CAN I BID AGAINST MYSELF

[LARRYTOWN]

I think this issue came before, the problem is I see an item that is a very good and low starting price,but in the past sometimes the seller realized his mistake or greed and canceled the auction. What I want to know if I use a bid there on eBay, let's say starting at $75..just to keep the auction alive as ebay claims it doesn't allow sellers to cancel ongoing bids, (they dont enforce that rule) as it happened to me recently,) if I then place a hidden bid here on GIXEN, lets say for $199, will I have to pay the highest price if I am the only bidder, or will I be \"Booted up\" to the second highest bid, even though i am the only bidder?. The simplest scenario is like this..... the item on ebay is now listed at starting price of $75..My gixen hidden bid will be $175. There are no bids yet, but I want the auction to proceed and not have the seller change the price, so I plan to enter a seen ebay bid of $89.99.Will this activity raise my final cost closer to the highest bid I put here on Gixen

[Cupid]

This is actually a standard sniping technique, when there is a low Buy It Now price on what is otherwise an auction. So, snipers that believe the item will get sold (to someone else) for that BIN price, but don't want to actually buy it themselves at that price, will often place a low early bid in order for Ebay to remove that option and turn it into just a pure auction.

The only real issue with doing it is that it might encourage other bidders to place a bid on the auction in order to outbid your early bid, and of course every extra bid increases the auction price on Ebay. So, it's possible that the eventual selling price could be higher than it otherwise would have been. But that's not a major risk, especially when you are sure that there is interest in that item at the price you are willing to make an opening bid at.

As for outbidding yourself, the way that Ebay works is that if you place a higher bid from the same Ebay account as is already winning the auction, the price does not actually increase at all. Therefore, in that respect there isn't a risk of paying more than you otherwise would have done.

You do, of course, need to be careful if you have multiple Ebay accounts, if you place a bid from a different Ebay account than the one you have authorised Gixen to place your snipes on, then you will end up raising the price if both of those different Ebay accounts end up having placed the highest two bids on the auction.

As you say, Ebay do allow sellers to cancel auctions, for a specific set of reasons, like it's lost/broken or sold elsewhere, but I think there may be more restrictions in the last 12 hours of the auction.
_________________
Mark

[LARRYTOWN]

thanks. that i s why I avoid going back to see the updates on items that interest me as some potential buyers see many views and start to bid early, raising the price up very high. With millions of items, I still dont see why I am seldom the single bidder on an item ,especially items with great low starting prices. I am convinced that Ebay hides items of my interest until i bid o r pay higher amounts, then they send me suggestions , when just a day earlier not one item that i was searching for appears, but after my first bid, then dozens of them show up.

[Ramona]

[Gixen]

[Cupid]

[LARRYTOWN]

I just wanted to make sure that the seller didnt cancel or alter his low staring price. Ebay thinks that we should all start off with practically \"Give a way prices\". So I did enter a starting bid, and of course others quickly joined in.Now the price is twice what it was when i first saw it. But hopefully my Gixen bid will win it, if buyers hold off bidding higher.