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Auction errors
Has anyone encountered this auction fraud…..I bid on an auction with literally 1-2 seconds left in the auction. The highest bidder was at $305.00. I could see his bid/handle. I bid $351.26 and lost the bid to a $356.26 bid. The bidder was not the same bidder who was at $305.00. I don’t have a problem loosing a bid…I have a problem that I was outbid by $5 and the person who won the bid was not the same person as the $305.00 bid and it stated that their bid was placed 3 hours before mine. If their bid was placed 3 hours before mine wouldn’t their bid had to have beaten the $305.00 bid and had been displayed as beaten that bid so I would have had a proper knowledge of the highest bid prior to my bid?
mudshark61369
Mentor2 years ago@apacejr2012,
Do as the Gnome suggested and check the bid while logged in on the whole site, not through the app's version. Go to the bid history and check the See automatic bids button to see the bid history. If the winning bidder did place their bid 3hrs earlier, the high bid shown before you placed your bid, had already been out bid.
woodland_gnome
·2 years agoIt WAS the same person AND the same bid. Is there some particular reason you believe you remembered the a***b type alias of a bidder whose alias when you looked at the Bid History BEFORE you bid for how long exactly? It was SHOWING at $305.00 because the next highest bidder at the time had a maximum bid of $300.00 (bid increment is $5.00 from $250.00 to $499.99). You were outbid by the earlier bid because it was higher than your bid (we don't know how much higher since eBay only used 1 bid increment--exactly $5.00--over your bid to calculate the price.
If you don't believe this please post an item number or screenshot of the bid history.
A few things to know in order to read a Bid History:
Never go by a bid history on a mobile app or the mobile web. They are deliberately incomplete and worse than useless.
Any bid of the high bidder that is higher than the "current bid" (what the price would be if there is no further activity before the auction ends, calculated primarily by the "underbid"--the highest bid of the 2nd highest bidder--generally the underbid plus 1 bid increment) is displayed with the current bid amount instead of the actual bid amount. All other bids show at the actual amount of that bid. Thus there can be multiple bids of the highest bidder at the top showing the same amount.
Bids are sorted by AMOUNT of the bid (the hidden maximum for each bid of the highest bidder showing at the "current bid" amount at the top), not by time received. For some reason people tend to expect them to be from latest to earliest bids, and if they notice the timestamps some take that to mean something is wrong rather than adjusting their expectations of how it works.
If there have been any cancellations or retractions those are shown in their own section below the main bid history table. Be aware that when a bid is retracted prior to the last 12 hours or cancelled at any time ALL prior bids by that bidder are removed from the main history but information on only the last (which will be the highest) will be given in that section.
The "Show automatic bids" function is a tool that attempts to recreate the "current bid" that may have shown at various times during the auction but it is only that: a tool to recreate (it is not a record of what actually showed at various times); a tool that attempts (it is often wrong, displaying "automatic bids" that never were the displayed "current bid" and not showing what actually showed as the "current bid" at various times such as what showed before a cancellation or retraction--a good thing as showing that could reveal more of the leader's bid than should be shown--or when a Reserve Price is first met--showing what that reserve was, not so good an omission); the timestamp on the "automatic bid" is not the time that that "current bid" was started to be displayed but rather is the time of a bid by the bidder it is attributed to; in any event the notion of "automatic bids" is misleading as it is based on an imperfect analogy used to oversimplify the eBay bidding process (in reality, eBay doesn't "bid on your behalf" but rather calculates what the price would be if there is no further activity before the auction ends, displays that as the "current bid" and hides the full amount of any bid by the highest bidder that exceeds that calculated price by substituting that "current bid" for the full amount of that bid).
mr_lincoln
Mentor2 years agoHi @apacejr2012
No, the first person with an amount of or to cover the $ 305 would be winning at $ 305. Someone placing a Max bid higher than the $ 305 bidder would be winning at that amount.