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The bidding system is disgusting and absurd.
For those of you who wait to the last possible moment to update the bid and force the other person out, you’re a child.
To ebay management, you’re beyond thoughtless for implementing the system like this. The bid end time should not be visible to buyers. The point of a bid is to determine who is willing to spend the most to acquire the object. You’re not only screwing buyers, but you’re also screwing the sellers by devaluing the item. I just lost a bid against a single individual who placed one bid, and then I placed a bid. No updates, I was the winning party until 5 seconds remaining when my phone screen updates with “you’ve been outbidâ€, and I couldn’t make it in time to update it. This is a pathetic excuse for a system. The seller was screwed because why would you bid before the last 5 seconds if all it’s going to do is drive up how much you pay? It’s absurd. It’s a game of internet speed latency and seeing how close you can get to 1 second remaining before hitting that button again.
This is so incredibly disappointing. Who honestly thought this was a good idea?
monroe67
Mentor6 months ago"This is a pathetic excuse for a system. The seller was screwed because why would you bid before the last 5 seconds if all it’s going to do is drive up how much you pay? It’s absurd. It’s a game of internet speed latency and seeing how close you can get to 1 second remaining before hitting that button again."
Successful bidders in auction settings
-- whether live, in-person, outcry auctions or online auctions --
approach the item knowing how much they are willing to spend. And they commit to that limit.
They also recognize that there are Other People in the World, who might want to buy the same thing that they do, and who might actually have more money to spend than they do.
People who are generally successful in their lives recognize that they cannot always win.
They cannot always win a game of checkers.
They cannot always win an election campaign.
They cannot always win every eBay auction they bid on.
People who are generally successful in their lives accept the occasional incredible disappointment.
gosimus
Mentor6 months ago@zra8218
< “you’ve been outbidâ€, and I couldn’t make it in time to update it >
If you stop to think about it, actually you did have plenty of time to increase your bid; you had seven days (or whatever the duration of the auction was). There's no rule that says you have to wait for the other guy to go first. You can bid whenever you choose. The guy who won chose T minus 5. I would have done the same.
jacbarcollectibles
Mentor6 months agoThe eBay auction process has been in use successfully for man years. eBay sees no reason to change how it works. It is not the last bid that is the winner but the highest bid made no matter when it was made. Bidding in the last seconds of an auction is called sniping and is an accepted eBay practice. eBay does not run a live auction like an auction house. They use a modified auction process for accepting bids and determining the winner.
The best way to make bids is to make a max bid on the auction. When you do this you enter the most you are willing to pay for the item (allowing for shipping and sales taxes). eBay will use only one bid increment over the current high bid (except when your bid is the first bid on the item where your bid will be the starting bid) and will continue doing this until your max bid is used up by other bidders making their bids.