Bidding increments at Ebay USA

[Robbyrobot]

Had a strange thing happen to me a day ago... I bid $7.76 on an auction at the US Ebay (www.ebay.com) site - Auction 330195973273 - and then lost the auction to a bid of only $7.90 placed at the same time as mine to the second.

This surprised me because at the German Ebay there are set bidding increments, below EUR 10 I believe it's EUR 0.50 and above that EUR 1.00. So if I were overbid in the above auction I would have expected a winning bid of at least $8.27 ($0.51 higher than my bid).

Are there no set bidding increments at the US Ebay site? Can you win an auction with a bid only $0.01 higher than the next highest? From my experience it would seem so.

Any comments?

[dsigma6]

Oooohhh Raaaaaayyyy!!

(Give it a few hours, I guarantee he shows up!)

I've noticed the same thing, and it's quite annoying. Even if it says the bid increment is $1.00 or whatever, people still end up winning by a penny.

[RealBlackStuff]

The last bid before yours was $6.00.
Hallicraftersguy's bid of $7.90 was higher than your $7.76, so it took precedent over yours, even if the bids came in at the same time.
Both bids were the required minimum of $0.50 (or more) higher than the last bid of $6.00

See also this overview: http://www.ebayjournal.com/podcast/notes/RGEJ-011.html

[whizkid]

This is an easy one. Say the price was at $5.50 (or whatever to make it work), then the guy who beat you bid $7.90. eBay puts him in at high bid at $6.00. You bid $7.76, but ebay already had a higher bid, so his bid was increased to his maximum. You could have bid again to beat that.

[Robbyrobot]

The last bid before yours was $6.00.
Hallicraftersguy's bid of $7.90 was higher than your $7.76, so it took precedent over yours, even if the bids came in at the same time.

Many thanks for the explanation! Now I understand what was going on... if the other bid had been received before mine, I would still have lost, but if it had been received even a second after mine, I would have won. Very interesting situation, and something I have not previously experienced.

[rkawakami]

Oooohhh Raaaaaayyyy!!

Somebody mention my name? .

Explanations on bid increments and timing are correct. If that were me bidding instead of Robbyrobot, my bid would have been denied since I usually use a 6-second snipe (those were 9 seconds), although I've been playing around with that time in the last few weeks. There have been a couple of times where I won by less than the minimum bid increment, as well as being beat by a few cents. Or the one that really slaps you in the face... your snipe bid being rejected by eBay because it's not the required bid increment above the current price AND it ends up being MORE than the eventual winning bid. This is what hallicraftersguy would have encountered if his bid was one second later. Drives you mad sometimes...

[jamerslong]

i have a friend that has been bidding on e-bay religiously for over 5 years and he started using a program that snipes Ebay auctions at the last second.

[RealBlackStuff]

So do I, Auction Sentry Deluxe from http://www.auction-sentry.com/
Snipe-time: 5 seconds before closing. Works great!