Ebay Rant - Im confused

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CraigF

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I was bidding on an item for my young son on ebay.
My max was £90.51 the item sold for £83.53, so i logged on to pay for it only to find i hadnt won it.
Ok, this is weird i thought so i spoke with Ebay live chat person.
He pretty much implied that even though my max was 90 i was beaten by a sniper. I pointed out that; that was impossible as my max bid was £90+ he then said the other person had a larger max bid.
Surely it would bid the item to £90.51 and then if the winning bidder was higher it would be an amount more than my max of £90.51.

Below is the conversation.
He ended the conversation abruptly.

Ryan Madison
Welcome to eBay Live Help, my name is Ryan. Please give me a moment while I check your account details.

Ryan Madison
Hello Craig, I have now verified your account. How may I help you?

togger1969
i was bidding on an item

togger1969
my max bid was 90.51

togger1969
however item ended at 83+ but i was not the winner

togger1969
can you explain

Ryan Madison
Before we proceed, do you have any additional question aside from not endiong up as the winning bidder?

togger1969
no

togger1969
just that, i was about to pay for it then realized i wasnt the winning bidder

Ryan Madison
This means that the winnign bidder have a higher maximum bid than yours. This is the reason you were outbid.

togger1969
how can bidding finish at 83.53

togger1969
if my max bid was 90.51

togger1969
that does not make sense

togger1969
if the winning bidder bid more than me then it would match our bids up to my max then his would take over

togger1969
im going to send a copy of this conversation to the seller as im sure he will be interested to know that ebays bidding system has screwed him out of money. If this is how your bidding works then you could be staring down the barrell at a class action law suit..i suggest you choose your next answer very carefully.

Ryan Madison
The winning bidder used the method called sniping, which is placinga bid at the last second of the listing.

togger1969
so to recap...if i bid 90 and the winning bidder has bid say 100...he can win it even if he does not reach my max of 90

togger1969
so even though i have bid max 90...another bidder was able to win it at 83?

togger1969
thats impossible

togger1969
can you confirm that please? That even if my max bid is higher another bidder can still win.#

Ryan Madison
Yes, because the bid was placed right before the end of the listing. The most common reason people lose an auction even though their max bid is greater than the other bids is because auctions on eBay have minimum amounts the bid must go up by each time an item is bid on.
Chat Session Ended, Goodbye. (5009)
 
:thinking: i know of the sniper tool that some people use but have no idea how they can do that or how it could be seen as right by ebay!
I'd do exactly what you have said you would and contact the items seller as he may want to complain to ebay himself.
 
CraigF said:
The most common reason people lose an auction even though their max bid is greater than the other bids is because auctions on eBay have minimum amounts the bid must go up by each time an item is bid on.
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That's the caveat, after his 'winning' bid, you didn't have enough left in your max to meet the minimum next bid requirement.
 
gramps said:
That's the caveat, after his 'winning' bid, you didn't have enough left in your max to meet the minimum next bid requirement.
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I can understand that but surely it would have to outbid me first?
Going by your explanation if 2 of us were bidding on a Porsche and i had a max of 35 and you 47 it could stop the bidding at £10k as i would not be able to beat you so it would give you the item.
 
The bid increment for £60.01 - £150.00 is £2.00. If the winning bidder had entered a bid before yours of anything of £88.52 or more, your max bid wasn't high enough to beat it.

Did you see that your bid was accepted? If you weren't auto-sniping yourself, you should've seen a page saying your bid wasn't high enough. Your bidding history does not show any recent bid of £90.51.
 
Auctions have to end at a specific time, sniping tools such as auction sniper can bid at the very last second if timed properly with servers just down the road from ebays so can get a bid in at the very alst second and therefore not allow enough time for another bid.

One of those things unfortunately...
 
photon said:
The bid increment for £60.01 - £150.00 is £2.00. If the winning bidder had entered a bid before yours of anything of £88.52 or more, your max bid wasn't high enough to beat it.

Did you see that your bid was accepted? If you weren't auto-sniping yourself, you should've seen a page saying your bid wasn't high enough. Your bidding history does not show any recent bid of £90.51.
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Thats the weird thing, its accepted a £79 and an £81 but thats it. The next bid was the winners at £83.53 which according to bid history was his first bid.
 
so if the increments from £60.01 - £150 are £2 and CraigF' max bid was £90.51, then it should have automatically bid up from the £83.53 that the other bidder won at, there should have been at least 3 more bids at £2 intervals before the £90.51 bid wasnt enough for it to go up again
does that make sense? it did in my head lol
 
One of the reasons I don't go in for the bidding war is precisely for that reason. If I buy from e-bay,and I always go for the asking price if applicable or buy from a business.

Realspeed
 
realspeed said:
One of the reasons I don't go in for the bidding war is precisely for that reason. If I buy from e-bay,and I always go for the asking price if applicable or buy from a business.

Realspeed
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Same. I just can't be bothered with the auction/bidding rigmarole. I don't buy much from ebay, but I'd rather just choose Buy it Now if it's worth it to me.
 
I don't know why anyone bothers with scamBay anymore. I slung them when they footered about with the feedback system so that buyers (or was it sellers?) couldn't leave negative feedback.
 
as above, if £2 bids, then should have gone up to OP's max and then he's out of the frame......
 
CraigF said:
Thats the weird thing, its accepted a £79 and an £81 but thats it. The next bid was the winners at £83.53 which according to bid history was his first bid.
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If yours was £81.53 and his was £88.52 or more, then he wins by the £2 bid increment, despite your next bid of £90.51.

Can't be sure what happened if yours was exactly £81.00.
 
im guessing that the way it works is this.

as each £2 bid is added this takes a certain amount of time as it 'bids up' to the maximum, my guess is that the sniping software used means that a bid was put in by the software that did not allow enough time for the bidding system software to increase your bid and therefore you were out bid. granted this increment may take a fraction of a second but if the auction times out in that time the clock will stop on whatever bid it stops on and they are the winner



this might go someway to explain it but from your point of view you have lost out, from the sellers point of view they have lost out (from a potential higher final value) and ebay have missed out as they could have had a bigger final value payment. an arse but thats how the system works!
 
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I don't think there was anything wrong. All that happened is that the sniping software bid at the very very last second. The eBay system would have tried to bid on your behalf but if the auction has ended there is not much it can do.

EBay will only bid on your behalf if someone outbids you and the auction has not ended. In this case it did try to bid for you but the auction ended before the bid was complete because the last user bid at the very last second. Perfectly legal.

The only way to beat this system is for you to also use sniping software as it is practically impossible for a human to compete with a machine that can bid at the last few milliseconds before the auction ends. :)
 
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ziggy©;3615884 said:
I don't think there was anything wrong. All that happened is that the sniping software bid at the very very last second. The eBay system would have tried to bid on your behalf but if the auction has ended there is not much it can do.

EBay will only bid on your behalf if someone outbids you and the auction has not ended. In this case it did try to bid for you but the auction ended before the bid was complete because the last user bid at the very last second. Perfectly legal.

The only way to beat this system is for you to also use sniping software as it is practically impossible for a human to compete with a machine that can bid at the last few milliseconds before the auction ends. :)
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Yep this, as someone else also said earlier in the thread although this may be a bit clearer.
Have had the same thing occur and it has been this scenario each time, went on to use snipes too and never occured since.
Basically sniping with a preset max is more reliable than bidding with one through ebay, sad but true.
 
I sometimes sit and watch the countdown and then bid as close to the end as i can.

When i have been unable to be at home to bid, i have used the sniper (see Goofbay), excellent tool, and the bit about it i like the best is when someobody puts up best offers, you can search with Goofbay to see what prices the seller has agreed on and also rejected.

Not good that you lost out on the item though, and the seller lost out on extra revenue.
 
If you had deff bid the amount, I really can't see how you could loose the auction lower than your maximum bid

Not sure any sniper tool is that good, unless it forced a bid in between the current bid and your maximum, outside of the minimum increase and somehow bucked the system

Ollie
 
Olliel said:
If you had deff bid the amount, I really can't see how you could loose the auction lower than your maximum bid
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By having a maximum bid less than £2 more than the other guy's.
 
photon said:
By having a maximum bid less than £2 more than the other guy's.
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Not how it works - if you put in a maximum bid well above what the current (visible) bid is you only need to beat the existing maximum by 1p.

The minimum increase is only above the current (visible) bid

eBay does not automatically bid on your behalf by going A-B-A-B-A it looks at who bid what total and will do all of the interpolation in the background.
 
Personally, I think had you not been so rude in your communication with the ebay person, I think you might have got a more complete answer from them.

As to why it happened - well who knows. The seller may have a more complete bid history available though. How long before the auction ended did you put your high bid in?
 
Uneducated_Rick said:
Not how it works - if you put in a maximum bid well above what the current (visible) bid is you only need to beat the existing maximum by 1p.
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Could you point me to a bidding history where that has occurred?
 
Numerous from my experience, here is an example of how it might happen:

Current bid £80
Current maximum (unable to see) £100

Minimum bid I can enter £82
I bid £100.17

I'm winning at £100.17
 
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