OT: E-bay confusion

The sensible way to play is think what your maximum bid is and place that bid. The less sensible option is to wait until 2-3 seconds before the closing time and enter it as a snipe bid ...

If it's an auction, £120 is the *starting price*. Bids will be 120, 125,

My local car auction does the same - sales are Wednesdays, but some cars have a buy now price that you can use to buy before the sale. Your choice whether to gamble it goes for a lower price in the sale, but risk somebody else buys now or outbids you.

Theo

That is the impression given, but that bid price is not shown, it says "0 bids".

This auction is not allowing any offer lower than £120.

You can put in a bid of £125 (or whatever minimum bid it should tell you) if it then says current bid is £125, you're the highest bidder

but you've revealed you're willing to bid, and other bidders will react to thay, but in the end the result is everyone keeps upping until nobody is prepared to any more, so you can bypass all the faffing, stick your maximum bid of e.g. £198.76 now, then walk away .. you might get it for £121 or might lose out to someone bidding £200

But I'm still puzzled as to why it e-mailed me to tell me that somebody else had put in a bid, but it still lists 0 bids. I just checked again.

An offer is not a bid. It's an invitation to stop the auction right now and skip further bidding.

The amount of the offer is only visible to the seller, not to the punters.

You can't offer less than the starting price. You're saying 'if I agree to pay £200 will you skip the auction?' and the seller has to decide to take £200 or let the auction run. Since the bid price only goes up (if there are any bidders at all), the seller is not going to take less than the starting price in order to skip the auction.

Theo

That's down to the seller, not the ebay system. If the seller says something, it doesn't mean it's reflected in the ebay system - they could say 'I'll take XYZ in part exchange' which ebay has no facility for. They may try to do deals under the table (which are banned), or to bend ebay to do something it's not designed for (eg cancel the listing, start a new buy-it-now listing for the agreed price, and send you the link in the hope you buy it before somebody else does).

Offers are not bids, see my previous message. They're telling you that someone else is interested in the item in the hope of getting you anxious on missing out and increasing your spend.

If you only want to pay £90, best thing you can do is message the seller and say 'would you take £90'. If they don't want to, you know where you stand. However you're likely to come across as a chancer, because they probably set the starting price for a reason and will prefer to let the auction run to see if they achieve it. Most bidding activity is in the closing minutes so the current bid a few days before is no guide as to what it'll actually go for.

If the auction doesn't sell and they relist, then you're in a better position. Or you can make your offer more attractive in some way (eg £110 collection against £120 'free postage' could be attractive if it saves the hassle and cost of posting)

If the item has received an legit offer (which must be over £120 if ebay won't allow you to go lower) then I think it highly unlikely they will take £90.

Theo

Does the listing have a 'make an offer' button?

Why? The item may be of little interest to anyone else and go for far less than your maximum bid.

Different I know, but in a property auction I saw a plot of land for £10. I assumed this was a ploy to attract attention and it would never go for that price. In the end it went for ... £10. I am very glad I did not bid £5,000.

ebay does bid increasing for you. If the current price is £10 and you bid £5000, ebay will bump up the price to the next step which is maybe £10.50, with you as the highest bidder. If somebody else comes along and bids £20, you'll still be winning but at £20.50 (or whatever the step above £20 is). If nothing changes, you'll win it at the ending time and pay £20.50.

(you can bid any amount and it'll work out the steps, eg if that person bid £20.36 then the next step might be £20.86. It's good practice to bid an odd number to avoid ties where the earliest bidder of the identical amount would win it)

ebay is not an auction - it's not subject to auction laws. They borrow some pricing strategies from traditional auctions, but they don't work the same way.

In real auctions it's strongly advantageous to place your bids live, but ebay autobidding makes that much less necessary.

The one advantage of 'sniping' at the last moment is it avoids revealing your interest until the last seconds of the auction, which gives others less time to respond to up their bids. But the highest bidder on the table always wins at the end of the day.

(a piece of land for £10 often carries more liability than value - caveat emptor!)

Theo

Try contacting the seller and offering £90

A good idea, thanks.

Our local auction house, a large East Anglian company, will auto-bid for you. In the same way as ebay does. I have found it useful.

Yes, a lot of traditional auction houses now have a blend between in-person and online bidding (which are true auctions according to law). I've not used the various online platforms, but the idea is that bidding in the hall is still a sensible way to buy (you get to inspect the item first etc) and the auction 'event' on the day is not just a bunch of people hammering the website from their phones. For another thing you get to see how much other lots are going for, which is often hidden with online only auctions.

Theo

In which case you'll get it for a fraction over the next lower bidders price ...

When the auction has ended it may allow you to "make an offer"

Maybe the bidder withdrew? or the seller cancelled the bid?

What you are trying to say is the starting bid is £120.

That is why it won't accept anything less that £120.

The bid counter will only increment once someone has bid £120 or more.

I use a eBay snipe bidding site. I suggest you look them up and join one.

Using a sniping site place the highest you're willing to pay and it will present that bid in the later seconds of the auction. That stops shill bidding from the seller or his accomplices or from overreaching buyers.

While shill bidding is technically illegal in the UK in auctions, eBay claims not to be an auction where shill bidding is rife.

Bids and offers are two different things. Is there a "Make an Offer" button? If no-one is bidding and you make the seller an offer (even below the minimum bid price), they may decide to accept it or make a counter-offer

You can't bid below the minimum asking price, but you can certainly make a lower offer - and if the item is being auto-listed for the third time and has had no bids, the seller may choose to accept.