I used A/S and it stopped well before my max bid. I entered 290.00 as my max and it quit at 214.00. The auction ended with reserve not yet met and I did not get the item. What went wrong?
Big S.
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Big S., this is the same situation that I wrote about yesterday. Your bid surpassed the maximum of the proxy bidder ahead of you, but it still didn't satisfy the reserve so the amount shown was the previous bidder's max plus one bid increment ($5), not the total of your bid amount. Look at it this way: the guy ahead of you didn't have his total bid displayed, only enough of it to make him the high bidder. Same thing with your bid -- you topped him, but didn't satisfy the reserve.
It seems to me, after reading the posts lately about using AS with reserve auctions, that you really have to use a slightly different technique if you absolutely want the item. One way or another, you have to know the reserve has been met before you can count on AS to place a winning bid.
So, if the reserve has not been met going into the last hour or so of the auction, you would basically have to manually bid until it was met. Essentially, a reserve is nothing more than a hidden "initial bid." (I hate 'em, personally.) So by bidding manually to meet it, you aren't losing any money. But you are revealing your interest in the item. Another, slightly more subtle option is the ask the seller what the reserve is, then put in a manual snipe in the last minute or so to meet it, and let AS handle your "real" snipe to cover any competition if it happens. But then you would be sniping yourself by one bid increment if there were no other bidder. So either way has drawbacks.
All of this presumes you want the item enough to meet the reserve, which you don't know until you KNOW (you know?)
Cause AS can't determine the reserve for you.
What do you think, Steve? Am I analyzing this wrong?
So, if the reserve has not been met going into the last hour or so of the auction, you would basically have to manually bid until it was met. Essentially, a reserve is nothing more than a hidden "initial bid." (I hate 'em, personally.) So by bidding manually to meet it, you aren't losing any money. But you are revealing your interest in the item. Another, slightly more subtle option is the ask the seller what the reserve is, then put in a manual snipe in the last minute or so to meet it, and let AS handle your "real" snipe to cover any competition if it happens. But then you would be sniping yourself by one bid increment if there were no other bidder. So either way has drawbacks.
All of this presumes you want the item enough to meet the reserve, which you don't know until you KNOW (you know?)
Cause AS can't determine the reserve for you.What do you think, Steve? Am I analyzing this wrong?
Well, Melanthe, your analysis is pretty sound. I've had mixed results with asking sellers about the amounts of their reserve bids -- some will tell you, most won't. What you *can* do, and ought to do whether you ask the seller or not, is go to the seller's history and look at his other reserve auctions. There's often some relationship between the amount of the reserve and the value the seller places on the item. Sometimes it's the amount he paid for it, for example. But if you look at his closed auctions where a reserve was involved you often can detect that relationship even if it's an unintentional one.
This approach also offers a safeguard against the unscrupulous sellers who deliberately set an impossible reserve bid, then approach you privately after you've been the high bidder but not met the reserve and offer the item to you for some price significantly higher than your "winning" bid. This is an illegal procedure and eBay jumped on the last one I blew the whistle on and had him out of eBay within 2 weeks.
My slogan is, "If there's information to be had, use it."
This approach also offers a safeguard against the unscrupulous sellers who deliberately set an impossible reserve bid, then approach you privately after you've been the high bidder but not met the reserve and offer the item to you for some price significantly higher than your "winning" bid. This is an illegal procedure and eBay jumped on the last one I blew the whistle on and had him out of eBay within 2 weeks.
My slogan is, "If there's information to be had, use it."
Reserves are set by sellers primarily so they can get people to start bidding on an item to spark more interest. More people bid on items with bids, than those without.
For example, I have an item I'm willing to sell for $50. If I start it at $50, people tend not to place a bid. But, if I start it out at $10 and get the ball rolling, it might very well meet the reserve and surpase it when people start the bidding war.
Either way, don't worry about it. AS gives you the chance to bid what you're willing to pay. If you saw an auction with my example, it wouldn't really matter what the minimum or reserve is. The only advantage you'd have of knowing the minimum is $50 would be you wouldn't place a bid if you thought it was only worth $40. If the seller has a reserve and low initial bid, bid what you want. If it doesn't meet it, keep looking for another item.
There are those that use the reserve to make sure they get the maximum $$$ out of the auction. I make it a policy to only buy directly off eBay and not make personal offers. That way, I have some amount of buyer protection.
Dave
For example, I have an item I'm willing to sell for $50. If I start it at $50, people tend not to place a bid. But, if I start it out at $10 and get the ball rolling, it might very well meet the reserve and surpase it when people start the bidding war.
Either way, don't worry about it. AS gives you the chance to bid what you're willing to pay. If you saw an auction with my example, it wouldn't really matter what the minimum or reserve is. The only advantage you'd have of knowing the minimum is $50 would be you wouldn't place a bid if you thought it was only worth $40. If the seller has a reserve and low initial bid, bid what you want. If it doesn't meet it, keep looking for another item.
There are those that use the reserve to make sure they get the maximum $$$ out of the auction. I make it a policy to only buy directly off eBay and not make personal offers. That way, I have some amount of buyer protection.
Dave
Well, the problem with AS and reserves, Dave, is that you don't know if your bid met the reserve or not until the auction is over. This is a wholly different thing than placing a bid and immediately seeing it doesn't meet the reserve. Then you have a chance to consider whether you want to up your bid or not. If you leave it all to AS, as people have discovered, you won't find out you were too low for the reserve until too late. What if you were too low by, say $5 on a $250 reserve? Quite a few buyers, I'd imagine, would have gone the extra $5 if they'd known.
As I've said elsewhere on this board, an AS snipe has a different psychological feel to it, to me, than a regular bid. With AS, I find that I tend to put in my initial reaction to an item, and then alter it as the auction progresses, because I have that option--seeing how much interest there is overall, and how much MY interest grows or wanes as I have time to become acquainted with the item or get questions answered from the seller.
I know there are many people out there who seem to know exactly how much they are willing to bid from the start. But not all of us are quite that authoritative.
Being that an auction is such a psychological shell game overall, essentially playing on our weaknesses and competitiveness and all that stuff, hopefully no one will take it badly when I say that reserves have a very manipulative feel to me--I always presume that a reserve auction will be no bargain, that the seller wants top dollar or nothing, but as Dave says, wants to get buyers hooked in. So I seldom bother to bid on a reserve unless the seller will tell me what it is.
As I've said elsewhere on this board, an AS snipe has a different psychological feel to it, to me, than a regular bid. With AS, I find that I tend to put in my initial reaction to an item, and then alter it as the auction progresses, because I have that option--seeing how much interest there is overall, and how much MY interest grows or wanes as I have time to become acquainted with the item or get questions answered from the seller.
I know there are many people out there who seem to know exactly how much they are willing to bid from the start. But not all of us are quite that authoritative.
Being that an auction is such a psychological shell game overall, essentially playing on our weaknesses and competitiveness and all that stuff, hopefully no one will take it badly when I say that reserves have a very manipulative feel to me--I always presume that a reserve auction will be no bargain, that the seller wants top dollar or nothing, but as Dave says, wants to get buyers hooked in. So I seldom bother to bid on a reserve unless the seller will tell me what it is.