increment rule not met? why did i lose this auction?

[sweetylang]

271117536056 e-bay item number. why did I lose this auction?

[Cupid]

For a bid to be accepted by ebay, it not only has to be more than the current auction price it must be greater than the current auction price by at least one bid increment.

This will be why ebay rejected your bid when Gixen tried to place it for you.

Your bid would need to have been $16 or more before ebay would have accepted it. That is because the bid increment is $0.50 in that price range as detailed here:

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

even when accepted though your bid will not necessarily win if the current high bidder placed a bid that was more than yours... usually you can not tell whether or not that is the case until after your bid has been accepted and registered on the auction bidding list by ebay.
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Mark

[sweetylang]

So, if that is the case, for that particular item the last accepted/posted bid whether it was listed threw a sniper or not determines where the next bid had to be at .50 more? So must i take notice in the bidding history what the last bid is at? But in the end that number can change by other bids listed. Im confused. Reason Im asking this particular question, on my next auction I checked the bidding history, noticed the last posted bid was at an odd number ($15.79) so i placed my highest bid threw Gixen at $16.29 (i won that) but at the full .50 more than the last bid of 15.79 (does that make sense to you)? Im still confused because on this auction bidding history listed at 15.00, then next bid was 15.29, then 15.79 and then the final winning bid was mine at 16.29. Why was the $15.29 bid ever accepted? It was not a full .50 more than the previous bid listed. Im sure I've seen bids in this price range category winning with less than .50, even a penny win.

[Cupid]

On the price range of the auction that you first posted about, yes your bid has to be $0.50 more than the current price to be accepted.

The current price is not necessarily the same as the amount that the current high bidder has bid.

Ebay works out the current price as, up to, one bid increment more than the second highest bidder. The current price is only less than one bid increment more than the second highest bidder if the highest bid is less than one bid increment more than the second highest bid.

So the auction price is set more by the second highest bidder than by the actual highest bidder.

If you bid exactly one bid increment more than the current auction price you will never win for less than that amount, and you may not win at all. This is what happened on the auction you are now talking about and is absolutely what you should expect.

Yes, auction prices change whenever bids are accepted and placed, whether or not those bids are higher than previous bids... ebay does not allow you to bid less than one bid increment more than the current auction price in order that this happens and auction prices always rise when bids are placed.

Ebay does not have a fully sealed bid process (in which the bids are only looked at after the auction is finished), bids are only partially sealed as the auction progresses and once they are outbid they are fully visible.

The 15.29 bid would have been accepted because at the time it was placed it was more than one bid increment (0.50 in that case, so the auction price must have been 14.79 or less) above the current auction price... as I said, the current auction price is not the same thing as the current highest bid.

Yes, it is possible to win by 0.01, but only if that bid is more than one bid increment more than the current auction price... you need to understand the difference between the current auction price (which, when you bid manually, you know when the bid is placed) and the current highest bid (which you may not know when the bid is placed, and may never know unless you win the auction).

You may find this all less confusing if you select the 'Show automatic bids' on the bid history page because then ebay displays all the auction prices that occurred during the auction, not just the bids that were accepted.
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Mark

[Gixen]

[sweetylang]

Ic, sorta, ok look at auction 130812668315 the bids went 10.50-11.66-12.01, my bid threw gixen was the 11.66 and I lost. The winning bid (12.01) won by less than .50. hmm

[Cupid]

Yes, the winning bid was placed before yours, when they placed it the price was $10.50, so at $12.01 they were more than one bid increment above that and the bid was accepted.

The auction price then rose to $11 which is one bid increment more then the second highest bidder at that time.

Your bid of $11.66 was greater than $0.50 more than that ($11) so was accepted by ebay... however it was not more than the bid that the current high bidder had placed (of $12.01) so you were outbid and lost, by less than a bid increment.

In that case you can be certain that $12.01 was the highest price the winner was prepared to bid, because if it had been any higher ebay would have made them pay up to one bid increment more than your bid.

Also you can say that if you had bid $12.02 you would have won that auction at only a penny more than the actual winner was prepared to pay.

As I said before, you may find it easier to see this if you select the 'Show automatic bids' link on the bid history page.
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Mark