Flippin' Ebay made me miss my ZX81
http://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/120956919351?ssPageName=STRK:MESINDXX:IT&_trksid=p3984.m1436.l2649&autorefresh=true
I bid just under ?50 total for this... For the first time ebay told me to review the amount I'd entered. Yes, I confirmed my bid.
Then it hung and revealed that bidding had ended.
Not happy.
I bid just under ?50 total for this... For the first time ebay told me to review the amount I'd entered. Yes, I confirmed my bid.
Then it hung and revealed that bidding had ended.
Not happy.
Post edited by Graz on
Comments
I wouldn't mind, but I was obviously logged in as I'd been placing bids up until about 5 minutes before it decided that I needed to be logged in :(
One thing I've noticed is that the timer is slow and you have to refresh the page in the last minute to make sure it's at least close.
The log in request is most annoying for sure. I've looked at my watch list with no problems and then had it request a log in a minute later. :mad:
Watching with 10 seconds to spare bid ?10 ...please log in....FFS...
and then I'm all fingers and thumbs trying to log in.
Bid ends....
item went for ?4.60 arrrrrgggghhhh YOU MUTHE************ARD
Sinclair QL with defect keyboard membrane was at ? 10. I waited for 15 seconds left, entered ? 40, and then was asked to log on.
I meet the seller some weeks later, and he was not happy to see it gone for a tenner! I told him what happened and he said what he now thinks about eBay.
The eBay is a good plattform if you do not carry about how much money you get for a item. Better than throwing it away.
lol, ever since then when an item I am interested is getting within the 5 minute left state, I log-out and log back in..... usually I wait until the last 10 seconds to put my Max bid in, as I am one of those that wont creep past a give budget for an item.
Usually I get items for a fair to reasonable price, which makes me feel good, and then there are the RARE times on eBay (forgive the pun) that you do get a bit of a bargain... while it can be quite exalting - I do get a pang of guilt for the seller.
9 times out of 10 if its a collect, then I will just say keep the change to the nearest note. (year I know I am nice guy.... its because I am civilized you know, just ask my mum....)
Maybe I'm missing something, but if we set our maximum bid in advance, isn't that the same as using Ebay's tool to bid? The same ceiling will apply in both cases. Is avoiding the need to bid first to set a ceiling that advantageous?
/Pedro
For example, say you put a max bid in of ?40. It'll start at the lowest point of perhaps ?1 or so (depends on the auction start price and if anyone else already bid).
Someone else comes along and thinks 'I fancy that', and bids ?5.
Your ?40 max is more, so you automatically become the highest bidder at ?6.
The ?5 bloke still fancies his chances so ups his max to ?10.
You still have the higher max, so its now at ?11.
Mr ?5 decides that his tenner is as far as he's willing to stretch and leaves it at that. Nobody else bids, so you pay ?11.
Now if you use a sniper, Mr ?5 has his fiver as the top bid right until auction close, at which point you win for ?6. It saved you a fiver.
This can happen over and over in an auction, with speculative bidders putting in lower amounts than you're willing to pay then bailing out. Either that or people being stingy and not putting in their max, but instead just putting in enough to put them in the lead for the current phase of bidding (the latter being really common among new ebay users).
Use a sniper, bid as high as you're prepared to and do so at the last moment. It will save you money. A side effect is that you don't get carried away in a last minute frenzy. Decide early how much you want to pay and again you'll save money as you can't pay over the odds for something in the heat of the moment.
not really, if I'm going to work or something finishes very early etc.. I'll put in a high bid, because I can't bid at the end.. and well if whoever wins it from that it's not a bargain , if they wanna outbid me.
some are pro snipe tools, I'm anti them simply because it makes ebay FAR from a fair playing field.. people new to ebay, it actually will annoy them to not bother to bid on stuff.
the prime example being a certain brummy re-listing won retro items for *5-6 what they paid for them .. not a collector etc.. but is aiming the end items at collectors and really artificially inflating prices.
I have noticed within say 10-30 seconds the time +1's or 2's... so it makes YOUR end time out by a few seconds.. e.g. ..... 29,28,29,27,26 so YOUR end time is acutually out and auctions end with 3 seconds to go etc.
so I refresh to combat such things very near the end.. not sure exactly what causes it, but does seem odd it does that and it does happen a fair bit..
I hate the pop up window for bidding also.. it slows things down.
the more you bid on stuff, the better at getting to time when it ends without using such tools. (one thread on here accused me of snipe bidding on 2 128 toast racks that I won WITHOUT any snipe tools... was funny :) )
But you might be tempted to put a fiver more on your max bid if you didn't become top bidder when you left for work.
I'm not saying it always happens, but its far from unusual for bidders to put in one amount, find out they're not the highest bid, then keep going. These people do push up the end price as they often don't return to auctions to bid again, they just like to have the top bid at the time they happen to be viewing. They rarely sit and watch auction end, so sniping by manual or automated means defeats them.
Study bidding patterns on ebay and you'll see it happen (though the bid pattern isn't as obvious as it used to be these days, they mask some of the data).