eBay bidders, bidding immediately, why?

[coansha]

I have been lusting after something for a while but they are pretty pricey £360-£500 and already another of said item but different model.
It will make my life much easier and found one , nearly new on eBay , oh I was very excited and happy with myself and my bargain "buy" anyways some bugger has bollocking well put a bid on it 6 days 22 hrs to go, followed by 2 other bids an hour later!!! Bastards have discovered it, but why bid soooooooo early?
This is not over, this might get ugly....

I bid when I see an item that I'm interested in whether its close to the end of the auction or not, like other posters I find that having it in my active list rather than my watch list gets me more notifications on it. I don't tend to go for high value items that have lots of interest though, I mostly bid on clothes for DD but not usually designer stuff, more commonly things with her favourite characters on them.

When it is something I want, but there's lots of other similar ones around and any of them will do, then I sometimes bid early incase I forget.
It it is something where I really want that one in particular or I think I might get a real bargain, then I bid at the last second.

I don't care how long is left on something, whether it's 10 days or 10 seconds.

If I want it, I put in my maximum bid and leave it at that.

Ok well you can't get cross with people for being inexperienced ebayer or whatever

Yeah, yeah you can

I've used another auction site which has an anti sniping mechanism. When a bid is put in close to the auction ending time, it extends the end time (I can't remember how much by, I think 5 minutes from the bid time). I don't know how effective this is, but I'm sure it makes some people feel better!

Maybe I should take an eBay exam

I think it's also because once an item has a bid on it, the seller can't add a Buy It Now price and flog it to someone who's had the wherewithal to contact the buyer and ask for a BIN. I prefer to bid once, to my max and late. Can get a bit hairy when the wifi is playing up though

What is a sniper?

What is a sniper?

It's a website that outs your bid on automatically, you set your max bid and time you want it to go on, 5 - 15 seconds from ending.
I, in all honestly use it when away or know I will forgot as quite like the last 5 mins, gets the adrenaline going,,

If something already has a bid on it, I put on a very low bid, so I don't forget it.

I agree with Chubfuddler and Flisspaps, I bid as soon as I see something, I don't care how long it's got to go and I refuse to use a sniper. I bid my maximum and that's it, if someone else wants to bid more, that's totally up up them, I don't care.
I am a very experienced ebayer, (ha ha) I don't think it's anything to do with experience.

Ebay automativally does that, doesn't it. I mean I put on a maximum bid, but it doesn't always go up that high, but if someone else put in a higher bid, it would go higher, up to my maximum bid.

No eBay only goes so far as to make your bid higher than theirs, unless their highest bid is higher than yours. I think done sellers ghost bid. I am always skeptical when offered a second chance.

I don't know if YABU but YAB a fool for complaining.

You want them to bid on it early so you can see what you are up against.

If they bid beyond what you are willing to pay then you can forget about that item and think about the next one.

Generally I will bid on an item I want as soon as I come across it. That might be one minute after it is listed, it might be close to the end. Sometimes I bid low, as others have said, to get it into my bidding list and emailed when/if outbid. These are generally the items I'm not too bothered about not getting (there'll be another along soon). Sometimes I bid my maximum. Generally because I really want this one, I'm not sure another will be listed anytime soon/at all. Bidding, only to find that you're immediately outbid (your bid is less than an existing bid), does seem to scare some people off.

I am a little bemused that this is seen as a sign of inexperience or shill-bidding. I've been on eBay for over a decade and have never shill-bid..

Some sellers are likely to have second accounts and bid on their own items to increase the price.
At worse, they'll just offer the item to the second highest because buyer "didn't pay" or resell it.

There are some sellers who will do a second chance offer as they have duplicate items to sell or the highest bidder has backed out - a second chance offer isn't always dodgy and shill bidding is not always the reason for such an offer.

I love it when people bid early to mark theitem... Pushes the price up.

I also love the sneaky bidding

I love it when they bid early. I'm getting rid of crap selling some stuff atm, and I still get ridiculously excited when I get a bid.

I'm not convinced early bids always put the price up. I've been over somethings I've listed having no bids, only for them to sell for a ridiculously high amount (IMO - obviously someone out there thought it was a good price).

What does push the price up is people going in two hours before the end.