F&%$*@& Ebay!!!!

Bad luck Mowog - but surely bad planning too ?

If you put in your highest bid then it really doesn`t matter if you are pipped as theoretically you would not have gone any higher !

I`ve been watching an *ist DS with faulty autofocus, to use as a dedicated manual M42 camera, all week it was slow and then popped up a couple of times - I put in my highest bid ( my lady wanted to know what I was doing ! ) of £80 and sat and watched the countdown from 3 minutes - at 25 seconds to go, a bid of £81 and change came in and the lens was gone !!!!!!

Yes I was a bit annoyed - but hey - it could have gone up and up and I really could not have justified the outlay to myself.

Another camera and another day - all part of the fun really !!

Tony

I think the only way to win auctions for sane money is to wait until the last seconds before bidding. I usually put my bid in with about 50 seconds left and I've still had people try to snipe me!

Bidding early just seems to ensure that you either get outbid or become a victim of shill bidding - when associates of the seller bid up to just below your maximum to push the price up.

Probably me .. I bid in the last 5 seconds.

Doing it that way makes sure that I never go over my bid limit.
I still get annoyed if I lose though.

I always bid in the final few seconds. I find if I bid my highest offer a day or so before, I lose by a pound or two.
If I throw in my highest bid in the last few seconds, there isn't time for anyone to add "just one more pound".

I have also lost an auction because ebay systems fail to respond correctly.

I was watching an auction and it reached £120 and asked for increments of £2.

In the last few seconds I put in a bid of £125.55 and received a rejection - someone had bid £125 at the same time and even though my bid was greater it was rejected and te auction lost.

Remember e-bay care about just one "person" themselves!

Our local e bay equivalent has an iniquitous option for the seller to select when placing his ad, it's called "Extends with late bids" any bid placed in the last two minutes of the auction extends the auction closing time by another two minutes ad infinitum. This is when the prices really jump to the sellers advantage.

Greg

I suspect the £125 bid was received sooner despite it appearing to have been placed at the same time as your attempt. Once the £125 bid is placed, you would have had to bid £127 for your bid to be placed.

not sure about this but perhaps it didnt go far
think this might be it

From your description of what happened, it would seem that you had forgotten to sign it - hardly the fault of ebay. As others have said, use sniping software - I use Auction Sniper which seems to work for me.

Steve

If you're already on the site and been navigating around it, Ebay should not make you sign in again, just before you are about to confirm a bid. That is stupid. OK, if I'd left the site and gone back, that would be the time to do it. That's what usually happens. As it is, I lost a lens that I could have made some money on, the seller got a lower price, and ebay will get a smaller final value fee. We all lost! .


On a happier note, I did have better luck on there, this evening. Got what looks like a very nice lens that was on a camera. I should get most of what I paid back for the camera body, when I re-list it, leaving me with a very desirable lens, for almost nothing!

This time of course, I took the precaution of signing out, and then signing back in again, just before bidding!

I get prompted to sign in a lot more than used to happen, so I suppose it's an increse in the security measures.

The eBay sign in for browsing only lasts 24 hours, and they make you sign in again to do certain things. Security needs to be balanced with convenience, and it is getting a bit inconvenient now.

Anyway, manual sniping is always risky, so you have to be prepared for a greater chance of loosing or something going wrong if you want to play that game. Using an online sniping service doesn't raise your blood pressure so much.