Silly question for those of you who buy clothes on ebay

crwilson

I haven't purchased anything on ebay for 6 or 7 years, and I've realized that I don't know or understand how it works anymore. When you bid on an item, do you put in your highest possible bid and then ebay will just raise it incrementally? That's what I thought I understood from reading their website, but I'm not sure. I'm worried that if I do it wrong, I'll be stuck paying more than I want to for items. (There are quite a few IO maternity clothes on ebay that I'd like to snag.)

16 years ago

Shopping

10 replies

Latest reply was from Marlene1

agrace

Active Member

I wish I knew the answer! I dont but I am sure someone will be along to answer this. When I most recently SOLD something on ebay, the buyers made their own bids so maybe there is an option to do both. There is a live chat option that is really helpful on ebay....I think under 'help'. Good luck!

16 years ago

Maya

Veteran

I never outright place my maximum bid because then someone else will try to bid it up, and I end up spending more when I don't have to. I'm not sure how to explain it clearly so here is an example:

An auction that starts at $9.99. I'm willing to pay $50. If I put my max bid at $50, another bidder will come and bid it up to $15. When that doesn't work, they bid up to $20. When that still doesn't work, they go up to $30, and so on. At some point they will either outbid me or decide it isn't worth it and give up. But either way, the price is nowhere near the $9,99 starting price. This is technically the way an auction is "supposed" to work but most users don't do this in my experience. The only time this might be the best idea is if you'll be away from the computer for a long time and you REALLY want the item.

The other method is to bid up in small increments, but you have to be prepared to lose the auction unless you keep a close watch. So using the same example, instead of starting with $50, start with $12. If someone outbids you, bid again just a few dollars higher. This way even if your limit is $50, you might get away with spending less since the other bidders won't be placing higher and higher bids in an attempt to outbid you--they will only need ot bid up 2 or 3 dollars, and you can always place a higher bid later. I don't know if that made any sense at all...

The last and evilest method (which I use and recommend :p) is to just figure out when the auction ends and place your bid in the final few minutes, or sometimes even seconds. The only downside to this is that you have to be glued to your computer during the final moments (I'm lucky since I have an ebay app on my iphone so I can bid from anywhere, and it helps that I have no life right now :p). You can have ebay send you reminders when an auction you're watching is about to end so you don't forget. I almost never lose the auctions I'm bidding on, and when I do, it's usually intentionally (because the price got too high or something like that).

I often use a combination of the last two methods, depending on how popular I anticipate the item will be. If (going back to the example), someone outbids me at $12, instead of placing a new bid right away, I just wait until the last minute to place it.

16 years ago

crwilson

Veteran

Thank you Maya! Your explanation totally makes sense. I downloaded the app for my iphone. One of the shirts that I really wanted has already gone above the price that I wanted to pay for it, so now I'm watching a few dresses. We'll see how it goes.

16 years ago

Marlene1

Active Member

I've had good luck using a sniper service, like esnipe. I place my max bid with esnipe and the esnipe server places the bid with ebay a few seconds before the auction ends. Helps prevent other bidders running the bid up without my having to watch the auction to make a last second bid. With esnipe, the first few snipes are free. Otherwise, the fee is 1% of the winning bid and nothing if you don't win.
I'm sure there are other sniper services, but esnipe is the only one I have personal experience with.

16 years ago

HannahC

Active Member

Christine,

First of all, congratulations on your pregnancy!! (I missed the original thread where you announced it). You have one child, am I right? How far apart are your kids going to be? Kids are wonderful, I am very happy for you!

Lately, I do a majority of my online purchases on ebay. Like Marlene, I use esnipe (download from http://www.esnipe.com) - you specify your maximum bid via esnipe, and they bid in the last minutes of the auction. If you are outbid by the time they come to place the bid, they notify you, and hopefully you see this in time to raise your bid (if you want to). Very convenient and very cheap (they start charging only after several snipes, and charge only for successful snipes).

Good luck!

16 years ago

shiny

Veteran

My understanding is that you can put in your maximum bid, and ebay will automatically bid in increments. So if the bidding starts at $10 and you are only willing to pay no more than $50, you enter in $50, and it'll start with $10.50. If someone counters with $11, then it'll counter automatically for you with $11.50. And on and on... but will stop at your maximum of $50.

The esnipe thing has completely complicated matters, because you could be in a bidding war and could be winning the auction, then at the very last moment, someone swoops in with esnipe and snaps up your item for $0.50 more, without giving you any opportunity to come up an extra 50 cents.

For that reason, DH and I no longer bother with auctions at all. Sorry, but esnipe has taken all the fun out of it!!! DH and I will instead search for "Buy it Now" items and if the price is reasonable, buy it that way and skip the auction. DH spent way too many hours in fruitless auctions getting out-bid by snipers ... it's just not worth the time and hassle. Of course, you have to do your research and ensure the buy it now price is reasonable.

16 years ago

crwilson

Veteran

I signed up for esnipe - what a great idea. Hopefully I'll get some of the items that I've bid on. Thank you for the recommendation!

Hannah - thank you for the congrats. By the time the new baby is born, my daughter will be a little over 3.

16 years ago

marianne

Active Member

Good luck! I bought a few maternity items on ebay, and found it to be a great resource. I used Maya's evil method too, but it's been a while and I don't know if it's more common now.

16 years ago

Mac

Veteran

I'm curious. What do you think happens if 2 people both use esnipe to bid on the same item?

16 years ago

Marlene1

Active Member

Mac, I'm curious, too! Here's what the esnipe website says:

What happens if two eSnipe users bid on the same item?

So what you're really asking is "what if multiple eSnipe users bid the exact same amount on the same item with the exact same buffer time"? (If it helps you, we've only observed this a couple times in the last million or so bids.)

The answer: it's undefined -- just whichever user's bid is retrieved from our database first. eSnipe makes no attempt to arbitrate among eSnipe users sniping on the same item. Any such attempt would result in a privacy breach, since eSnipe promises not to disclose your individual bids to a third party.

16 years ago

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