To bid or not to bid - That is the question - Press Article

To bid or not to bid - That is the question

Thankyou for taking the time to look at this brief article. As a real life auctioneer and valuer, I can hopefully offer you a little insight into real life auction bidding scenarios, which you may, or may not wish to consider applying to you ebay bidding techniques. Either way, I hope you find it interesting.

In a real life auction room you will find many bidders, some experienced, some not, some professional bidders, others not so. You will also find, if you speak to the more experienced bidders, each will have their own techniques for bidding, and securing that bargain at the best possible price.

Here are a few examples of bidding techniques:

Jump Bidding: This is where the bidder will try to throw the auctioneer of his track to some degree, and frighten off competing bidders at the same time. For example, if an item is being auctioned and this bid is at 80.00 going in increments of 10.00 at a time, the JUMP BIDDER may attempt to frighten off competing bidders by offering a much higher bid, of say 150.00 that can frighten off the other bidders and grind the auction to a halt. It can of course have the opposite effect and encourage others to jump in quickly assuming that the item must be worth far in excess of this amount.

Holding Back: In many cases an experienced bidder may well hold back until the very last minute to make his bid, even to the point of where the auctioneer is just about to bring the hammer down. The logic behind this technique is to wait until all other bids are exhausted and jump in at the last minute. Again this can work, the downside being that it may create a last minute bidding frenzy, with the eventual winner actually paying more than they ever intended to.

Throw Bidding: This is where a more experienced bidder will try to throw the bidding sequence completely, putting the auctioneer of his stride and at the same time abruptly stopping the flow of bids. For example, if the auctioneer is going up in increments of 100, say One hundred, two hundred, three hundred, the throw bidder will shout in -And Sixty two- This will of course totally upset the flow of the auctioneer, and can put off other bidders. Of course the reaction of the other bidders to this depends on their own skill and experience.

After the Auction Vultures:
As the name would suggest, these are bidders that do not actually bid, but wait until after the auction to make an offer on any unsold item that has not reached its reserve price, or perhaps did not even receive an opening bid.

How can any of the above be applied to internet auctions and how can they work ?

A similar way of jump bidding that can be applied to ebay, is where an item has a reserve price. We will use the example of a car that has a £1 start price, but you see when you go to bid on it that there is a reserve on it.

Well, in a nutshell, the item is not going to be sold for less than the reserve price, so if you want to buy it, then you have to be prepared to pay at least the reserve price. On ebay, the only way to find out the reserve price is to keep increasing your bid, until the reserve price is reached. Once the reserve price has been reached, you will be shown as the CURRENT winning bidder, you can of course be outbid right until the very last second. OK, so going back to our example, say the car or other high value item you are interested in has a reserve price, and you type into your ebay bid the maximum you are prepared to pay, and this puts you over the reserve, in other words it makes you the winning bidder at that point are you going to end up paying too much?

Not necessarily. There are various points of view on this, but please think about these facts very carefully. In my experience on ebay, when an item starts with a high starting price there is far less interest in it, the item gets far fewer watchers, and in turn far fewer bidders. So, if that car, or other high value item you are after has just been listed, and you put in a bid straight away over the reserve price, then the price on that item is immediately quite high by comparison to other items it may put other people off bidding for it. It will probably attract a lot less attention that the item next to it still on a few pounds. Whilst I am not saying this can work on every occasion, it can work and it does happen. You can see this often if you study the higher value items on ebay, a particular item may have the same winning bidder all week, at the same price, the vendor being pleased that his item has reached the reserve on the first day, only to find no more bids come in.

Holding Back:
I think we have all seen it on ebay, where a bidder holds back to the very last minute to get their bid in commonly referred to as sniping, they jump in a the very last second and snatch the item from under the winning bidder. So should you hold back to the last second yourself ? Well it is of course a matter of personal choice, but bearing in mind that in the above section on jump bidding you can see there are alternatives to sitting up all night trying to snipe something at the last second only to be disappointed as another sniper beats you to it. Again you may well put off the snipers by getting the bidding up to a comparatively high price nearer to the start of the auction, to put the professional snipers off and play them at their own game.

Throw Bidding: Whilst this particular live auction room technique cannot be applied directly to internet auctions, there is one element of it that can be applied, a fact that more experienced ebayers are familiar with.

I refer to the element of throw bidding where you finish your bidding with an irregular or unusual amount. For example, say you are bidding for one of my rings, and you decide that the maximum you are prepared to pay for it is £30. Well, there may well be another potential buyer with the same sum in mind. If there are two high bids of the same amount, then ebay will make the first bidder of this amount the winning bidder. The answer to this one is quite simple. Never make you highest bid a round figure. Always add a few pence onto the end of it. Whilst those of you who have some experience on ebay may well already use this technique, there are many, many that don’t and those people end their highest bids in a round figure if you still need convincing of this fact then look at any ended auction item and click on the bids to see how the bidding went you will see that vast majority of bids in most cases are round figures such as 26.00 or 31.00. My advice would always be to add on the extra few pence such as 31.53 instead of 31.00 it may make the difference between getting the item or not getting it all for just a few pence.

After the auction vultures:
Whilst I can respect anybody who tries to get themselves a bargain, I and most other auctioneers have a specific dislike of this method of operation. The idea of an auction is to join in the bidding. The vendor of the item for sale wants people to bid in an open and competitive situation, that is why they have decided to sell their item by auction in the first place. After auction vultures are not joining in the spirit of the auction and are certainly NOT acting in the spirit of ebay when they try the same thing on here. It is common in real life scenarios, especially property auctions (A subject which I have had a book published on in 2005) for some more experienced buyers to wait until the end of an auction and then approach the auctioneer with low bids for unsold items, in the hope that a desperate vendor may accept. I have noticed in recent months an increasing trend for some people to approach me after an ebay auction on the rare occasion when one of my items has not sold, because it did not reach its reserve. Well for starters, making an approach after an ebay auction to try to buy directly from the vendor is STRICTLY against ebay rules. Thankfully ebay have in place a system whereby, subject to certain conditions, if your item does not sell, you can re-list it for free. This is useful to sellers who are testing the market on an item by perhaps starting with one reserve price, and then re-listing with a lower reserve price in the event of a non sale, it serves to also allow the vendor to refuse a post auction offer. My personal opinion on people who operate in this manner is not a very good one. It really goes against the spirit of the ebay community.

If you did miss out on an item that you were unable to bid for, the correct method of approach to the seller is to ask them if they will be re-listing the item. If they are then you need to keep an eye out for it. Another method which may help you bag that post auction bargain AND keep within ebays rules is to negotiate a price with the vendor post auction and once you have agreed a price you are both happy with, for the seller to re-list the item with a buy it now price. You, as the buyer would then be able to buy the item instantly, and more importantly both yourself and the seller will not just be operating within ebays rules, you will both benefit from the ebay buyer and seller protection programme and if using paypal, from their buyer and seller protection too.

Whilst I for one would not say that ebay is perfect, it is damned good, and those who try to circumvent the rules are not just acting against the spirit of ebay, they are also spoiling it for others.

Martin has complied a list of the best online auctions and they can all be seen at the website

www.auctionregistration.co.uk

There are links on the site through to each particular auction site where you can browse, or register for free.

Category: Internet