I am not too up on ebay, I need some help.

There is an item I want and I think the bidding could get a bit frantic at the end.  Where it says on the item page to place your bid it states maximum bid, if the item is £30 at the moment and I am prepared to pay £150, is this where I can put in £150 and it will increase my bid in stages to that amount if it goes that high.  Or is this the box I should just be putting in say £35 because if I enter £150 will it show my bid as £150.

I am confused, help.........

Sandra

You put the maximum you are prepared to pay, and it goes up in stages. :)

If you can remember to be on eBay when the auction's near to ending, I would put in an initial bid of £31 for the time being, then go on closer to the end of the auction and see what's been happening with the bidding.  Ideally you want to bid in the last minute, but this isn't alway possible and I've lost out before by forgetting when an auction ends.  I wouldn't put in £150 just now to be honest if the auction has some time left still to run.

If you put in a high amount, it won't move off the initial bid until someone else bids, then it will increase to about £1 (I think) above their high bid.

Hope this makes sense and helps!

Good luck!

Simone :)

Thanks, where I am confused is when I have just put in an amount on an other item it has shown that amount in the bidding.  I am a bit afraid to put a larger bid in and it takes it as my bid.

Bidding finishes this time tomorrow, I am not going to put anything in until nearer the time, I just have a feeling this item is going to attract a lot of bidders at the last minute.

Yes, you would put your maximum bid of £150 in, that way ebay will automatically bid on your behalf upto that amount. I wouldn't do your bid until quite near the end if you are putting your max bid down though as if it is at present £35 and if you put £150 down someone may come along with a £70 highest bid and it will jump straight away from £35 to £70  people will then keep bidding and the price will keep rising. (Probably not explained that very well :-) ) But wait until as near the end as poss before placing your £150 bid.

Good luck. :-)

I am a bit afraid to put a larger bid in and it takes it as my bid.


This will only happen if say someone else has put in a bid of £149.50 then it will go straight away to £150, if someone has put in a bid of £31 and then you place a bid of £150 it will just show the bidding at £31.50 or whatever the next highest bid was.

The only problem with this is some friends (I've been asked to do this but pretended that I had forgotten my password)  bid on each others items to get the price up. Then if they do win they just put the items back on saying that they were never paid :-(

That's called shill bidding and i believe ebay come down hard if they are caught.It's very hard to tell that's going on now though with the changes they've made and you can't see who else is bidding...

http://pages.ebay.co.uk/help/community/shill.html

Thanks everyone, you have put my mind at rest.  Lets hope I get it now. :)

Hi Sandrah, I use eBay a lot so do PM if you need any other help.

When any of my items sell for unusually high prices it's often new members that are getting carried away by the bid process.  Although you are obviously willing to pay £150 for your item presumably you'd rather not!

If you put place your maximum bid on eBay at any point before the sale ends there is a chance that an underbidder may keep chipping away with small increases to find out your maximum bid.  Even if they do not reach your limit, perhaps they decide not to go any further,  they have still managed to raise your price and in the process have probably bid more than they wanted just to try and win.  These are the type of buyers that a seller would like - new people often = high prices

Experienced buyers know that there is always another product coming along behind - very few items are so unique that you will never see another.  Because of this these type of buyers are a bit more restrained.  You can check completed items to see what price you can expect to pay and then set a sensible limit.  For these type of buyers the safest option is to use an auction sniper product.  This means that you can bid days in advance if you like and then walk away.  You don't even have to be online - the system will add your bid in the last few seconds of the auction thereby minimising the risk of a pesky underbidder!!  I use Auction Sniper.   Mine is set to bid 7 seconds before the sale ends and although there is a tiny fee on large value items it's saved me 10 times that in lower purchase prices.  Most of these type of sites will offer you at least 3 free bids before you need to start paying fees.

Finally don't ever bid in round figures.  For instance £150 is a price that others may have chosen.  You can add 1p or 50p to your bid but lots of people know that trick too.  If I was prepared to pay £150 I'd probably ask myself - am I prepared to lose it for a fiver?  No - then go to 157.68 or something equally odd.  Always go just a bit above your final figure in odd numbers.  Someone may still outbid you but at least you gave yourself the best chance.

Good luck

Wow thanks for that, it is a bit of a minefield.  The item is Memorabilia and I have waited a year for one to come up, I am sure I am not alone.  The tip for not using round figures is a good one and I will do that.

I will have a look at the Auction Sniper site you have linked for me.

If I decide to put an intial maximum bid of say £100 and I see other bids are getting close, do I just put in a higher figure before it reaches the £100 or do I have to wait until it reaches my max. bid.

If it were me and I was going to be online at the time the auction was ending or nearby, I would only put in a small initial bid.  You will be emailed if you are outbid.  I would then go on nearer the end time and increase my offer then.   Ideally, I'd want to be on in the last few minutes and up my offer at that time.

Good luck.  Let us know if you are successful.

> If I decide to put an intial maximum bid of say £100 and I see other bids are getting close, do I just put in a higher figure before it reaches the £100 or do I have to wait until it reaches my max. bid.

If you are going to use Auction Sniper - put your absolute highest amount in and walk away until after the sale finishes.

If you are going to be online - if you are sure of your connection and trust you won't have a power blip or weak internet connectivity - you can bid near the end of the sale.   You can put a higher bid it at any time - the eBay system will recognise you and it's impossible to bid yourself up.  A word of caution though, if you are thinking of live bidding at the end it's very easy to run out of time OR get a bit a carried away.  You will never beat a snipe bid on timing - they are timed for between 20 and 5 seconds before the auction close - you can only beat these bidders on price so even if bidding live give yourself minimum of 2 minutes to get your last bid in just in case you have a connection problem or the system hits a 'go slow'.

I'd recommend auction sniper for an important item, it's easier to be disciplined about price and it's comforting to know that your bid will be placed even if you get stuck elsewhere at auction end time.  Just make sure that you get registered on your snipe site early and you can always practise on a 99p item that finishes before your memorabillia item to test it's working ok.

> If it were me and I was going to be online at the time the auction was ending or nearby, I would only put in a small initial bid.  You will be emailed if you are outbid.  I would then go on nearer the end time and increase my offer then.   Ideally, I'd want to be on in the last few minutes and up my offer at that time.

Earl makes a good point about a small early bid.  Sometimes you'll find that items are sold early or offline before the auction time is up.  This tends to happen with bigger items such as washing machines, partly because people need to arrange a convenient collection time or because they go and view first.  If there are bids on an item it makes it more difficult for the seller to end the sale early, so a small early bid on any item is a good way of registering your interest.  However it also signals your interest to other bidders!!  The other place to look and see if an item is interesting to other bidders is the counter at the bottom of the page which lets you see how many times an item has been viewed.  As a seller you can also see how many people have your item on their watch lists.

Fingers crossed for you...

I would never put my max in till the last 3-4 seconds.  If you put it in early someone will always push it up, the thing about auctions is to try and get it as cheap as possible.

It is like going to a car or house auction some " bleep silly person bleep " :-D always jumps in with a silly high bid.  

Dont do what i did a couple days ago, i wanted some curtains i had been watching for a few days.One hour before they ended i opened two pages on ebay ( while i browsed another site)one which i bid £50 on which then went to the confirm page,the other page i kept refreshing for the up to date time, when it got a few seconds til the end i clicked confirm page which i thought should have confirmed my bid, but cos my confirm page had been sitting there for an hour it wanted me to confirm my name and password, by the time i did that ( on dial up) the curtains went for £22, boy was i fed up at myself!

Thanks everyone, I won it. :))

As I suspected it went mad in the last few minutes, the highest bid before mine was obviously £100, so I got it for £101.

Don't think I could go through that again, my heart is still racing.

Now I just have to find a way of telling my husband how much I have spent on it.........;)

Excellent Sandra Tell him it was his fault LOL

The icing on the cake was it was a charity auction with all proceeds going to a worthy childrens charity.

Even better the he will have no answer to that then ;-)

Are you going to spill the beans on what it is now please :-D

> Are you going to spill the beans on what it is now please

Oh good Gillian, someone else who's nosey LOL!

M.

Hee hee, I was going to ask too!

Well done, hope you're pleased with your purchase.

Simone

Nope........all I will tell you is that it is an original autographed photograph, not telling you of who though.  ;)

I know it is authentic as they named the PR agency it came from (a famous one), I e.mailed them prior to bidding to check they had sent out an original to this charity and they kindly confirmed they had.  Very unusual to get an original, they usually only send out pre-printed ones.

Should be arriving tomorrow. :)

OK not a BC so you lost my interest ROFLOL
Edited to add now who's arm can I twist to find out who your a fan of

Well all I can say is I found it and I'm not surprised you're not admitting to it LOL.

M.

I don't know how you found it.........if you say anything I will have to kill you. LOL

Oh, I'm just a stalker by nature, Sandra. Your guilty little secret is safe with me and it's a very worthy charity, so good on you.

M.

It is fairly easy to find with the details you have given :-D  You might want Admin to remove this actually as I know I would have the heebie jeebies if I thought strangers knew my ebay ID.

Hi Sandrah

Congrats - it's great to win something you really wanted isn't it.  Yep I'd ask admin to edit for you.  From the info you've given, coupled with a clue from your avatar to be sure, it took me less than a minute to find the item you bought.  Not stalking I promise, but checking.  If admin just removed the price you paid, and maybe the charity bit, you'll prob be ok.  Better to be safe :)

MuffyMoo, that is dis -heartning as I have just recently started to use ebay, obviously I am new to that but I find is disgusting that your friends are doing that and totally commend your strength in saying you don't have your password.
Sandra

PS how can they say they've not been paid, do they choose a different payment method other than paypal, cheque postal order? I am assuming they don't cash the cheque/postal order and then relist the item. Can this be listed as fraud to a certain degree???.