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These 66 comments are related to the topic:
Buying on e-bay
Buying on e-bay
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Replies: 66
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would any one buy me a cheap car and a cheap computer on e bay , I will either send a cheque or transfer the money with a simple bet on betfair .
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I buy lots of stuff on EBay ...mostly guitars/guitar parts/accesssories etc.. and sometimes the odd Car.
Just put in the max you're prepared to pay and as "Clouseau" says above EBay will automatically update your bid to your max if necesary. If someone outbids you (bids above your max price) - tough - but that's the wasy it works ! There are "sniping programs" you can use..I've never used them - just not that desperate ! |
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I can imagine it could be addictive for those with the time and inclination>
Just putting low maximum bids on a whole load of stuff, and just leaving it to chance. |
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Rockiniron - you'll win more items, bidding your max in the last 10 seconds than by putting your max bid in early and allowing Ebay to take over. I'd guess you know your subject (and therefore values) pretty well, so there is no advantage at all in going in early; you are just giving items credibility (ie bids) that they may not otherwise have. Try it!!
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Plenty of interesting stuff on "Buy it now". No bidding stress.
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Blackbarn and I have this bidding lark sussed. Putting in an early bid, or an auto bid will only put the price up... trust me (us).
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johnizere
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Johnizere. Would you care to explain how or why? Say, for example, that I wish to buy a radio tuner. I would decide what the most I would be willing to pay for it...and I would enter that amount. Say £85.00.
How would your method achieve the results you mention unless you are willing to pay more? Also, I have seen the site crash, so that bids could not be accepted...so the last live bid won. The item went for £108 and I was trying for three hours to bid £195.00. I even sent an email to the seller telling him that the site wasn't working so he could stop the auction. I can only assume that he did not receive the email. Sniping does not work. |
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Johnizere can answer for himself. But for me the answer is. IF no one else bids, there is no difference between the early/proxy bid AND bidding at the last minute.
BUT nearly always someone else DOES bid, and the evidence is that people are more likely to bid on an item that already has a bid, and THEN are even more likely to chase that bidders maximum. There is no doubt that bids add credibility to an item for many bidders - the "well, they think its worth that so it must be worth more". I guess downtime could be a risk, but I have never lost a bid through this in 16 years of bidding, been outbid of course, but never lost through downtime/outages. |
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I'll give it a go naydam...
if you see an item and are prepared to pay £85.00 tops. with 5 mins to go before end time, bids have reached 65.00, 2 mins to go bids have reached 70.00... 1 min to go bidding still at 70.00... 30 secs to go a new bid raises to 80.00... no further bids with 10/12 secs you put in your confirmed bid. Now if there are no auto bids hidden away, you will possibly win the item. If of course there is another bidder that has already put in an auto bid you will lose. If you put in an automated max bid for your £85.00 some time earlier, there is a chance that someone has already put an auto bid of £90.00 or more. This would then automatically raise the price to 86.00 (your bid plus the next increment, taking into consideration that the other bidder already has £90.00 waiting to bid) I look at it this way... don't pay more than you think it's worth. I see auction fever all the time on ebay. Ebay site crashing is something we can't predict or do anything about. Never happens on here of course. If you mean manual sniping, I can only say it works more often than not for me. Never tried sniping bot, you have to pay every time it operates? |
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if you put in a max bid the seller can work it out so your
leaving yourself open for seller to bid you up via another account as some do |
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That is only partly true Ron, but the seller will never know that your bid is NOT anything other than your maximum bid, because proxy bids and normal bids are synonymous.
What is open to abuse by the seller is the seriously stupid practice by bidders of putting in multiple bids on the same item, in the hope of deterring other bidders. You see this all the time. A bidder sees an item for £10, puts in a bid of £10 and another of £20 and another of £30, thinking their three bids will deter bidders. Of course the seller and other bidders can see that these three bids were made by the same person and will bid the item up until at least the third bid amount is reached. It always wins First Prize in the EBAY Dummest Behaviour award. |
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that is what i meant blackburn.
nicely explained |
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We are giving away all our best tips here!
Well explained above but, by way of illustration, there is an item coming up which I am interested in. There are currently no bids and the starting price is 99p. So, when punters are scanning down the great big long list of items and they see that something is 99p with no bids some might skip on assuming it was just another load of junk as there is a lot of unsold crap, priced at 99p but worth nothing, in this particular section. However, if there was even just one bid they might pause and think, "hmm... someone is bidding so it might be worth a look and if it is anything then I might get it for £1.20 or something." Bids alert other bargain sniffers |
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I'll add my 99p worth Couseau.
If it's a 99p item, with no bids with a few minutes left, and still no bidders... have a think about what you'd be prepared to pay, call it £20.00 and no more. It could be that someone has valued it at £15.00 and put that in as his/her max bid (automated) it will still show as sitting at 99p because no different bidder has placed a bid. Leave it till the 10 secs countdown and fire in your 20.00 max bid. There will be no time left for anyone else to bid higher, and you possibly win the item... unless someone outbids you at the exactly the same time. The price you pay will be the next highest increment from the previous highest bid, not necessarily the 20.00 |
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I don't see any logic in any of your 'secrets'! The item will sell to whoever values it highest, unless they are too late with their bid or, as stated, the site develops a problem and further bids cannot be accepted. In that case the item would sell to whoever had the highest bid at that time.
It has happened to me and it was very frustrating...it sold for £108 and was worth every penny of £250! |
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It's no secret naydam... most people who know how it works use the same method. If it's a popular or sought after item, the bidding will be frantic in the last minute or so of the bidding. Just watch and learn.
I guess you're still smarting after losing out on that item you were trying to buy when the site went down? Sh1t happens... wait for the next one to appear. |
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No, I'm not smarting...I just wanted a bargain! I knew its true worth, which was too dear for me, but sometimes the selling prices can vary wildly.
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Sorry to not contribute much to my own thread, but I'm appreciating the discussion, and ideas.
With regards to the "Autobid",up to a maximum declared price, is it not the case that, let's say I have put in a max bid of £15.50, and another bidder also has a max of say £16.80....will not the"Auto bid go like the clappers, with increments one after another, until the other bidder is one tick above me, and then it stops? |
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In a word... no
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In a word..yes! The exact sequence of events depends on which of you two bids first, but the end result will be that t'other bidder will end up one tick above you.
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Thanks blackbarn as, with my limited knowledge, I worked this out all by myself!
Right.....time to get bidding! So what do I want to bid on? ermmm.....  |
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Step away from the E-type !
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Still no. it would be the end result, but that's not the question that Aunty asked
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Crags - I was trying to simplify the process, and as I said it does depend who is the first bidder AND of course it also depends on what opening required bid was. Whatever the fact remains that bids of either bidder will be incremented by the system until they are higher than the max of the other, or until they have reached their maximum.
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Hmmm. I think 'the system' might perform a mental shortcut. If opening bid is 99p and the first bidder (A) bids £15-25p and the second bidder (B) bids £18-00p Then the bids would show '2 bids' and a figure of £15-75p (or thereabouts) with B as the high bidder.
On the other hand, if B had bid £18-00p BEFORE A's offer...A would have seen a screen saying 'You have been outbid. Blah blah blah, and would only accept bids higher than the £15-25p bid showing...with the same 'you have been outbid' notice until you decided that it was too dear or your bid exceeded the maximum offered by the other bidder. However, each individual offer that you bid would increase the 'no. of bids'. Mind you...all this is probably bollocks!  |