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Automatic Bidding
If the sale ends before reaching the max of my automatics bid, do I only pay the highest bid or am I on the hook for my automatic bid max?
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woodland_gnome
·2 years agoOnce the auction has ended (do not rely on the countdown--it doesn't always catch last second bids; wait a few seconds and refresh the screen with the supposed final results) the price is as stated. "Automatic bids" are a fiction in a not-always-accurate analogy to simplify explanation of the process where eBay hides the full amount of any bid of the high bidder that exceeds the price calculation.
The general rule is that the price is 1 bid increment over the highest bid of the second highest bidder. Exceptions:
a. If the highest bidder's bid is less than a full increment over that underbid (including an earlier-placed tie) the price will be the full amount of the highest bidder's bid. (If s/he has placed multiple bids that are higher than the underbid it gets complicated as to which bid is used to make the price calculation*).
b. If there is no underbidder (there is only 1 bidder) the price is the Starting Price set by the seller.
c. If there is a Reserve Price set by the seller the price is the greater of that Reserve or the price as calculated above. If nobody bid at least as high as the Reserve the high bidder's bid SHOWS at what the price would have been without the reserve but there is no sale (if the seller makes a Second Chance Offer to the highest bidder it will be at that showing amount except in a couple of categories where the seller can set the amount up to the Reserve Price amount--in no case does s/he see the high bidder's hidden maximum).
*If you really want to know: If you are leading at $xx.xx because that is the full amount of your maximum bid (and the underbid is less than a full bid increment lower) and you place a new bid, my understanding of the current practice is that the "current bid" will go up to the full bid increment over the underbid (i.e. as if the new bid was the only one you placed), but if there is no further bidding activity after that it will go DOWN to the $xx.xx at the end for the final price. Originally it went up and stayed up (eBay calculated the price based on the HIGHEST bid of the highest bidder) but eBay got sued over doing that and did a settlement in 2009 where they promised not to raise the price without prior notice to the bidder when s/he goes to increase the bid; but instead of giving that warning it changed the formula to use the LOWEST bid of the highest bidder that beats the underbid (including an earlier tie) to calculate the price. THEN a couple of years ago eBay appears to have gone back to sometimes calculating the "current bid" using the high bid (i.e. it would go up if you rebid while leading by less than a full increment, again sometimes but not always--I've seen bid histories both ways) but using the lowest winning bid for the final price (i.e. goes back down at the end if subsequent actions don't make it moot--I have not seen any bid history where it does not go back down), but I was never able to get any eBay employees to say whether that observation is correct and if so if is a deliberate change in the policy or simply an error in recoding something.
ETA: And the price might turn out to be lower than the highest of your "automatic bids" if there is a cancellation or retraction of another bid.