EBAY

[Roderick M. Fitz-Randolph]

I am puzzled (perhaps just very naive) about the bidding on EBAY.
There were several items that I thought I would bid on and did so,
but with puzzling results.

As an instance: An opening bid for an item was $10.  I bid $15 for
the item (as well as my memory serves me) and as soon as my finger
was lifted from the ENTER key, a message came back that I had been
outbid by another and his bid was $16.  I then bid (immediately)
$17 and, again, as soon as I lifted my finger from the ENTER key,
the message came back that another had made a bid of $18 and the
new bid level was $19.  Once more, somewhat skeptical and chagrined,
I bid $19 only to experience the exact same situation: no sooner had
I lifted my finger from the keyboard than the message that I had been
outbid by someone that had bid $20.

Now that may be a regular and understandable phenomena but I don't
understand it if it was!  It looked to me as though it was somehow
programmed into the server to simply raise the bid by $1 every time
I bid (in an effort to juggle up the price???).  I became skeptical
enough to withdraw any further bids.

Can anyone please explain to me (1) How in the world someone could,
with the speed of light, outbid me three times in a row? (2) How
this could be done without an automatic programmed response from a
computer? (3) How anyone would be caught continuing to bid up a
price when they were confronted with the same situation I was?
(4) Is this a truly legitimate operational practice and I have
somehow missed the bidding protocol? (5) Etc., etc., etc.

If, and only if, someone can satisfactorily explain this phenomena
to me will I go back and make any further bids.  What did I miss
or not understand?

Rod, N5HV
w5hvv at aeneas.net

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