Reserve - will it be met?

From my experience, if you are exclusively the first bid with the situation you describe, your bid will automatically be put at whatever the reserve is at.

If someone has already bid and you snipe it with the same situation you describe, the auction will end with no actual winner, but more likely than not, the seller will email you with a personal offer, which is usually the reserve price or less.

I hope that helps

Reading the above brings to mind another situation/question....

If I us AS to snipe on an auction where the reserve price is not yet met, and I set my snipe to a max that I'd want to pay (well, could live with paying is a better way to look at it...I'd want to pay less of course!) and which would hopefully be above the reserve, does/can AS submit a snipe that simply meets the reserve?

I'm asking because I had an unsuccessful bid (not using AS) in a reserve price auction where my high bid was below the reserve (and the seller never even bothered to make a personal offer). After the auction had ended I was able to see that another bidder and I were both trying to creep up to the reserve price without having to bid significantly above it.

I'd love it if I knew that AS can determine what the reserve price is so that I don't end up having to risk overpaying. Has anyone been successful using AS this way on a reserve auction?i

You don't have to worry about your bid exceeding the reserve if you get the item for the reserve bid. However, if your reserve bid is higher than the reserve amount and a higher bid is needed to outbid someone, then your bid will be used up to the maximum you specified in your AS setup. There is no way you can say "this far and no farther" with AS. The amount you specify in your snipe setup is the amount bid. This is because the reserve bid isn't known to anyone other than the seller until the auction is over. Look at AS as just another sniper. Is AS fast and reliable? Yes. Is AS convenient? Certainly. Does AS know something you don't? Nope. Just do as you have been doing, bidding the max you're willing to spend (and don't forget approximate S&H costs) and make that your bid.

Best of luck!

Thanks for that answer. After I posted I then also noticed the Reserve Not Yet Met thread, and see pretty much the same info there.

I decided that in an auction that I'm now watching I'd just go ahead and ask the seller. What the heck, maybe he'll tell me.h

Sure, go ahead and ask the seller. Sometimes he'll tell you, most of the time he won't. But you can do one other thing: Using the "Search" function off the eBay main page, select "By Seller" on the resulting menu and enter the seller's username in the appropriate window, being careful also to designate how far back you want to see his closed auctions. If you can find others of his reserve auctions, you may be able to establish some indication of his usual expectations. This is often the case, since many sellers unconsciously make the reserve bid a mathematical function of their opening price. To be sure, some sellers are ridiculous, asking a $9.99 opening bid with a reserve price in the hundreds of dollars, but this isn't usually the case. Give it a try -- the more you know about the seller the better off you are.

I use AS all the time but primarily I am a seller. If something fails to meet the reserve and I get a reasonable offer - I always sell. Sellers that I communicate with are only to willing to enter into a dialogue with a potential buyer - not olny do they not have to pay the ebay fees they can often get way above their reserve if it is done correctly.

Kiwi Keith

I never heard from the seller who I'd asked about the reserve...but in the end I wouldn't have continued with the bid as at the last hour or so bidders went "schtoop-ed" by bidding much higher than the lens was worth even if new.

OTH, I wanted to bid on a flash today that I've been looking for. Sent a message to the seller and didn't hear back. Realized his user name was in e-mail format and took a chance by sending to that address, and he said that he never got the previous message. He answered my questions about shipping, and when I told him that I was going to be out this afternoon but would try to guess my way to his reserve before I went...he came back telling me the reserve.

So with that info, and knowing that bids were way below...I set a snipe for a bit above the reserve. Got home this afternoon, and had won.

Some days are better than others. :-)a