Re: [Leica] Bidding on eBay (was: something else totally unrelated)

[Dennis Painter <dpainter@Bigfoot.com>]

Frank Dernie wrote:
<snip> 
> I only want it if its cheap.
> The outbidder seems to know:-
> a) how much is my maximum bid, which on one occasion had been over $1000
> more than shown as the current high bid,
> b) Outbids this value by a minimal amount ( less than the normal increment).
> c) Does so in the last seconds of the auction.
> 
> clearly b) and c) are reasonable objectives for a successful online auction
> junkie but the knowledge of a) and the precision of c) lead me to the belief
> that some sort of legal or otherwise automatic bidding software must be
> being used. The internet delays make reliable manual bids in the last
> seconds of an auction too risky, knowledge of a) implies a hack into e-bay.
> Lets face it the outside world, despite policing, is addled with crime and
> legal ways of being dishonest, it is naive to believe that the internet is
> not at least the same.
> Each time it has happened to me the outbidder was a dealer with 100s or
> 1000s of transactions. It has happend to me far too often. I believe that
> some merchants have either a hack or other homemade e-bay bidding software.
> cheers Frank


If you are outbid by less than the increment amount then the outbidder's
bid history should show they entered a bid sooner than you. If not then
it's a fair question to ebay as to why.

I believe all bids received are timestamped by ebay to 'sort out' things
when bidding gets hectic. 

It's not hard to bid within seconds of the close of an auction. I have
done this many times. You just synchronize your watch with ebay and
click on the place bid button 10 seconds (or whatever suits you) before
the end of the auction. Sometimes the internet has a huge delay and you
miss, that's the breaks of last second bidding. Sometimes ebay is down,
another risk you have to be willing to take with last second bidding.
You can increase your odds with internet traffic by sending 2 bids at
the same time. That way if one bid gets routed via outer mongolia the
other one might make it.

Even with an automatic bidding program the bids are still being sent via
an internet connection, same as your manual bid.

Martin: An automatic program waiting for emails from eBay to 'up your
bid' is not going to work in the final minutes of the auction. eBay just
is not that fast on sending out those notices.

Bid the max you are willing to pay. If you are looking for a bargan then
decide how good a bargan you want, in advance! 

Dennis