Thread: I hate Ebay

Yeah I do right now but I know it's my own D@# fault. I just missed out on a Japanese straight razor because I don't usually use Ebay and didn't realize you had to be logged in to bid. It went for $2 less than the bid I placed but I was't logged in so my bid did't count.
In fact I have only ever bought 1 thing on Ebay it was a tent about 7 years ago and I'm pretty sure my wife actually did the buying on a Buy it now not an action and it wasn't quite as nice as the seller described it but not bad enough to do anything about it.

had that happen to me also,but that was the last time!! there will be another razor and in better shape.

yes but will my wife let me buy the next one.

The best thing to do is to use a service like esnipe. They charge a small fee (a few cents usually, unless its a high priced item), but it almost guarantees a win assuming you put in a high enough bid.

The only times I've lost is when a bidding war kicked off and the price shot up in the last few minutes.

But what I usually do is throw the bid on esnipe with my maximum price a few days before the auction closes, put the item in my watch list and ignore it. I might check on the price to see whats happening and maybe increase the snipe bid if I really want it, but usually its just fire and forget and wait for the email confirmation of the win..!

So if you bid say $30 more than what the next highest bider did you pay the $30 extra but thats the price you where willing to pay so no big deal or do you pay just enough to win the bid

Originally Posted by gandrw

So if you bid say $30 more than what the next highest bider did you pay the $30 extra but thats the price you where willing to pay so no big deal or do you pay just enough to win the bid

If you bid $1000 for a razor which opens for $10, eBay will automatically bid $10 for you as the first bidder. Your remaining $990 is held in reserve. If someone else should bid $15, eBay will automatically increase your bid to $16. Each time the bid is raised by another bidder your bid will be raised incrementally until your initial $1000 is reached. If the highest competitive bid was $19, your bid was automatically raised to $20 at the end of the auction. Then you win the auction for $20 and the remaining $980 doesn't come into play and you are only billed for the amount of the winning bid.

Regards - Walt

What happens is the snipe software chucks in your maximum bid with, say, 4 seconds to go, but you only pay as much as you need to in order to win.

For example, say you see a razor that you really like and the max you'd pay is $200. You set esnipe to throw in that bid with 4 seconds to go.

Say with 4 seconds to go the bid is $140, increasing in $5 increments, and esnipe chucks in your max bid of $200 but eBays proxy software means you only pay $145 assuming no other bids are made in that final 4 seconds.

If the previous winning bidder then sees that he's been outbid and throws in $150 he'll be told that he'd been outbid and he must bid at least $155. Thats the beauty of the proxy software, it doesnt tell other bidders what your maximum bid is, just the next incremental jump. So he then bids $155, but gets told he's been outbid and must bid $160 and so on. Of course, he's only get 4 seconds to do all of this, so the bids not going to go up that much in that time.

You might find that the price increases from $140 to $150 (or more dependant on how trigger happy the other guy is), but as long as he doesnt go over $200, you'll win. Even if he throws in a last ditch bid of $195, you'll pay $200 and win it.

You'll basically win the auction unless someone else throws in a bid higher than $200 in that last 4 seconds. Useful software!

EDIT: Walt beat me to it. And said it in a more concise way..! Hehe!