Bidding: A Question?

I've never bid on anything on eBay before, and just yesterday I bid on a few Wreck-It-Ralph DSF pins to try my luck.

I bid on two different pins, and literally half a second after bidding on each one, it said I'd been outbid. I just wanted to know if I'm being silly thinking that a bot bid automatically? Or could it have been someone sitting on that auction and waiting to bid on it themselves? I obviously gave up after bidding a few times, not wanting to get outrageously expensive in money that I didn't want to spend.

Is this a common happening? I just want to understand bidding and auctions a little better, because I hated to find pins I loved at fair prices and then be cheated by some bot or something.

There are sniper apps that people download that automatically outbid you, once it surpasses what they would pay the app stops sniping.

Sniper apps......interestingly interesting....

Wow, that's what I thought. That's too bad...

it's because you can put in your MAX bid when you bid...for example, if I have a pin that I place on eBay and start the bidding at $.99 and you see it first....you place your MAX bid at $15 because it's a pin that's worth some money...eBay will bid you to a $.99 bid because that's the starting price, and it increments in like $.50 or $1 at a time. So, Joe Schmo comes along...sees that $.99 bid and thinks..."I'll bid $2 for that" and JUST put his max bid at the $2. So eBay registers HIS bid after yours and since he bids up to $2 and you have up to $15 then you will have the winning bid at $2.50 or $3 depending on the increment. (so, he will pay $2, but because the increments are $.50 it put it like you are sitting there bidding your next bid) and so on until someone comes in and decides that they will pay for than your $15 max bid. But Joe Schmo sees what you saw...he bid, and then found out that he had already been outbid. Now, some people (like me) only bid on the next increment and THAT is my max until I decide how much I actually want to spend.

There are some sniper apps, but most likley it's just the way eBay has their system set up.

Good luck. eBay can be a great place, or a big fat pain in the a$$!

lol This is the exact same question I had when I first started using Ebay a long time ago. Does it ever say you are the top bidder and then say you were Outbid? Or does it just go straight to "You were outbid?"

If you aren't familiar with how Ebay works (which is fine), it works like this: When someone puts in their max bid, they don't pay their max bid, they have to pay whatever the next highest bid is. For example, if you bid on a pin $1,000. The next highest bidder who got second place only bid $100. You would only have to pay $100.50 (right about their bid). So, if you bid on an item and it immediately says you were outbid, that isn't because someone else is using an app or is sitting there outbidding you, it is because you just didn't beat their max bid. Once you beat their max bid you will remain the top bidder until someone outbids you.

As Pin-A-Colada said, there are apps for Ebay auctions but in all my years (about 8 years) of using Ebay I have never been put up against one because people are very skeptical on using them. If a person really wanted a pin bad enough to pay anything for it, instead of using an app, they would just bid $999,999.000 on it. Then, unless someone else bid 1 million dollars on it, the person would win regardless. Apps aren't necessary for Ebay if you really want something lol xP

you are only being "outbid" if you first get to see a box that tells you that your top bidder. If that box never shows up, it just means someones max was higher than your max bid. Don't frett.

Althoiugh the snipe bid thing... is there a app that does an auto bid at the last second of the auction as well?