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How is this even possible?
I like to think I'm pretty savvy with eBay, but today I've experienced something that has me truly flumoxed. I received a notification for a card on my want list. It had no bids and a starting bid of 99 cents. So I make a max bid of $150 expecting that it'd be the hugh bid (at least for a while until someone outbid me). But no - immediately I'm outbid...even though I was the opening bid. When I look at the bid history is shows that a higher bid was placed 5 hours before.
https://lh3.googleusercontent.com/pw...SlzS_oO8UBmhcg How can that be the case? If they bid higher than me, wouldn't there have been at least one bid at 99 cents before me? How can I be the opening bidder at 99 cents but a bid was submitted 5 hours before? Its highly probable that I'm just being stupid. If so, please educate me. Thanks. Gary G01db3rg |
How is this even possible?
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It looks like the Bidder above you placed his bid 5 hours before you with a Max Bid of $152.5 or higher. Since you placed a max bid of $150 it automatically bumped his bid to $152.50. You must not have actually been the opening bidder as there was already a bid at .99 according to the bid history. You may have seen Opening Bid 0.99 but it probably said “1 Bid”. Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk |
If you are "g*" then it appears you're right.
According to the history shown, the opening bid seems to have been made by you, as there's nothing between your bid and the starting price. Is it possible that the phantom bidder had a snipe bid that kicked in because it was triggered by your $150 amount?? I don't use (or have enough knowledge about) any of those apps, but could that potentially be the reason?? |
Yep, i'm g... in that bid history.
The bidder at 152.50 couldnt have nid before me because i was the first bidder. When i placed my bid it showed no bids. I was the first bid at 99 cents. I dont think it could be a snipe app, because that would just look like another bid and it wouldn't be 5 hours before mine. I've seen soemthing similar on Pristine where i bid on a pennant that had no bids....and then i was automatically outbid even though my bid was the first bid. I just stopped bidding there because it seemed iffy. I'm now seeing this on ebay. Something doesn't feel right to me. |
Simple explanation
Other bidder has a DeLorean with a flux capacitor.
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I use snipe tools but they usually don’t place a bid until the last 3-5 seconds of an auction. So much BS going on with auctions now.
Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk |
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Can you post a link to that auction, so we can see what the bidding timestamps look like to us in the USA? |
Did the auction originally have a hidden reserve of $150?
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Definitely strange
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Yes, im in the UK and using the ebay app set to the US region. Its a good suggestion about the timezone for the servers but ebay normally shows the times absolutely not by timezone. For the more technical amongst us, I'd expect ebay to be standardizing times to UTC and then converting the the local time for each user. I think I'll need to raise this with eBay for them to investigate.
I had thought about a hidden reserve too but that would show as reserve not met rather tha a competing bid. The the other bidder isn't the same at the one who listed the card. Is it possible that a large seller has some way of rigging the system? |
I though chatgpt might actually be useful for this as I couldn't think of any explanation. Does this fit your scenario?
https://uploads.tapatalk-cdn.com/202...61e28dc4bc.jpghttps://uploads.tapatalk-cdn.com/202...4ecd5dbd2b.jpg |
Does the auction show a cancelled bid? The high bidder could have bid an extremely high amount to feel out your bid and then cancelled his bid immediately. He would then know you were at $150 and bid above that.
It would only take two bids to get to $152.50. |
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The whole situation is really weird. A quick look at a world time zone map tells me that I have bid from around 18 time zones and never had anything even remotely similar happen.
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