Ebay proxy bidding strangeness

[RedTomato]

OK, so I'm bidding for an Xbox with XBMC installed.

It's not for games, it's to be a media centre, playing films and other media on the tv via ethernet connection to my G4 server hidden in the attic.

No bids so far, starting price 99p, reserve not yet met.

I bid £50, as that's more or less what I feel it's worth. I expect my proxy bidder to scale up till the reserve is met, probably around £30-40.

That's not what happens. My amount bid immediately jumps up to my max bid, £50. Oh well, I'm happy to pay that, at least the reserve has been met.

In the last few minutes, another guy bids with £51. Checking that the bid increment is £1, I bid my max, £55.01.

I expect to see my proxy bid climb up in stages to £52, £54 and so on.

That's not what happens. My amount bid immediately jumps up to £55.01, and I win the auction. No other bids are registered. Huh? Altogether, only 3 bids are shown - my first one, my last one, and the other guy's bid.

Can anyone explain what happened? OK maybe the reserve was exactly £50, but I still don't understand the second jump in amount bid.

I'm not bitter, I'm happy with what I paid (as long as it get delivered) but I don't understand what happened.

 

[xfiftyfour]

well i don't know about the first bid, but as for the second: it sounds to me like the other guy's max bid was 55, and since you put in 55.01, that's what it went to.

a link so that we could see for ourselves would probably help people figure out what exactly happened.

 

[RedTomato]

Oh soz,

Linky:

http://cgi.ebay.co.uk/Custom-Xbox-X...ryZ20387QQssPageNameZWDVWQQrdZ1QQcmdZViewItem

Hope it works.

 

[Lau]

The bid increment changes as the price rises, and it may go up to £5 increments over £50.

 

[RedTomato]

Nope, it goes up by £1 until the price gets to £60.

http://pages.ebay.co.uk/help/basics/g-bid-increment.html

I did check this

 

[xfiftyfour]

Oh soz,

Linky:

http://cgi.ebay.co.uk/Custom-Xbox-X...ryZ20387QQssPageNameZWDVWQQrdZ1QQcmdZViewItem

Hope it works.

well, i was right about that second bid, but i'm still clueless about the first. what it looks like is that the starting bid was 50, not 99p like you thought.

 

[RedTomato]

well, i was right about that second bid, but i'm still clueless about the first. what it looks like is that the starting bid was 50, not 99p like you thought.

Hmm, yup, now I can see the other guy bid £55, and I beat him by 1p

I do wish eBay would show the proxy bidding activity, it would make things clearer.

However the first bid, if you look at the item link above, it's clear that the starting bid was 99p, it says so right there. Mystery still stands.

 

[xfiftyfour]

However the first bid, if you look at the item link above, it's clear that the starting bid was 99p, it says so right there. Mystery still stands.

oops, you're right - i missed that. very strange indeed!

idea #2: you bid 50, it sat at 99p for a bit, then the other guy came in and bid 55, which pulled your bid up to the max 50, and his to 51 or whatever it would have been, and then you bid 55.01, taking the win.

 

[RedTomato]

oops, you're right - i missed that. very strange indeed!

idea #2: you bid 50, it sat at 99p for a bit, then the other guy came in and bid 55, which pulled your bid up to the max 50, and his to 51 or whatever it would have been, and then you bid 55.01, taking the win.

That makes a lot of sense, and at first I thought you'd explained it.

But looking at the bid timings, he made his bid about 5 hours after I made my bid.

My bid went straight up to £50, immediately after I'd made it. He didn't come along for another 5 hours.

http://offer.ebay.co.uk/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?ViewBids&item=300028709035

Hmm. Mystery still stands.

 

[Lau]

Nope, it goes up by £1 until the price gets to £60.

http://pages.ebay.co.uk/help/basics/g-bid-increment.html

I did check this

Hmm. How strange.

Maybe try posting it in the Community>Answer Section of eBay? They're usually very helpful there.

 

[NYmacAttack]

Ebay will lists what you bid as you max bid. Since you max bid was 50 it shows that once it has been surpassed. It only showed .99 because no one else had bid yet and the reserve had not been met. Once the other person bid it automatically jumped your bid to 50.

 

[RedTomato]

Once the other person bid it automatically jumped your bid to 50.

It jumped my bid to £50 before the other person bid. See posts above.

 

[richard4339]

Cancelled bid maybe?

 

[phuong]

RedTomato, i'm using xbox as a media center too (running XBMC, and it's the default dashboard as well). but it connects to a Dell server which runs winXP, has 1TB raid sata, 1G ram, dual xeon, and no graphic card nor sound card. it also does the job of downloading stuffs. it's a little noisy though (read: "very annoying cause i'm living in a studio there's no attic or whatever nice like that")

i didnt know i could use a Mac as a media server.

can you tell me how do you config it. i mean im very new to the Mac world (i used Mac before, but the Mac Pro i just received last week was my very first Mac machine)
by the way how noisy is that Mac G4? how does it perform as a media storage? how much time does it generally take to config it? can it be connected to and be controlled remotely? God i have so many questions.. can we discuss over PM? i mean people are selling their old G4 and G5 machines all over the place, how tempting this is for me..