How my higher bid in last 5 sec. Wasn't took??

Question

I had high bid of 225.00I've been getting 1.00 bumps ,in last 5 sec. I placed a bid of 228.00But a 227.50 won .What did I do wrong ??

eburtonlab · Answer

If the high bid had already been raised to $227.50, you would have had to have bid at least $230 in order to meet the minimum increment requirement.

https://www.ebay.com/help/buying/bidding/automatic-bidding?id=4014

Otherwise, you may have waited too late to submit your bid. One issue with waiting until the last five seconds to submit a bid is that if you get an error message there is not enough time to correct the issue and submit another bid.

Also, if your computer's clock is off by even a few seconds, that can make it impossible to bid in the last few seconds of an auction.

Check your time to see if you are ahead or behind and by how much here:

https://time.is/

If the maximum amount you were willing to bid was actually $228, you should have bid that amount once, as late as you comfortably could while still being assured that eBay would accept your bid, rather than submitting a lower bid, earlier. Possibly adding a few odd cents to avoid a tie.

Just because the winner paid $227.50 does not mean that the winner only bid that amount; the winner may have bid a lot more. That was just the amount needed to exceed your previous high bid by one bid increment.

Repeat bidding in small increments is called "nibble bidding" and it is not a very effective strategy compared to bidding your maximum amount once at the end of the auction.

If you bid your maximum early enough that your bid is received by eBay and you are declared the high bidder, the only way you can lose is if someone else is willing to bid higher than your maximum and does so before the auction ends.