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Bidding question
Hi,
I placed a bid last night, was out bid this morning so I increased my bid. The auction was not supposed to end until tomorrow. When I checked tonight, poof no sign of it anywhere. Then I found an email saying that the item was sold. How can this happen? Is this normal or is it an infraction of the rules?
2 comments
woodland_gnome
·1 year agoWas the listing in your My eBay: Bids/Offers: Didn't Win (at the bottom of the page) or in your Purchase History (if it sold TO YOU)?
If not:
Do you have the item number (it should be in the email you got)? If so paste it into the URL: ebay.com/itm/########### If a short form completed listing page comes up look at top left for the reason the listing ended. You can also click on the # of bid display to see if any bids were cancelled before the end. If the item number is not found, eBay removed the listing for some issue with the listing and/or seller (this also applies if you had the listing on your Watch List and it is gone from there).
If you don't have the item number rerun the search where you found the item originally and if it's not in the results for active listings click the box to show "Completed listings" in the left column of the search results.
I recommend you place any listing you are planning to bid on onto your Watch List (or another list you make for that purpose) BEFORE you bid so it is easy to find after you bid: you won't have to look in 3 different possible locations (Bids, Didn't Win, and Purchase History, and if your bid is cancelled it won't be in any of those, AND it can take some time after it disappears from the active Bids section at the end of the auction to show up in the appropriate other section) as it will be in the Watch List regardless of your status in the auction (unless eBay removes the listing).
If there are bids in the bid history (rather than all of them being cancelled) compare the endtime with the starting time (on the line with the Starting Price) and the Duration (at top right). If those all add up then the auction went the full duration and you were mistaken about the endtime (possibly a timezone issue--different pages display the endtime in different timezones and Thursday in California (Bid History Page, My eBay pages) can be Friday east of there (ebay.com displays what it thinks is your timezone in search results and on the Listing Page). If they don't match but there are active bids showing then seller ended early to sell to the top bidder. If all bids were cancelled then the seller ended the listing without a winner (may or may not be a policy violation depending on the seller's intent).
eburtonlab
Mentor1 year agoSellers are allowed to end an auction at any time to sell immediately to the highest bidder, though it is rarely in the seller's interest to do so, since many users wait until the end of the auction to place their bids.