Can Gixen bid even if theres a higher bid?

[MelloMero]

Hi, I was wondering if there was a setting in which Gixen still bids even if somebody has bid higher than me. The reason I'm curious is due to the fact that my bid could have been 2nd twice and if the first person dropped out, I could have still won the item.

[juangrande]

No. Whether or not your bid is accepted is determined by eBay. If the current price (2nd highest bid) showing is higher than your bid, then it will be rejected by eBay when Gixen attempts to place it. There is nothing Gixen can do about that.

Ebay has clear rules regarding bid retraction, and presumably everyone who intended to drop out (retract their bid) would have done so before the last few seconds of the auction when Gixen attempts to place your bid.

What you are asking about touches on the possibility of bid shielding. See this earlier thread for a discussion of an example of this. Be sure to look at the last five or so posts.

Using Gixen to place your bid seconds before the auction closes reduces the possibility of bid shielding, but the example referenced above shows that it is still possible, and only eBay is in a position to take action against it.
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John

If you don't know where you are going, you will wind up somewhere else.
--- Yogi Berra

[LARRYTOWN]

I asked a similar question last year. What I wanted to know is;if someone bids higher then I and then they drop out, will Gixen still place my bid even if Gixen has informed me that my bid has been overtaken and outpriced? will I be kicked out of the race if I do not up my bid? I was told that even if the second place person was still in the race there will be no guarantee by gixen or ebay that the second place in line will then be moved up to be the winner.Sometimes it seems that ebay will arbitrarily select a winner even if that person didn't meat all of the guidelines. Even the increment rules are not ironclad; as I have lost items by one penny!

[juangrande]

1. If the current price (second highest bid plus a bid increment) is higher than the bid you attempt to place, it will be rejected by eBay and there will be no record of your bid in the bidding history. If the high bidder later retracts their bid, the result will be the same as if you never attempted to bid. That is why bid shielding is unethical.

2. If your bid is recorded by eBay; that is, your bid is at least as much as the current price, then your bid will be in line to be the high bid if a later higher bid is subsequently retracted. eBay's system is very reliable and I have never seen it fail. However, allowing last-minute retractions (such as in the bid history referenced in my previous post) allows bid shielding to subvert eBay's bidding system.

3. Losing by one penny does not imply that eBay's bid increment rule was violated. Remember that the current price of an auction is a bid increment more than the second highest bid and that the high bidder's bid is often higher than the current price. This means that it is often possible to make a bid higher than the current price (so that eBay accepts the bid) and only one penny more than the high bidder's bid. That's what you experienced when you lost by one penny.
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John

If you don't know where you are going, you will wind up somewhere else.
--- Yogi Berra

[Gixen]

[LARRYTOWN]

I think what you mean, is that Ebay records the highest bid sent to their system, even if the rest of us can not see that bid. Ebay registers something let's say $16.99; but we can only see one cent above the highest bid $16.98 that ebay wants us to see so that they can get us to attempt to spend more money trying to outdo the highest bidder, that way we only raise the amount of the "invisible"bid "so that ebay can collect more money because when someone starts out low, ebay wants to encourage more profit by encouraging a bidding war. We all add a few more cents believing that it will give us the win, but that "invisible"bid" registered already with ebay only means that the winner will wind up paying more of his bid, I guess if everyone started out bidding one cent, then the next person bids a thousand dollars they will win every auction at just 2 cents.seems confusing; but plausible.

[Cupid]

You are just about there Larrytown,

Ebay only displays one bid increment more than the next highest bid (not 1 cent), so since bid increments are larger at higher auction prices, the higher the price the more above the next highest bidder Ebay displays.

This is indeed how Ebay works and naturally they encourage prices to rise, that is how they make money since they not only charge listing fees they also charge a proportion of the selling price, to the seller.

That doesn't make it unfair to any particular buyer though, no one ever pays more than they are prepared to bid and many pay less than that, without any other bidder or the seller ever knowing how much they were really prepared to pay, if necessary.

The important point to take from this is that it's the second highest bidder that sets the price of an auction on Ebay, not the highest.
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Mark