Auctions "Auto-bid"

Since when is this even fair to those who actually watch an item and bid on it?

I recently lost one auction because of this, though it never updated until it closed to say I was outbid. When I viewed the history, it said the bid was made at the exact same time I made my final bid. Yet I kept checking it until I had to go out and it said I had the highest bid.

So, care to explain how this auto-bid crap is fair? I'm not seeing in any way how this is fair. e-Bay doesn't even do this kind of crap. "Auto-bid" has no place in auctions. It is very easy to exploit as well, people could be scammed into having to pay far higher prices than they desire, because friends could easily do this "auto-bid" to raise the price and exploit the system. The only person who benefits is the person who put the auction item up and perhaps their lackey who triggers the auto-bid.

This "auto-bidding" you mention is actually a system feature. If you bid on an auction that has no prior bids, and you bid 1000 gold, then the system will only use as much gold as is needed to "win" the auction at that time. That would mean 10 gold if there is no reserve price. So your bid shows up as 10 gold, but you actually bid 1000 gold, right? Now another user comes and bids 20 gold. Then the system will use more of your bid amount and bump your bid up to 30 gold. That continues until your maximum bid has been used up. I hope that clarifies it a bit. Regarding fairness, it obviously is a working method to give the seller the benefit of the best price among multiple bidders. Have a happy day, Dralspire.

There is still nothing fair about it. If a user bids 10,000 gold and the minimum/starting bid is 1,000; then it should update and show the 10,000 bid.

Say a user bids 10,000 on a 1,000 item and the incremental bid amount is 10 gold. See how annoying it can become for that user trying to win the bid when the second they enter a bid they are automatically outbid by this autobid crap?

Sure, it may work for the seller, but there is nothing fair about it for the buyer.

I find the Auto-bid function stupid as well, but this is probably because i look at things with a broader view.

Seller: Dwarven Battle Axe - 15^50% 20/20 +30 starting bid.... 10g.. bid inc. of 100g.
Buyer1: Autobid set at 5,000....
Buyer2: puts bid... over bid... puts bid... over bid... puts bid... over bid... puts bid... and so forth.

the auto-bid is made for lazy people imo....

This is called proxy bidding. Ebay uses this feature, has for years. It's what its based off of everyone.

Quote: Originally Posted by Replicant Buyer2: puts bid... over bid... puts bid... over bid... puts bid... over bid... puts bid... and so forth. That when paired with the extremely long page load times when on broadband and the constant timeouts/whitepages; that becomes very annoying, very quickly.

It is extremely annoying to try and bid on an item when that autobid junk is going, because the second you bid you're outbid. So you have to keep bidding/guessing at a higher amount to try and win. Meanwhile that user who is doing the autobid isn't even watching the auction in their web browser, yet they keep winning. There is nothing fair about that. If they want the item, they too should have to be on the auction page bidding.

You may not like this, but it's a standard feature for auctions since ebay popularized it.

The idea is to put in the maximum you are willing to pay for that item, that way you can leave it and go about your business. It's a very good system.

Never once have I seen eBay do that. And since when did these auctions have to do the same thing as eBay?

I wonder how much some of these auction "features" slow down the site itself.

Quote: Originally Posted by Malice Black

http://pages.ebay.com/help/buy/proxy-bidding.html

No, it doesn't slow anything down. Thank you for the feedback, this feature will be staying though in this and future auction versions.

Quote: Originally Posted by Inde No, it doesn't slow anything down. Are you sure about that? Considering the amount of SQL database queries that must run for the cron jobs and more. Updating a bid causes SQL queries, sending e-mails when a user is outbid causes database queries, item watch e-mails sent whenever a bid changes causes database queries, and so on and so on...

I work with servers frequently at home and my place of work (including companies via contract) and all of those things listed above, plus more will cause slowdowns.

Quote:

Originally Posted by Inde Thank you for the feedback, this feature will be staying though in this and future auction versions. What a shame, looks like it's time to find a better auction site.

Tarun, I appreciate your posts but you do not know what is going on with our servers. The issues and problems that we are having. Your diagnosis' are off and I have attempted some of what you have suggested. If you feel the need to move to another auction site that is your choice. This thread will be closed since it seems you have resolved your issue.