Why do people bid on items with days of the auction to run?

Hence why you should always think about how much the item is worth to you and how much you are willing to pay. Put in your max bid and then forget about it. If you win then you paid the price you are willing to pay. If you lose then you know you didn't go over the price you were willing to spend

The thing is, people are often willing to pay £10 more than what they are really willing to spend just to get it there and then. So if you are bidding early, you give other people an incentive to go "ooo I could win it if only I pay just a little bit more...."
 
Early bids stop the seller dealing off the table. As a seller I'm less likely to allow someone to make a buy it now style offer if there is a bid.

If you really want something bidding early helps to ensure the item will still be listed by the time its due to end.

I do agree with this but don't put your maximum bid, just a small securing bid to lock down the item giving the seller a tougher moral decision should he later want to deal off auction.

Also with Buy-It-Nows with a low starting bid it is VITAL to get in ASAP if you are interested and think it's cheap at BIN, this removes the BIN price for everyone else and takes the pressure off you. When looking for motorbikes I'll often printscreen the newly listed bikes I'm interested in (record of BIN for me) then throw 99p bids on all of them and research at leisure.
 
I wait to the end, why would you let anyone know your intensions early in the auction?

Waiting to the last few seconds gives the other punters less time to decide if they would like to counteroffer, bidding early in the auction gives other bidders time to evaluate your bid and decide if it's worth trying to outbid you.
 
The thing is, people are often willing to pay £10 more than what they are really willing to spend just to get it there and then. So if you are bidding early, you give other people an incentive to go "ooo I could win it if only I pay just a little bit more...."

+1 This is exactly the reason to bid in the dying seconds, doesn't give the other party any thinking time or practical room for manoeuvre to go the extra £10.. BAM, too late buddy, you're outta time :D
 
I think we have cross coversations going on here.

Some people say I'll give you 50 quid max for the item if you get higher sell it to the other guy.

Some people treat it as if they were in the auction house waving a numbered card.

Both systems arrive at the same result.

What happens if two people put in a max bid of the same value does it go to the first to bid?

Usually if the value is too low the seller will just pull the auction anyway.

I've lost loads of items as my max was too low but to be honest I have better things to do that to be at the PC waiting for a real bidding war... lol
 
The last minute bidding war is quite exhilarating :p

I always want to pay as little as possible for anything I buy, so I wait until the last minute and use multiple tabs to get the my bid in literally the last 2 seconds.
 
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Im guessing its because not everyone has the time to sit at the computer to watch every auction end that they are bidding on. So they put in their maximum bid and come back after the auction has ended to see if you have won or not. Probably doesn't work very often though.
 
Your maximum bid placed days before the auction ends also allows some people to bid up & up & up until your max is revealed at which point they remove their bid claiming "entered wrong amount" They now know your max and can work with it, usually in the very last dying seconds.
 
I've not read the whole thread because some of the first few comments are retarded, let's clear the max bid system up

On ebay if I see something I want I bid how much I would be willing to pay, Let's say I'm willing to pay £50 for it, I set my max bid at £50, If there is no bid already on the item ebay automatically bids at 99p, then it stays at that price until someone else bids, if they bid £5 for example ebay will automatically bid £5.10 on my behalf, It will keep beating all other bids by 10p until it hits my max bid, at that point the item is going for more than I wanted to pay so I ignore it, no reason to wait until the last minute only to get caught up in the bidding war and paying over the odds
 
Doing that's way pushes up the price and people keep bidding. Meaning everyone pays more.
Bid at the last minute and you don't get in a bidding war, have just as much chance of winning it and the price isn't pushed up.
 
I always leave it till the last 40 seconds or so, put in my max bid and usually win.

Doing this, as many people have said, prevents people bidding above me and making me want to bid higher then I actually want to pay.
 
I am seriously LOL at the retards who think bidding later will drive the cost up.

Your assume your only bidding against gormless muppets who only live to bid in the last few seconds. Which lots of people aren't

I have seen loads of last minute bids win, guess what, no one else wanted it at the price you paid!
I have seen loads of last minute bids beaten by the guy who bid 3 days before the auction ended.

The real key is that if more than one person is really interested then the chances are the person who was willing to pay most wins, its not hard really is it now?

If only one person was really seriously interested they will win if they bid 1 sec after the auction was started or 1 sec before it ends.

The only time last second sniping will really stand you a chance of a bargain is if the only other bidders are bargain hunters as well. Then the one willing to pay most wins, wow surprise.

Ok some people will always want something so ultra desperately and dont get the maximum bid thing properly will bid more in some sort of *** for tat battle potentially paying more than they should have. Thats just survival of the fittest, those retards get everythign they deserve although they are probably the regular ones who then fail to pay for the goods and claim the cat sat on the keyboard and did the bidding ;)
 
Bid snipers work purely because a lot of people dont understand max bids (as this thread has demonstrated). They would prefer to manually enter each single bid when they are outbid. Using a sniper means they dont have time to make another bid.

If every person who puts on a bid used the max bid option, then there would be no use for snipers.
 
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I am seriously LOL at the retards who think bidding later will drive the cost up.


If only one person was really seriously interested they will win if they bid 1 sec after the auction was started or 1 sec before it ends.

The only time last second sniping will really stand you a chance of a bargain is if the only other bidders are bargain hunters as well. Then the one willing to pay most wins, wow surprise.

;)
Does not compute, you have contradicted yourself.
Of course bidding early on average achieves nothing but push the price up.
If everyone budded late prices on average would be less.
 
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the biggest issue with laying down a max-bid early is that people will get their mates to push up the auction to increase the bid as high as they think it will go, so you're effectively bidding against the person doing the auction, and WILL pay more than you should for the item - especially when there is no one else real placing any bids. This is also the source of most second chance offers.

By bidding late, you remove this risk, and dont jeopardise your chances of getting it for what you want pay (or more likely less).

People also want a bargain, so won't put their absolute max down. Early bidding means they realise their low-limit may be too low, and so boost it when they see the bids coming in early. Going late means they don't have that visibility.
 
If everyone budded late prices on average would be less.

They just wouldn't though, your assumption is the only bidders have the same mindset that bidding late = cheaper

Lots of people don't share than and hence they bid early.

Plus there is no way to prove that bidding late = cheaper, its a view held by some, disagreed with by just as many who say its completely and utterly false.

The only piece of reasoning that you can possibly argue for is that if every person bidded last second no one would ever get the chance to think about it and bid more than their inital bid. Other than some limited people almost definately bidding on cheap tat I have yet to come across anyone who gets into bidding wars.

The vast majority of the time I have seen someone clearly values said item more than anyone else and from that point it time it makes absolutely no difference when the bid is made. Zero. None. Nil. It just doesn't matter assuming that person places their bid and waits to see if they have won.

If you really wanted something you wouldn't leave it till the last second to bid, you have just as much change of losing as winning. If you really wanted something you would bid early and at your maximum and hope you won. Bidding last second should make zero difference to the perceived value to you and hence makes no diff. If your outbid, your outbid unless what your saying isyour incapable of deciding the value of something and hence only want to bdi cheap and late to hope to win.
 
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