eBay question....

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Posted By: <b>Rob</b><p>Can someone outbid themselves on eBay?

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Posted By: <b>Anonymous</b><p>No, it just raises your maximum bid.

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Posted By: <b>Rob</b><p>Ah. Thanx!

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Posted By: <b>Texas Ted</b><p>One can outbid themself if they have more than one identity and do it that way. But then either they are taking part in a shill bidding scheme or just (dare I say) plain stupid.<br><br>Ted<br />He who so shall, so shall he who!

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Posted By: <b>Rob</b><p>I meant if you changed your mind and wanted to place a higher bid.

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Posted By: <b>barrysloate</b><p>You can bid as often as you like and if you decide your bid wasn't high enough, you can always come back. No ethical issue there at all.

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Posted By: <b>Julie</b><p>But: does raising your mid ONLY raise your max,or your absolute bid? Someone said only the max. I can't imagine WANTING to raise your absolute bid unles you had to.

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Posted By: <b>Don J.</b><p>There are actually times when you can raise your own bid on ebay (I've inadvertantly done so). Its a little hard to explain - but say your top bid on something was $151.00 with the showing amount on ebay being $99.00. Say another bidder came up behind you and bid $150.00, still leaving you the top bidder. If you really wanted the item badly and decided to increase your original bid, your bid would go up to the next increment say $152.50 even though you were the prior top bidder.

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Posted By: <b>Julie</b><p>it would only make sense (unless you wanted to wait for le grande snipe) to raise your bid, to protect your lead.

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Posted By: <b>pete</b><p>i once raised my own bid and i was the only bidder....you need to use the "raise maximun bid" button, instead of clicking on the place bid button...i screwed myself out of .50 cents!<br />pete-

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Posted By: <b>Elliot</b><p>Don's correct, that's one way of raising your own bid, and it occurs, if the previous bidder even bids slightly less than your max bid (within 1 increment below your bid). You can also raise your own bid in a reserve auction, if the reserve can not be met. This question sort of reminds me of the "how many ways can you reach first base question".

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Posted By: <b>Judge Dred</b><p>One problem with upping your bid past your previous high bid is that you might find someone that will nickel and dime bid it up to your max bid. It's quite easy to do this. Just keep placing a minimal bid on the item and it keeps jacking up the price until your max is reached or surpassed. If you happen to have set the max way up there then this can add up. But then again, if the item is truly nice you'll probably get snipe bids at the end that will do the same thing.

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Posted By: <b>Rob</b><p>Isn't that called "shilling"?

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Posted By: <b>davidcycleback</b><p>Some legitimate bidders (bidders who actually want to win the item and have never met the seller) will do the repeated small increment bidding to see where is the competitor's bidding.

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Posted By: <b>Bob Marquette</b><p>That is true. I myself have on occasion bid several small incremental amounts to try and determine where a leading bidder's high bid is so that I can know what to bid to top it. In these days of using auction snipe services, though, this doesn't work as well as used to.