I bid on an item using AS where "reserve not yet met was showing. Item was currently at $125.00. On AS I put my max. bid at $290.00 to try and get over the reserve. After the auction I was notified that the reserve had not been met and I did not win. I went to the item and it listed the final price as $175.00. What went wrong? If my max bid was $290.00 why did it stop at $175.00?

Big S.

You didn't say whether the reserve was ever met, but I'm assuming that your $225 snipe didn't match the proxy bid, which didn't satisfy the reserve either. Unless your bid topped the proxy, the proxy would continue to show as high bidder at $175 even though your bid was $50 higher.

The bid was at $125, and your $290 bid raised it to $175 but wasn't enough to meet the reserve. That means that it was enough to top the proxy bid that went before it, which had a max of $170, and the bid increment of $5 gives you the $175. But your $290 bid didn't meet the reserve either, so the bid stopped at $175 and you had a proxy of up to $290 if anybody else cared to bid. But that's where the auction ended.