Help me understand the logic of bids in this auction

[AndreiPiatra]

Regarding eBay item number: 292186412268

n***3(182) GBP 41.00 27 Jul 2017 at 8:38:06PM BST
emanuevulp0(5) GBP 40.00 27 Jul 2017 at 8:38:22PM BST
emanuevulp0(5) GBP 40.00 27 Jul 2017 at 8:38:22PM BST
n***3(182) GBP 30.00 27 Jul 2017 at 6:26:35AM BST
Starting price GBP 30.00 17 Jul 2017 at 8:38:24PM BST
Time ended: 27 Jul 2017 at 8:38:24PM BST

I sniped this auction with 3 seconds offset, both in Main and Mirror. I have Mirror subscription. I am the guy who lost, what I don't understand is why the GBP 41.00 bid was placed before my GBP 40.00 bid. I also find curious that there are 2 equal bids on my behalf, at GBP 40.00. Also noticed that my 2 bids were placed with 2s before the end, and not 3s as I actually edited the offsets(both Main and Mirror). It's definitely not a big deal, but I might wish to place even smaller offsets in the future, and I need to know if gixen is accurate enough or not.

Kindly, thank you, looking forward to read your thoughts.

[Guest]

The listing cannot be found easily unless you give a link. There are many E-Bay sites and all have different numbers I perceive.

It is showing you the bids in incremental order, by value, rather than by date.

I perceive that person put in two bids.

One of GBP 30

A second of GBP 41 plus (a value of GBP 42 or more) so it could have been a bid of GBP 87.

It does not matter when you bidded, his bid was higher. You need to understand and read up on E-Bay, bidding and how bidding occurs. To do this you need to go into a search engine and type:

"E-Bay bid increments"

You'll then come up with various links, high up will be the E-Bay page showing you the bid increments. If you are unable to find it, contact E-Bay customer services to locate it. I advise that you read and digest it.

He beat you by a pound (GBP 1). It will automatically put in your bid, and that bid will be on the incremental chart. You need to read up on how bids work, as his bid could have been 'just' ahead of yours by pennies, but this then depends on the amount that the final bids increased the last highest bid by. You need to read up on this as well.

Your message reads that you actually edited both bids to go at the same time, thus they did. The mirror is a 2nd bid, thus two bids. Even Gixen advises you (when you place a 2 or 1 second bid), with the warning shown in red when you do:

"There is little or no reason to keep bid offset lower than 3 seconds. You get no advantage with it, quite the opposite - bid increment rule works against you, and you also dramatically increase chances of your snipe being late."

Informing you that 3 seconds is advisable due to delays or other issues that can occur (E-Bay is full of glitches and issues).

Respectfully you need to actually take the time to read the information given to you? not just by me, but by E-By on their pages and Gixen. I'm sure if you go on the internet, these forum pages and also E-Bay, that you'll find pages and pages of "Why did my bid fail?" questions and answers. This may be why no one has rushed to assist you on your questions above.

I'm nothing to do with Gixen support by the way, I just use Gixen.

[Cupid]

As explained previously, by our helpful guest, this is normal behaviour and display by Ebay when you lose to an earlier, higher bid.

In order to find auctions that have completed, the auction ids are globally unique.

You can't search for them any more though, after the auction ends.

Just add:

www.ebay.com/itm/

as the start of the URL in a new browser window and then append the item number at the end, so in this case:

www.ebay.com/itm/292186412268

Any site will do, you can use '.co.uk' instead of '.com' it makes no difference where the item was actually listed and sold.
_________________
Mark

[AndreiPiatra]

Thank you so much for the replies, guys, so what I learned is that eBay doesn't provide accurate bidding dates, at least not for the winner, which is weird to me. I know about Gixen advise regarding optimum offset, but I have to take in consideration that I do not know how well Gixen updates his website, so I took into consideration lowering the offset, which I will now avoid, due to your kindly advice. I appreciate you took the time to reply in this thread, thank you, once more.
There is one more thing that intrigues me, and will annoy you once more with this bidding panel, that also includes automatic bids:

a***n GBP 41.00
Jul-27-17 12:38:06 PDT

emanuevulp0 ( 5 ) GBP 40.00
Jul-27-17 12:38:22 PDT

a***n ( 182 ) GBP 41.00 -grey text
Jul-27-17 12:38:06 PDT

emanuevulp0 ( 5 ) GBP 40.00
Jul-27-17 12:38:22 PDT

emanuevulp0 ( 5 ) GBP 31.00 -grey text
Jul-27-17 12:38:22 PDT

a***n GBP 30.00
Jul-26-17 22:26:35 PDT

a***n ( 182 ) GBP 30.00 -grey text
Jul-26-17 22:26:35 PDT

Starting Price GBP 30.00 - grey text
Jul-17-17 12:38:24 PDT
Gray text indicates an automatic bid (proxy bid) placed by eBay on behalf of the bidder.

I added "grey text" where the text was in grey.

So now I see 3 bids that took place on my behalf at 12:38:22 PDT, and this is much more confusing. I see 1 bid at GBP 31 and 2 bids at GBP 40, all at the same time. Doesn't Gixen place bids using the increment+current bid? I'm not following the logic here...The GBP31 makes total sense, but what's the point with the GBP40 bids, then? Were there more incremental bids from the winner, but not shown by eBay?

Kindly, kindly thank you, guys. I don't want to waste your time, but I feel that if I understand this I can make good decision in my future auctions. I rarely bid for products on eBay, but when I do I need to make sure that I understand in depth how auctions work and how should I set Gixen for winning results.

,Andrei

[Gixen]

[Cupid]

Here is what I see on ebay.co.uk with automatic bids included:

n***3(182) GBP 41.00 27 Jul 2017 at 8:38:06PM BST
e***n(5) GBP 40.00 27 Jul 2017 at 8:38:22PM BST
This is an automatic (proxy) bid placed by eBay on behalf of the bidder.n***3(182) GBP 41.00 27 Jul 2017 at 8:38:06PM BST
e***n(5) GBP 40.00 27 Jul 2017 at 8:38:22PM BST
This is an automatic (proxy) bid placed by eBay on behalf of the bidder.e***n(5) GBP 31.00 27 Jul 2017 at 8:38:22PM BST
n***3(182) GBP 30.00 27 Jul 2017 at 6:26:35AM BST
This is an automatic (proxy) bid placed by eBay on behalf of the bidder.n***3(182) GBP 30.00 27 Jul 2017 at 6:26:35AM BST
Starting price GBP 30.00 17 Jul 2017 at 8:38:24PM BST

There are only two bidders on this auction, the winner and you. But there are two bids from both of you. They initially placed a bid of GBP 30.00 at 7 Jul 2017 at 8:38:24PM BST then followed that up with a bid of at least GBP 41.00 at 27 Jul 2017 at 8:38:06PM BST (which did not raise the price because Ebay doesn't make you pay more if you outbid yourself and no one else places a bid), that was just before your loosing bids of GBP 40.00 were placed at 27 Jul 2017 at 8:38:22PM BST by Gixen.

That grey bid of yours of GBP 31.00 is what Ebay is saying was you outbidding his lower earlier bid, it's not really very helpful since his higher bid also outbid yours in the same instant.

The times of the bids are correct... the last bid is not necessarily the winning bid. The winning bid is at the top, it might have been much higher than the next highest bid and might have been placed at any time during the auction. This is what the Guest post, above, already pointed out.

You've made a common mistake of assuming that Gixen will only bid one increment more than the current auction price.. It doesn't, and it wouldn't work if it did, because, in general, you don't know the amount that the current high bidder has actually bid on an item. Gixen places your bid as you specify it, no messing about with potentially multiple bids, that there is no time left for it to do, when the auction is just about to end, Ebay can take quite a while to respond to a bid, especially at busy times. Gixen is able to do this without causing you to always pay that much because Ebay does not ever make you pay more than one bid increment more than the next highest bidder.

You will often see two bids of that same amount placed by Gixen when you set your snipes to have the same offset for both the Main and Mirror server, they work independently, both trying to place that bid, they can often succeed in doing so if Ebay is not quick enough to recognise that a bid of that amount has already been placed by you perhaps just a few milliseconds earlier.

None of the above is unusual and has been discussed here many times over the years... not, admittedly, in the past few days when we have been busy with other more unusual issues.

Most of this behaviour is just how Ebay works... so it gets discussed by newer Ebay users all the time on their forums too... the Ebay help pages cover the subjects, but are also quite hard to interpret for inexperienced users... Once you know how it all works it dawns on you 'Oh, that's what they mean...', but, unfortunately, often not until you already understand it, through bitter experience.
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Mark