OK, now I get it. You are under the mistaken impression that eBay lists separate incremental amounts generated from one proxy bid. This is incorrect.quote:Fine. Why doesn't that bid show up then? That is my question. I want to see his bid at 1507. Then I want to see my snipe beat it, then I want to see his new higher bid beat mine. If no one can see a bid put in by him at 1507, how does anyone know he really put one in?
Unless eBay is running a snipe system, the bid he "supposedly" made at 1507 ought to be shown. Otherwise, someone has to explain why it's not there. I have filed a complaint with eBay about this.
When you or anyone bids, that particular bid is registered only ONE TIME in the bid history. It lists only one bid, and that bid shows seconds after that bid is made. It appears an hour later, a day later, when the auction is about to end, and after it does end. Even though someone else comes along and bids, that single bid that you made will still show up as one bid, even after the other person's bid caused more of your amount to be needed. The time/date of your bid does not change in the bid history, only the amount.
For example, an auction starts with an opening price at $25. Bidder A comes along and bids $47.56 on Tuesday, 6/5 at 11:45. His bid does NOT show as $47.56. Rather, it shows as $25, because that is the opening bid amount, and it shows as being made on Tuesday at 11:45. We can look at the auction after Tuesday at 11:45 and see that A is winning at $25, and yet we have no way of knowing what amount A actually bid. We see:
A 6/5 11:45 $25.00
Then bidder B comes along on Thursday at 23:33 and bids $35. This bid, naturally, will not be enough to make B the high bidder, but it will use up more of A's proxy bid. Once B bids, A's amount will change, but not the date and time of his single bid. The auction bid history now reads:
A 6/5 11:45 $36.00
B 6/7 23:33 $35.00
Notice that the date and time are still the same from A's earlier bid; it is only the amount that has changed, because B's bid has caused more of A's proxy bid amount to be used. B's bid of $35, plus the $1 increment needed at that level, shows A's bid now as $36.00.
Bidder C is a deep-pockets kind of guy and bids $101.67 early Friday morning. The bid history will then read:
C 6/8 00:50 $48.56
A 6/5 11:45 $47.56
B 6/7 23:33 $35.00
Again, we do not realize that C has bid over $100; we simply know that he has bid at least one increment above A. But notice that A's amount has now changed in the bid history because C's bid caused all of A's proxy to be used. At this point we know the full amounts of A and B's bids, because they have been outbid. But we do not know what C has bid; we simply know that it is more than A. This is what eBay means by the term proxy bid.
Bidder D is a sniper. Of course, she thinks that she is slick and will win the auction because she sets a snipe at $77.34. She is confident that her snipe, which is well above the current high hid, will win. She has even bid in an odd amount, just to make sure. As a sniper, she could snipe manually herself during the closing minute of the auction, but she has instead elected to use Auction Sniper for many reasons, not the least of which is that she will be asleep when the auction ends. Her snipe is set to fire Monday 6/11 at 02:22, seconds before the auction ends in the middle of the night. Moments before, we still see the same bid history:
C 6/8 00:50 $48.56
A 6/5 11:45 $47.56
B 6/7 23:33 $35.00
D's snipe fires as planned and the auction ends. When D wakes up, confident of her win, she will instead be greeted by this unpleasant picture:
C 6/8 00:50 $78.34
D 6/11 02:22 $77.34
A 6/5 11:45 $47.56
B 6/7 23:33 $35.00
Like the real-life scenario in this thread, the winning bid was placed days before, but the amount has changed once again to reflect the latest bid. Just prior to D's snipe, C was shown winning at $48.56. After D's snipe, C won at $78.34, and the bid was still his single bid from five days earlier. There was no snafu, nothing dastardly going on here, no "preferential treatment by eBay." This was the system functioning properly, at it was designed to do, and as it has done for the last decade, which is that the highest bid wins, no matter when it was placed. AS has many advantages, but it cannot change that simple reality.
Had, A, B, or C come back later in the auction and entered separate bids for higher amounts, that would have been different. Their new bids of higher amounts would have registered separately. (This is called nibbling, and it is something that we snipers seek to avoid, because it only drives the price up.) But as it was, their single bid amounts simply changed as other bids came in.
Hopefully, this explanation and example demonstrate not only how the eBay proxy bid system works, but also the need to read up on proxy bidding at eBay help. Doing so is much more helpful than becoming frustrated here, simply because one does not have enough experience on eBay to fully comprehend. We all went through the initial period of not understanding proxy bidding, but soon we got the hang of it, and soon after that, we became snipers, and then VERY soon after that, we became AS snipers!