NOT FLAWLESS!

[zhannax88]

I usually use Gixen to bid on auctions and have no issues. This AM I registered a bid for $45.88 and the auction was won at $44.99 by someone else! Gixen reason listed: "BID UNDER ASKING PRICE"?????? NOT HAPPY!

[Cupid]

You need to read about how auctions work on eBay with respect to the Bid Increment, here:

http://pages.ebay.com/help/buy/bid-increments.html

this was not a fault with Gixen, simply how eBay works.
_________________
Mark

[mootube]

Yes, it's something I wish Gixen would tak the initiative on then it'd really be working for us. If you'd have put $45.99, the item might have been yours. I'd also like Gixen to add a few masely quid to my failed snipes in retrospect but it's something you have to consider beforehand. As an old unwritten rule of ebay; Snipe but snipe what you're willing to pay.

[Owens]

Yeah, thats not Gixen's fault. As was mentioned, it was ebays bid increments which gixen can't override.

$45.88 is a little specific don't you think? It would have been better if you entered whole dollars like $50 which would have given you a nice buffer and then YOU would have won it for $45.99 or whatever.

Be more realistic next time.

[Gixen]

[Atreides]

[Cupid]

I agree you can over think yourself into commiting yourself to higher and higher bids, I also agree that odd amounts are in general more successful to 'edge out' people with similar budgets.

The way I think about it is that I snipe at the absolute maximum that I am prepared to pay... the more I want it the more that is likely to be... perhaps even a few more pence .. If I loose I am always happy that I did not have to pay as much for it as the winner.
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Mark

[gumby_kevbo]

It is worth noting that once a bid is accepted, it only needs to be one cent higher than the next highest bid to win. That is to say that the proxy bid increment does not apply when an accepted bid is less than one increment above the current price...like going "all-in" in poker.

Say an item is currently at $23, but the current high bidder actually has placed a proxy bid of $50. A snipe (actually any bid, but we're all snipers on this bus, right?) at $50.01 will be accepted because it is well over one bid increment, $1, above $23 and will win the auction at $50.01. You don't have to place a $52 proxy bid to beat a $50 proxy bid, and if you did, the increment rule would be applied, and you'd have to pay the $52... 4% more when faced with exactly the same competing bid!

This strategy will still work if the $50 bid came from another sniper, because the proxy bidding won't start walking the current price upward from $24 until the second of the two snipe bids has been accepted.

It will fail (which is what happened to the OP) if there is a long standing $50 proxy bid, and another sniper puts in a $50 bid before you...or it could be two $50 snipes coming in ahead of you. In this case the bid increment acceptance rule applies, and your $50.01 bid will be rejected.

But if your snipe got in ahead of just one of the $50 bids you could still win. This is one reason NOT to push the offset timing to the bare minimum. It needs to be short enough so that the "live auctioners" can't react, but it is better to be the earliest of the snipers, as this allows you to win by less than an increment more often, and best case can save you 4-5% on the purchases that go to your maximum bid.

I usually "oddball" my bids so they will beat all the $5 rounders, (not on cheap stuff though) and all the .25 rounders. I'd guess that about 10-15% of my auction wins are by well under one increment, and often only a few cents over the next highest bidder.