Bids Not Meeting Reserve Price On Ebay

Not sure I'm understanding how bidding works when a seller has set a hidden reserve price. I put in the first bid on an item which was accepted at the minimum level specified in the listing. Over the course of several days, others put in bids that were successively higher to drive the price up to a little over twice my initial bid. On the day the auction was closing, I put in higher bids, but instead of accepting those, the system kept indicating that I needed to bid even higher since the reserve price was not met. The auction ended with a winning bid showing that was significantly less than what my final bid would have been if it was accepted.

Now I assume that the seller has the option of not selling to this highest bidder if the reserve price was not met, but why wouldn't my higher bids at least be registered and then subject to the seller's wishes versus just being rejected altogether by the system? Is there some defined point in such an auction when the system just stops accepting any bids below the hidden reserve?

Hope this question is making sense. Thanks.

Basically you didn't out bid the other bidders is why.

Northener, as I pointed out in my post, my last bids were higher than the bid shown as winning, so not sure I understand your response.

The bid shown is not the highest bid the person had placed. The bid shown is a specified advance over the previous high bid. The bidder could have entered a higher bid and as you bid you still are not reaching the bid limit the person had.

If I bid $20 on a .99 min bid, the bid will show .99 as highest bid. If you bid against me, you will have to bid more than $20 but you will not know my highest bid until to reach $20.50 (think that is next bid level). Then you will be become the highest bidder and someone has to bid $21 (I think) to best your bid. If you bid $40 then the high bid will still be $20.50.

As you bid below $20, the bid will increment to your bid plus the next increment.

angore, someone can correct me if I'm wrong, but in your example if someone bid, say $10, the high bid would no longer show as 99 cents. It would be adjusted to the next bidding increment above $10. In other words, your bid would keep increasing as others bid more than the high bid that is showing, but less than $20. With that said, I don't really understand what happened to Oracle of Delphi.

Oracle can you post a link to the auction so we can see the bidding?

Rustyc, yes that's my understanding of how it should have worked and that has been my past experience. In this case, I put in the initial bid of $9.95. Subsequent bids by others over the next few days, including some automatic bids, pushed it up to $23. Then I put in a bid of over $30 on the last day of the auction, but it was rejected by the system with a message that I needed to bid higher because the reserve hadn't been met. The winning bid stayed at $23. If others had higher bidding limits, why didnt the winning bid go up to, say, $31 instead of remaining at $23? And, if the reserve was even higher, why did the system accept all of the previous bids pushing it up to &23, but then reject mine as being too low? At the end, still have no idea why the bid of $23 won the auction (or at least that's what was showing on the listing)

Anyone's comments that would help me understand why it worked this way do I can handle the next auction better would be greatly appreciated.

I sent a message to the seller inquiring about how this auction went, but he said he had no idea why it ended up the way it did and to contact ebay. Winning bid was actually $23.50. When I go to this listing within my ebay account, I see the message "Sorry, you were outbid. This item sold for US $23.50". When my subsequent bid was over $30??


http://www.ebay.com/itm/oldhal-New-...AOSw3v5Yqjuv

Oracle, can you please post a link to the sale. It is still there, even though the sale has ended.

Peter

See link above.

Call ebay. You were glitched out. Go up the tech support chain.

I agree with the seller's reply to you - contact ebay. A speculative thread here does nothing to explain or resolve the issue.

I'm confused, I thought you said it was a reserve auction but it doesn't look like it to me and his other auctions do not use a reserve?

KRelyea - that's the message that I received when I tried to put in a bid at a price over the $23.50 "winning bid". The system did not accept my bid and stated that I needed to put in a higher bid since the reserve price had not been met. I then put in two successively higher bids, assuming that the reserve price message was correct, to see if I could get above whatever the reserve price was, but I kept getting the same message and the $23.50 "winning bid" never changed to adjust to my higher bids. I messaged the seller to find out if there was indeed a hidden reserve price and whether he planned to honor the winning bid or relist the item - no reply yet so I assume he's leaving it up to me to follow up with ebay if I wish.

So at this point it looks like it was some kind of ebay glitch, unless someone else has any other insight.

I think it was a glitch. There is no such thing as a hidden reserve, if there is a reserve it shows as (Reserve not met} in red.

Thank you all for your advice.