Ebay.....didn't win, frustrations

Discussion in 'Marketplace Discussions' started by spanky1, Sep 19, 2016.

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  1. spanky1

    spanky1 Forum Resident Thread Starter

    Location:
    East Tennessee
    I thought I'd start a thread to see how often this happens to other members. I'm referring to finding something that you really want on ebay, and don't win it due to some reason OTHER THAN BEING OUTBID. My experience is that this happens when something sells for a dirt cheap price, and I end up being mad/pouty for a couple days after it occurs.

    First off, I know that almost all of these issues would have never occurred if I had just entered my maximum bid long before the auction ended. However, men are stubborn, and never learn. Through the years, I've found items(generally music related) that I have missed due to being gone when it ends, or the computer connection messing up, or some variation.

    My most recent frustration dealt with an auction that ended tonight for the Phil Spector BACK TO MONO box set. I'd watched it for a few days, and it stayed at $9 with free shipping. The seller even sent me a couple of photos of the outer box, and all looked perfect. With a minute or so left in the auction, I decided to enter my bid of $16.50. I tried to enter it, and I did, and then was asked to confirm it. When I did this, I got a message about a session error. I furiously tried for the next 60 seconds, and it was to no avail. The auction ended up closing for $9.50. :mad: :wantsome:

    I've had many like this through the years, and I suppose I'm not the only one.

    I'd like to hear other's stories. Also, if you have this set for dirt cheap, let me know.
     
    somnar and InStepWithTheStars like this.
  2. R. Totale

    R. Totale The Voice of Reason

    I got the exact same result a month ago bidding on eBay.uk. I thought I could leave it until the last few seconds and bid live. I got the same nag screens you saw and lost the item when I would have paid twice what it sold for. My mistake. I've used esnipe.com for years without complaint and I should have left it to them like I usually do.
     
  3. kwadguy

    kwadguy Senior Member

    Location:
    Cambridge, MA
    Use a proxy service. They are cheap and well worth it. And they have 24/7 servers that will place your bid exactly when you want. I use Gixen myself.
     
  4. TLMusic

    TLMusic Musician & record collector

    I suggest using a sniping service.
     
  5. Laservampire

    Laservampire Down with this sort of thing

    This. No more server error issues.

    What is far more annoying is when an auction has already ended twice before with no bids (at $15.99), and when you finally go to buy it the winning bid ends up at $120+, way out of my league.
     
  6. Reese

    Reese Just because some watery tart threw a sword!

    I use Goofbid. While it is a sniping service, I use it because it's free, it allows me to place a bid with the option to change that bid or cancel it right up until the auction ends, and it's free. I find that placing a carefully considered maximum bid via a service like Goofbid keeps me from bidding too much later on and doesn't alert other potential bidders of my interest in the item. No, I don't win a lot of auctions this way as there seems to be a lot of idiots on eBay who are willing to overbid on auctions (unless it's something I'm selling).
     
  7. CraigC

    CraigC Live It Up

    Location:
    LI, NY
    Sometimes when the end of an auction is approaching I put a minimal bid in on a very low priced Rolling Stones SACD just to ensure I won't hit a glitch when I bid on the item I really want. Plus it's usually a Stones disc I still need.
     
  8. MLutthans

    MLutthans That's my spaghetti, Chewbacca! Staff

    Esnipe (and it's ilk) exists for a reason.
     
  9. tmtomh

    tmtomh Forum Resident

    I use a sniping service too. Works very well.

    And I never place my max bid - or any bid - early in the auction, because that risks driving up the price and starting a bidding war.
     
    Robert C likes this.
  10. eddiel

    eddiel Senior Member

    Location:
    Toronto, Canada
    I don't mind losing an auction as it generally means I wasn't willing or able to pay what others were.

    But forgetting to bid...happened to me quite often and like the OP I missed out on a few things I really wanted. So I started using a bidding service like many others have. I can set it and forget about it.
     
    tmtomh likes this.
  11. OnTheRoad

    OnTheRoad Not of this world

    I've not gone after a 'bid now' item in ages. Seems everything I look for is a 'buy it now' and at a very good price !

    I have lost a few items in the past for generally connection problems. I've been both successful and lost by bidding within a few seconds of closing time. It used to be fun...now it's automated as many here use that. Takes the fun out of bidding.
     
    Ben Toscano likes this.
  12. tmtomh

    tmtomh Forum Resident

    Agreed. And one thing we sometimes forget is that if an item sells for a bargain price, that only means that the 2nd-highest bidder bid low.

    Say there's an item worth $200, and you would be thrilled to grab it for $100. You see it's going on eBay for only $50 - but then you forget to bid or there's a system error and you miss out.

    That winning bid of $50 only means that the 2nd highest bidder bid $49. You have no idea what the winning bidder's actual max bid was. It could have been $50, but it also could have been $100, or $200, or $500. So if you'd been able to place your $100 bid, you might have won the item for $51 - but you also might simply have pushed the high bidder's bid up from $50 to $101.
     
  13. gedsmit

    gedsmit Fair Weather Member

    I have a question on sniping software from a seller's point of view - something which I've often wondered. Does a snipe bid show up on the seller's ebay page as a bid, or is it just hiding there ready to pounce at the last minute!?
     
  14. Raunchnroll

    Raunchnroll Senior Member

    Location:
    Seattle
    Occasionally I forget to bid on an item I wanted. Its tough getting old.
     
    Simon A, fuse999 and Giorgio like this.
  15. joachim.ritter

    joachim.ritter Senior Member

    eBay doesn't know about the bid until the sniping service actually bids on an item. Same with sniping software that is running on the bidder's computer.
     
  16. Trashman

    Trashman Forum Resident

    Location:
    Wisconsin
    As others have already stated, a sniping service such as eSnipe is the way to go. You don't have to babysit the auction or try to remember when it's about to end. You just enter the price you're willing to pay, then wait to see if you win or not.

    If it's an item I REALLY want badly, I will often put in a placeholder bid right away... not a large bid, just enough to register a bid and keep the seller from pulling the auction early. (Yes, sellers can still pull an auction early, but they jump through more hoops to do so if the item has already been bid on.)
     
    TLMusic likes this.
  17. Jae

    Jae Senior Member

    I thought that only happened to me!!! Darn frustrating!
     
    Laservampire likes this.
  18. stenway

    stenway Forum Resident

    Location:
    USA
    related:
    Any tool for WATCHING items OUTSIDE EBAY?
    yes! I want avoid watch items on ebay site, why? first ebay only let me watch 100 or 200 items... I don't remember but I need a lot more, second if you WATCH items on ebay, other people see that have a lot watches and that auction get more popularity, so! you are the fool that show to all people that item is there. The idea is watching items outside ebay with a tool, just adding the ID of the item or something.
     
  19. Giorgio

    Giorgio Forum Resident

    Location:
    Varese Italy
    I never had this kind of problems because, in case of a my big interest regarding the item in auction, I always do my maximum bid few hours before the auction ends, if not the day before.

    This is my real problem too :thumbsup:
     
    spanky1 likes this.
  20. The Killer

    The Killer Dung Heap Rooster

    Location:
    The Cotswolds
    If I really want something I snipe. I have put bids on to stop the seller pulling out if he thinks there's no interest, I hate it when I lose those one's as I'm the one who did the initial legwork. But yeah, I have seen stuff in my watch list that I forgot about and it went cheap, grrrr.

    I recently made a best offer on discogs and it suddenly disappeared and reappeared on ebay, I didn't win it and it went for less than the original discogs price, yeah I should've paid the price originally, failing that put a better bid on ebay although by that time I resented giving the setter any money at all especially as he didn't respond to my offer. [/moan]
     
    Simon A and melstapler like this.
  21. DreadPikathulhu

    DreadPikathulhu Senior Member

    Location:
    Seattle
    For some of the obscure items I'm looking for I usually refrain from joining in on a bidding auction and sit back and wait for it to show up with a buy it now option or as part of a bundle. If I'm lucky I can get in and buy it outright when no one else is looking or buy the bundle and sell off the items I don't want to recover most of the cost of what I did want.
     
  22. InStepWithTheStars

    InStepWithTheStars It's a miracle, let it alter you

    Location:
    North Carolina
    Very nearly had one of these two months ago. I was on vacation and a box set I was after showed up for $9.99 (starting bid), about $25-$30 cheaper than usual, auction ending at 11 AM the next day (found this at about 8PM the night before). No bidders either. So I bookmarked the page (didn't want the "people watching" counter to go up and alert people about it).

    So the next morning (about 10 AM) I pulled it back up and two other people had bid on it. It was up to about $14 now. Fine by me, I would have paid $40 otherwise. Nobody else bid on it, and when there were about 5 minutes left I decided to make my bid $22.50 - I figured that would be higher than their bids if they were going to go the sniping route. About 15 seconds before it was going to end, I refreshed the page... only to get the "Thank you for staying at our hotel!" welcome page. Oh no!!!

    All I can say is... thank god I was paranoid about people seeing that there was somebody watching this. I pulled up the bookmark, punched in $22.50, and hit "place bid" with about three seconds remaining. Then those glorious words came across the screen: Congratulations, you are the winner!

    This was my first time doing an eBay auction in about... wow, probably close to seven or eight years (holy **** has it really been that long!?). Imagine my confusion when it said the winning bid was $18 - not the $22.50 that I placed - and that I was considered the winner, and that I only had to pay the $18! After looking into it I discovered that eBay pulls your bid down to the minimum, which is a very strange feature but I am not complaining. I got the set for about $23 including shipping when ordinarily I would have been looking at closer to $50 or so.

    A significantly lesser one which was completely my fault was about a year ago when the complete set of Rolling Stones Virgin collector's edition CDs showed up for around $29.99 (starting bid). Now I didn't want Emotional Rescue or Tattoo You at the time and used that as my rationale for not bidding on it (as well as the fact that I expected it to go upwards of $200). Went out and did some other stuff and came back after it was over... to see that the whole set sold for $44. I was really kicking myself for that. :mad:
     
  23. spanky1

    spanky1 Forum Resident Thread Starter

    Location:
    East Tennessee
    Speaking of Rolling Stones(and my stupidity), for a month or so, I've been watching for the 3-cd GRRR Rolling Stones set. Was watching one today, that sold for $10. I planned on bidding tonight, but got back in town tonight about 15 minutes after it ended. Wasn't a Chinese copy, and total including shipping was less that $13...........I could kick myself.
     
    InStepWithTheStars likes this.
  24. InStepWithTheStars

    InStepWithTheStars It's a miracle, let it alter you

    Location:
    North Carolina
    Sometimes it's not losing that stings, but rather that you wouldn't have had to try in order to win. :shake:
     
    spanky1 likes this.
  25. torcan

    torcan Forum Resident

    Location:
    Toronto
    If I see something I want I'll usually bid when I see it. Life is busy and with work and everything, if I don't do it that way it'll slip my mind until it's too late then I've missed out anyway.

    It's frustrating having the high bid for several days with no competition then getting outbid at the last minute...this has happened to me quite a number of times. Personally, I wish there was someway e-bay could put a stop to that. Even if my bid is quite high, I almost always lose in that kind of situation.

    It's mostly 45s I collect, and sometimes I've had maximum bids of over $40 on a 45 that isn't worth even half that amount, but even if I'm watching it at the end and increasing at the last minute, I always seem to be on the short end of the stick. It's really surprising how high some people will go.

    Personally, I prefer the "buy it now" option, and it's annoying when something I really want is NOT on a "buy it now" - as soon as I see that second bid, I know I'll end up losing in the end.
     
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