Strange AH occurrence
 

Just curious if anyone else has run into a scenario I recently experienced: I went to bed as the high bidder on a lot at $1075 (which was my max bid). The next morning I woke up, did not see any 'outbid' emails, so I checked the item page and the winning bid (with the juice) was in the $1,880's (I forget the exact dollar amount) - 4 bid increments above my max bid. So I lost.

That evening I got an email congratulating me on my winning bids, so I logged in to my account and found that I had indeed won the item for $1,075 + juice. Kind of confusing. Scott the cynic might think that there was some shill bidding going on, and that it was a damned good thing I stopped at $1075, and because I was asleep, didn't get tempted to fight with the four additional bids that would have ran my cost up. Scott the believer that all humans are wonderful and good has no idea what might have happened.

That's strange. I would call and ask about it.

Yup I bet ur right Scot they overbid as a shill then when they out bid you and no further higher bids were placed they cancelled. Is there anyway to see if you had cancelled bids above you?

If I was in your shoes I would not pay your designated ceiling amount, since it sounds like without the missing bids, you stood a good chance of winning the item for less money.

i might have missed something, scott...which AH did u say this was????

Not to defend the AH, per se, but even if they WERE shilling, why would they shill 4 bids beyond Scott's. I would think one would have been enough.

Probably just a mistake, if the house or a shill had really outbid you, presumably you would have received an email to that effect. Indeed if you assume bad intent the house would WANT you to know you had been outbid so you would come back to bid again.

If it's Fusco, their bidding platform is an absentee platform and they run a live auction.

Edited for bad grammar.

I haven't edited my original post - it's quite clear that I did not post an AH name. If I had proof, I might do so. The question was whether or not any of the rest of you had experienced the same thing I did. That question has been answered by one person, privately via email. I have had it happen at least once before, and like this time, I thought I was going blind and that the mistake was mine.

However; I was high bidder on only one lot, and I wanted to win it at my final bid. So when I woke up in the morning and checked the item page to see if I had won, it's highly unlikely that I accidentally read a final value of $1889 rather than the bid that I actually won it at. That makes no sense.

Regarding the comment that shilling four bids is illogical, I would agree if there was a shiller patiently sitting on each lot, ready to place another bid as soon as I bid again; however, it would be more efficient to place one reasonable bid that might be one or even four increments higher that mine.

Regarding the comment that it would make the most sense to send an email telling me that I had been outbid, that would be true if the shiller was fairly sure that I would come back with another bid, or if they didn't mind winning the lot since my bid was ridiculously low; however, that would leave a documentation trail and prevent retraction of bids when it turned out that I had actually gone to sleep.

Peter, I'm not sure what happened, which is why I asked the question. I have never had a problem with this particular auction house, so I will assume, as weird as it might be, that I cannot read numbers correctly early in the morning.

But first thing that morning I did look for the 'outbid' email, and seeing none, excitedly went to the auction item page. Misreading a number at that point would have probably required mushrooms. Is it possible that shilling by AH's is advanced enough that when they do so, the 'outbid' email doesn't go out until they see some activity by the bidder? Just to keep the paper trail flexible? I don't know; however, shilling increases profit by enough that it makes sense.

One of the auction houses has a rules sheet that includes language to the extent that: "We reserve the right to make bids up to the amount of the hidden reserve..." or some such. It's possible that this was occurring, and when no additional bids were made, they contacted the consignor and asked whether he/she would reduce the reserve to the current highest actual bid. When that happened, they killed all four bid increments, and you were left as the high bidder.

It's also possible that for some reason, you were outbid by an actual bidder, however he sent the auctionhouse a message saying that he intended to bid on a different lot or didn't realize he couldn't pay with Monopoly tender, and the auctionhouse retracted them. However, I would hope they would contact you and explain the situation. That's one reason I don't really like the blind bidding process many of these auctionhouses seem to have. At least with eBay you get a sliver of a screenname (6*****a) that you can see is an actual bidder, or whether you're bidding against one person or 30.

i had a AH with a different outcome....The site Iconic said i won the item, tho my email said i got outbidded...So i had contacted them...they said there was a bid that didnt process (by using some other bidding function they had)

In response to Sean's comment, I don't think it would be Fusco's action. That was this past Saturday and I was there at the auction. It was over by about 6:45 PM, Eastern time. I thought Scott said he went to bed with the high bid at $1,075. Unless he goes to bed real early, I doubt it was Fusco's.

BobC

Scott I didn't mean to suggest YOU made a mistake, I was thinking maybe the listing was just erroneous or something, a software glitch in the final price? Just speculating.

Okay, that could be. I did end up getting the item for the price I wanted, so overall I'm happy with the result. But I can remember arguing with people here about placing ceiling bids, and now I'm seeing the benefit of not doing that. If I had placed a ceiling bid 4 increments higher (which would have been a stupid price) I might very well now owe the AH an extra $600. The discussions here have certainly been valuable.

No, it wasn't Fusco. It doesn't matter that much who it was, as I've seen this with other AH's, and at least one person emailed that they had seen it with yet another AH. Given that, and the fact that I have no documentation to prove anything nefarious happened, stating an AH name would be ill-advised.

John, these are certainly possibilities I had not thought of. Even though a bid is a binding contract, it's probably easier all-around for an AH to just retract bids and ban the reneger. Of course, the lack of an 'outbid' email makes you wonder. Again, perhaps I had an eyeball fail.