that your bid remains just over £150 just incase

Buzzer

If you want it that much, why not install a free 30 day trial of bid sniper

That way it will bid for you in the very last second of the auction and get you a snip as others will think they have it for a good price but you sneak in with 0.5 secs to go with a winning bid.

My bid sniper has NEVER failed me

paulr

cheers...

..cant be bothered with stuff like bidsniper,if i dont get it so be it.

Les Behan

I had a look at Sniper, not closely admittedly, but I was worried about handing over my user id and password to them. I understand they need this information to bid on your behalf but what assurances do they give about securing and misuse of this information?

Cheers
Les

paulr

if i'm only prepared to pay £150 and the other guy is only prepared to pay £100 using bid sniper,if my first bid is 150 then i'll still get it for 105....yes?

jjones

yes

paulr

okay,so bidsniper is only good for trying to get something cheap IF the other people are bidding by making one bid at a time.If they bid by going straight to their max bid then its irrelevant.

secondly,if i bid straight to my max bid and leave it at that,are there any disadvantages to doing that?

Spoon

Yes, you may be outbid, that's all.

gsm1

The current high bidder at £50 may also have already placed a maximum bid in well above £50. If it is £90 then as soon as you put your £150 bid in you will be the current high bidder at £95 (or thereabouts).
Most buyers on Ebay rarely bid their maximum in one hit though.

gsm1

One is that some dodgy sellers use an alias bidder to work out how far you are willing to bid and then retract the bid that beats your maximum. It's pretty rare though, IMO.

paulr

gsm,having been outbid once before,and knowing how horrible it was to be done with seconds to go,i'm very reluctant to participate in it again.the only way i will is to put in a max bid and so be it.

btwwhat if 2 people bid with bidsniper,they cant both win???

TEXAS PETE

Because people can bid up to and over your maximum, raising there bid further and further but if you snipe them you don’t give them the chance! They might think there secure at £100 and you come in on the last second and ‘win’ the item! Some people (amateurs) get in to a biding war and raise the price up and up, if one of the people sat back and sniped……. the winner !!

gregh

if the final bids are equal it's the person who bid the higher value first who wins.

Best bet is to decide your max and don't go above it. You can do a manual snipe, by putting in your max bid with seconds to go.

regards,

greg

gsm1

I suspect if 2 or more people are using bidsniper at the same maximum bid then it's down to nanoseconds who wins.

gsm1

I was bidding on something once and was waiting to the last 10 seconds. Stuck my bid in and the bloody 'Enter username and password screen came up'!

Henrik

iTrader: (5)

gsm1: I know that feeling all too well, and once my browser froze up as well

Tiggs

bear in mind this:

other bloke has put in max bid of £90 say, but he's well over current bid so it shows at £50......he wont go over £90....he thinks.

you come along and bid £150, it now shows £95 and other bloke is pissed off...he now has a few days to realise he really wants it and finds the extra......before bid ends he is also biding up near you.

best is to let the item sit at £50 till last 30 secs....you then go in, if maty has set £90 at his max then he sees he's out bid he is less likley to bid higher at that point.

T

(which is why some sellers bid up their items- not in a nasty evil way but just to get the price up to a realistic point)

paulr

good point Tiggs.

milo

out of interest, what happens if 2 people are both bidding on the same item and they both have bid sniper?

Buzzer

.........and assuming they have both made identical bids

I would imagine the one with the fastest ISP

P1Fanatic

I always wait til the last minute. If you bid your maximum well in advance it gives people more time to bid again or at least think about it. Keep quiet so they think no one else is interested.

Simon.

Tiggs

prob is for sellers this happens a lot so they self bid.

i have an item on ebay now at £200...its worth £600 and has 43 watchers! all waiting for the last 10 mins no doubt.

if i get a mate to bid £400 it lets the watchers know they are gonna need to consider good bids and not screw around........with 4 days left some of them will up their max bid (in their mind) which they may not do if they saw big numbers flying around in the dying seconds.

paulr

43 watchers,how do you know that?

Leslie

Wait until the last 30 seconds and bang in your maximum bid, gives no time for you to be outbid and stops the other bids going too high with luck.

Les

Tiggs

check MY EBAY, it tells you

paulr

okay.

paulr

can you outbid yourself.
say you bid 150 for something and are winning,then decide to go to your max bid of 200,will it go to 200 or stay at 150?

Buzzer

It will tell you that you are daft tw@t and that you are already the highest bidder

However it will register your willingness to increase and will automatically bid in £xx increments until either you win or run out of money

Paulr,

My cousin started using ebay recently, to sell from home. She learnt by bidding on nothing things like books for 20p each and stuff like that, y'know worthless stuff just so she could become more adept at it for when "something good" comes along