Stupid eBay Tricks

[billroper]

I picked up a used ADAT XT-20 on eBay to use in the "portastudio" that I'm putting together for min0taur to use. I had another one go for a good bit more than I was willing to pay for this particular brand of obsolete -- but still useful! -- technology.

I was left to wonder at one of the features of eBay's bidding system. If you put in a maximum bid, the system will just bid you up to the minimum level necessary to get above the previous bid. This may be less than the reserve. It appears that you can have a maximum bid that's higher than the reserve, but fail to meet the reserve unless you either enter a larger bid by hand or another bidder pushes you over the reserve.

Am I misunderstanding the way this works, or is it just a bit nutso? It would seem like your bid should enter at the reserve price if your maximum bid is at or over the reserve. And if your maximum bid is less than the reserve, your bid should enter at the maximum.

Comments

[fleetfootmike.livejournal.com]

That's not how it should behave. Odd.

[markbernstein.livejournal.com]

It's been a while since I bid for anything on eBay, but my recollection is that it's supposed to be smart enough to bump the bid up to the reserve amount if you bid above that. If your bid is less than the reserve, it will do what you described, and only raise the current bid to the minimum amount needed above the last bid. I could be wrong.

[pheltzer.livejournal.com]

I believe if there is a reserve... if your max bid is higher than the reserve your bid will automatically be raised to the reserve price.

[kevinnickerson.livejournal.com]

My first thought is that the bidding should act as if there is no reserve until the end of the auction. At that point, if the current high bid is less than the reserve, it would bump up to the reserve if possible. The point being to hide the value of the reserve until the last possible minute.

I'm not quite sure why I feel this way, nor am I totally sure it's a good idea, but it would be my first cut at the problem. I did do some digging on ebay to see if they spelled it out, but nada.

Reserves

[dave-ifversen.livejournal.com]

The way it is supposed to work is that if your proxy bid is above the reserve, then the bidding goes to the reserve right away - you would then have the high bid, and the "reserve not met" indication goes away. There have been a lot of glitches on eBay recently, so it would not be surprising to see this messed up as well.

As far as reserves go, it is intended to protect the seller (so that he/she won't have to take a loss on the item). My personal opinion is that you should start the bidding at the lowest amount you would accept for the item and not bother with a reserve (and, not have to pay the hefty eBay reserve fee). The prevalent opinion on the seller's board on eBay is that if a reserve is used, the amount should be listed in the item description. Many people won't bid on an item that has a hidden reserve - they don't feel like playing guessing games with the seller. I tend to agree - just list the reserve price in the description, and if the item is one I am interested in, and the reserve is not outrageous, I will bid above the reserve.

Re: Reserves

[tigertoy.livejournal.com]

I would say that disclosing the reserve price in the description defeats the purpose of having a reserve, except that to my way of thinking there IS no purpose to a reserve except to make the person offering the item look like a dork. Only a moron would make a bid they knew was lower than the reserve. And only a moron would bid on an item without reading the description closely enough to see that it announced the reserve price. But, I have to realize, a large part of the point of eBay is taking advantage of morons -- who wants to sell something for what it's worth, when you can get some dunce to pay a whole lot more?

Indeed ...

[the-magician.livejournal.com]

... in a live auction it is perfectly normal to not announce a reserve price until everyone has finished bidding and then say "the highest bid was 150 dollars, and has not reached the reserve".

The point is that if you say up front "I want 400 dollars for this" then possibly no one will bid. But if you start it at, say, 200 dollars, then someone may bid that, someone else come in at 210 and back to the first person at 220 etc. each one going just that 20 dollars more and getting invested in buying this item and beating the other person and suddenly they find they are at 500 dollars. This is pretty normal in auctions. And this is the reason for a hidden reserve, to get people bidding and wanting your item (and hoping they'll bid up to a price above your reserve).

It is also possible (on ebay) to lower your reserve and to offer to sell your item to the highest bidder even if it is below the reserve price.

But if you publish a reserve price, then I don't see why you don't set your starting price to that published reserve price. (Heh, just glanced down the desks and the chap two desks down is currently doing something on eBay!)

No, you're right ...

[the-magician.livejournal.com]

In Reserve Price Listings, if your maximum bid is the first to be greater than the seller's reserve price, the eBay system will automatically increase the price to meet the reserve and bidding will continue from there.
http://pages.ebay.co.uk/help/buy/proxy-bidding.html

eBay has many stupid problems

[(Anonymous)]

Just a random comment from someone who got here via Jeff Duntemann's friend's list...

I am the so-called "eBay guru" at my company, simply because I'm the unfortunate software engineer that has to deal with our interface to them. I can tell you that there are many, many silly eBay tricks out there. A look at their API docs will make you scream in frustration faster than anything else I've encountered (curious?: http://developer.ebay.com/DevZone/XML/docs/WebHelp/wwhelp/wwhimpl/js/html/wwhelp.htm).

My favorite eBay oops was when they had walk-behind lawn mowers as a sub-category of riding lawn mowers.