ebay bidding

[Roy Wall]

Okay fellas (and ladies), I would like to know somethng...

There was an item ending today. About 5 hours prior to close of bidding, someone placed four consecutive bids $5 higher at a time. These bids were recorded in 20-30 second intervals........

So what's up with that??? Another "teammate" bidding it up at the seller's request???

[Erin Raasch]

These were probably automatic bids. When you place a high bid, e-bay will use only enough of that bid to beat the next-highest bid. If someone places a new bid that is higher than your registered bid, but lower than your high bid amount, e-bay will automatically bump up your bid, to the limit that you set, as a response to the new bid.

I don't know if I've explained this very well, but if not I'm sure someone will come along and make it clearer.

Erin

[Jeff Sudmeier]

I belive ebay calls it proxy bidding. You enter your max price you are willing to pay. If the previous bidder had enter a max, higher than the current bid, the price will go up and up, until one of the two is "out bid".

It could have also been team mate bidding, but that is very hard to prove.

[Doug Shepard]

I'm not an expert, but how do they show up in the bid history? If they're proxy bidding like Erin and Jeff mentioned, I think there will only be one entry in the history. The bid's timestamp will be the time the bidder originally submitted the max bid so it could be an earlier time than other bidders in the history. If multiple entries actually show up in the history, then I think someone is manually submitting the bids rather than proxy bidding.

[Roy Wall]

Thanks,

Doug- I looked at the bid history:
The Same person increased their bid by $5 four times in a row. No one else bid in between .........just the same person..........about 20-30 seconds apart.

Raising the bid $20 in a matter of one minute ------about 5 hours before the auction ended.


THat's why I was so surprised.........errrr ...........that's a pleasant way to say it.

[Lee DeRaud]

Thanks,

Doug- I looked at the bid history:
The Same person increased their bid by $5 four times in a row. No one else bid in between .........just the same person..........about 20-30 seconds apart.

Raising the bid $20 in a matter of one minute ------about 5 hours before the auction ended.


THat's why I was so surprised.........errrr ...........that's a pleasant way to say it.
Thank you for the reminder why I'm not an Ebay fan. But at least it inspired this:
http://www.geoffellis.com/ebay.html :)

[Rob Russell]

The clue for proxy bidding is to look at the bid history for a bid with a higher dollar amount, but an earlier date/time than the series of $5 increments.

Let's say an item has a current bid of $25 and that $25 is not a proxy bid - it's truly the high bid on the item. I'm willing to spend $50, so I bid $50. Ebay bumps the bid up to, let's say $30. You come in and try to out bid me. You bid $35. Then you bid $40. Then you bid $45. Each time ebay will outbid you with my proxy bid, but the bid history doesn't show that. It only shows the original $50 I put in with the series of step bids you put in.

Rob

[Roy Wall]

The clue for proxy bidding is to look at the bid history for a bid with a higher dollar amount, but an earlier date/time than the series of $5 increments.

Let's say an item has a current bid of $25 and that $25 is not a proxy bid - it's truly the high bid on the item. I'm willing to spend $50, so I bid $50. Ebay bumps the bid up to, let's say $30. You come in and try to out bid me. You bid $35. Then you bid $40. Then you bid $45. Each time ebay will outbid you with my proxy bid, but the bid history doesn't show that. It only shows the original $50 I put in with the series of step bids you put in.

Rob

ROb,

this gives me more clarification.......thanks Rob!