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 Elida Trading
ELIzabeth and DAvid Ward
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BID SUCCESSFULLY ON eBAY AUCTIONS

BID AND WIN ON EBAY!

Going to an auction and bidding can be fun if you are not afraid of sneezing and accidentally buying a lot of twenty shovels. Bidding on an eBay should always be fun because you know that kind of thing cannot happen.

An eBay auction, or any other internet auction, is not like an ordinary auction where the auctioneer is rattling away twenty to the dozen because when the cyber hammer comes down you probably will not be there and you may not have time to make that last bid which wins it.

To bid sensibly on an eBay auction and to save yourself time and trouble it is important to realise that the way the auction ends means that you have to approach it quite differently. It does not matter in the slightest whether you have been the highest bidder all the way through if somebody jumps in very near the end and you cannot respond.

So you have found something you must win and you put in a bid. Somebody else does the same and overtakes you, so you come back, and they come back and so on. You are no more likely than the other bidder to win it, and you will both lose if somebody else comes along at the last minute and beats you both. That last minute winner may also bid less than you are prepared to. You lose the item because you did not give yourself the chance to make a bid high enough to keep on top. Going up one increment at a time did not take you high enough.

eBay auctions do not work like ordinary auctions. In an ordinary auction the bids go up in set increments one at a time, and the auction ends when everybody is done. eBay auctions do not end when everybody is done but at an exact time set in advance. At that time you and somebody else might be prepared to go higher than the last bid on the cyber table.
 
Although the highest bid at any one time on an eBay auction is only one increment higher than the second highest bid, it is possible for the price to go up much faster than that if two people are prepared to pay enough.

A little example: You and somebody else have been bidding against each other and overtook each other a couple times and the bidding has got up in £1 steps to £20 and you are winning. You are prepared to go up to £50. Somebody else comes along and they are prepared to go up to £40. They bid £40 but the figure shown only goes up to £21. So you bid £22 to get on top again. It doesn't work, so you try £23. Then £24. Then £25. Then time runs out and he gets it for £26. The other bidder would only have had to pay £40 if you had gone up to £39. He's won it for £26, you could have won it for £41, and you valued it at £50. So you didn't get it, and you should have got it!

Remember the eBay motto: "He who laughs last, laughs loudest" or rather, "He who bids last, wins most". The golden rule is to decide what your absolute maximum bid should be and have the courage of your convictions to stick to it. You should make only one bid – your absolute maximum remembering that if you win you will only pay what the second highest bidder bid plus one increment, unless there is a reserve which has been set higher than that or if he his bid is one increment less than yours. If you lose and regret not having bid more then you didn't bid the maximum that you should have bid. Remember you cannot pay more than the second highest bid plus one increment unless there was a higher reserve and if you did not meet that you have not won the item anyway.

If you are not prepared to make this one bid, your absolute maximum, you are not giving yourself the best chance of winning the item. It is as simple as that. If you play it along like a normal auction someone can jump in with their maximum and not give you enough time to reach it and pass it.

Whether you make your maximum bid early in the auction or until late is a matter for you to decide. There are pros and cons both ways. Nobody can tell, not even the seller, what your bid is. The maximum bid you make could be as low as the very lowest that can be accepted or it could be very much greater: you know what you’ve bid but nobody else does. There is nothing to lose because the highest bidder will always succeed in the end.

Perhaps you wish to wait until near the end to see how the bidding is going. We would say you should make up your mind how much the item is worth to you and pay little attention to what others are doing. You have no way of knowing what the top bidder has bid and how much others may come in with. There is also the risk that if you leave it very late, something may keep you away from the computer at the vital time or something else may go wrong and you can't put in that bid. If you prefer to see how things develop before committing yourself and are concerned that you may miss the end of the auction there are programs that will automatically place your bid for you, but even they can fail. In any case, whatever time you decide is best for you to jump in, get your maximum bid in and don't worry about it.

One little thing we should all do, and often don't, is to check the listing some time during the last twelve hours. It is possible that the seller may have added further information which indicates that the item is worth less than the original description led you to believe. If further information is posted and it is unfavourable it may be permissable to withdraw your bid and to substitute a lower one.
 
Don't forget that the 'Items I'm watching' section is very useful if you have not made your mind to bid on an item or want to see how prices for different things work out.

Lastly a word about reserves. Do not expect a seller to sell you an item if your bid is less than the reserve. Some sellers set them realistically, and some don't. Don't keep bidding upwards and upwards trying to find out what it is. You should only bid once and that should be your maximum bid. By all means ask the seller what his reserve is, politely of course; he may tell you or maybe not. Anyway you've lost nothing and you've shown yourself to be a serious bidder.

If there is a reserve and it is not met when the auction ends, neither the seller nor you the bidder will know how close a thing it was. There is nothing to be lost by disclosing your bid to the seller and asking it he would consider making a deal at that figure. You would have to be careful to make certain as far as possible from his feedback that he is reliable since such a deal would not be protected under eBay rules as a successful bid would be.

We will pleased to know whether you found this article helpful and to receive any suggestions for improving it.