Lesson learned; Max bid on eBay

[DanP]

I just learned a valuable lesson about using maximum bids on eBay. I was bidding from my phone and too lazy to go to my PC and use Bidnapper. I entered a maximum bid directly on Ebay. I never usually do this, not even with auction houses.

Here's what happened:

Yesterday someone outbid me at $2,550. Fine, I was OK with losing the auction at this price.

This morning that bid was retracted (conveniently just before the bid retraction limit of 12 hours of the end time).

So now I'm the high bidder at $1,950.

So now the seller knows what my maximum bid was! So guess what's going to happen just before the auction end time? Someone is going to bid $2,450 to bring me to my maximum bid.

I understand the "If you win the auction at what you bid, don't complain" thinking. However, this type of crap really irritates me. I tried to retract my bid but by the time I noticed what was going on it was within the 12 hour limit.

Most likely this will be a $500 lesson learned (kind of). I just thought I'd pass this information along so others don't make the same mistake. Whether what I'm predicting happens or not, next time I'm using Bidnapper or just putting my max bid in within the last few minutes of the auction.