I haven't used ebay much so I don't know it very well, but I cannot figure out what it is that I'm missing in this case.
You see, in ebay when you want to place a bid on an item, you don't place a direct bid. You place a "maximum bet" – that's how much you are willing to pay for an item if it comes to a bidding war. The next person to bid however must immediately place an amount larger than your maximum bet – otherwise it doesn't make sense of course because the person instantly loses.
So, say, you see a nice T-shirt that's currently going for $1, which also happens to be the maximum bet for the previous guy. Now I get to choose my own maximum bet which should be at least $1.50. Let's say I bet $5. Ebay will note my maximum bet but will only bid $1.50 for me. So if I win now, I will only have to pay $1.50. But the next bidder will have to place a maximum bet of at least $5.50, or he will instantly lose anyway. Thus ebay doesn't even allow him to enter anything less than $5.50, it's even written there.
So what would prevent me from entering, say, $99,999 as my maximum bet? It's pretty clear that nobody in their right mind would bet more than that for a simple T-shirt. However I won't have to pay more than $1.50, because that's the next step after the current bid.
So… what exactly am I missing here?
Best Answer
That's not how it goes. Any user can post a higher bid than your current one, there's only a minimun (the bid increment). If your maximum bid is still higher than the new bid, ebay will add the bid increment to the last bid and count it as your new bid, so you're still going to be the highest bidder, as long as no-one surpasses your maximum bid.
Now to why you shouldn't enter 99,999$ as your maximum bid... If your maximum bid is ridiculously high, you'll be sure to win the item, but you may end up paying a lot more than the original value of the product.
In your example, as long as someone is interested enough in the T-shirt to bid up to $100 for it, if your maximum bet was 99,999$ you'd find yourself paying $100.25 for a T-shirt that in other circumstances you'd only have paid $15 for.