I understand that eBay has recently been experimenting with changing the bid increments for some auctions. My recent experiences suggest that this is resulting in different bidders experiencing different increments for the same auctions. For example, I just lost an auction (in the $1-$5 range) where my bids had a minimum increment of a dollar - the bid was $2, I bid $3, and the current bid became $3 instead of $2.25. But, the final selling price was only $0.25 over my high bid. I lost another auction ($5-$25) where again my bids had a minimum increment of $1 but, when I placed a bid that was not below the true maximum bid, the new current bid became only $0.50 more than my maximum bid. As a third example, in an auction ($1-$5) I won the the later and higher of the two previous bids was $0.25 cents more than the earlier and lower bid. So, another bidder was allowed to bid only $0.25 more than the current bid. Yet, when I went to bid, I was required to bid $1 more than the current bid. In all three cases cases other buyers got the benefit of lower increments than I got.
It should go without saying that this is extremely unfair. And, I cannot imagine that this is the intended behavior for recent changes. So, I hoped this can be fixed ASAP. At the bare minimum, eBay should ensure that all bidders on the same auction are subject to the same terms.
