This thread prompted me to a thought about the manual sniping I used to do. I used to go through the 'place a bid' button and enter the figure on the next page then confirm it but on the next page not 'submit' yet. 2 'backs' then gets you to the item decscription to monitor it - in the last few secs you go 'forward' 2 pages and hit submit.
NOW for the 'meat'
Because the 'current' winning bid value is checked on the screen where the new bid figures were entered perhaps 10 mins ago this check is done on old data. So my question is whether this can lead you to a lower than standard increment win?
Scenario: I get my bid ready to go when the item price is 10 and prepare a bid of 20.66 - then go and monitor the situation and keep track of time - say a new bidder 'Fred' comes in and is shown as having a highest bid of 14.50 - then as I head off through the 'forward' keys to submit my bid someone else has processed a bid of 20.50 in the face of Fred's bid which had a max of 20.25 - now I don't know about this as I hit the 'submit' button - my question is whether this bid would be rejected - because the check is normally carried out on the page I bypassed at the end of the auction - and when I keyed it it was ok.
I have a sneaking suspicion that in these circumstances my new bid might stand and win the auction. It could happen fairly normally with two bidders both placing bids at almost the same time so both going the the usual increment check against an earlier and lower bid - then both hitting submit.
Anyone got any opinions on this?