Stupid eBay Tricks
May. 16th, 2006 03:48 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
billroperI picked up a used ADAT XT-20 on eBay to use in the "portastudio" that I'm putting together for ![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
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.
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.
eBay has many stupid problems
Date: 2006-05-17 05:30 pm (UTC)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.