In the market for a cheap acoustic to take with me to europe for 6 months, one that wouldn't be an entire loss if it's destroyed or lost. So, looking on ebay for someKona guitars, I stumble upon this one


Kona Gold, if the regular K1 series go for $250-300, this must be more than those, and it's on ebay for $78 plus 30 shipping. I had to have it, so I spent the remaining couple hours of the auction sitting here waiting to make a bid in the last minutes. I really didn't want to miss this one, because earlier this morning I ended up missing bidding on another Kona by 1 1/2 minutes because I was eating some cereal. So, last 2 minutes of the auction, no one has made a move on it in 15 hours, i bid $96 on it. I refreshed and refreshed and no one made a move at all, then in 7 seconds left of the auction, some guy bids a dollar higher than me, and I couldn't make another bid fast enough so I lost it......BY 7 SECONDS. Really, I hate ebay right now. I want to go break that other bidders neck

So, yeah......post your ebay stories

It's called sniping.

He couldve also put more than he won it for down, and it bid just enough to beat you.

The dude who did it sucks, not ebay.

Unfortunately, that's the kind of thing I do when I really want to win the item.

Must suck when it happens to you. :p

And it's not as if hacker wasntt trying to do the same thing as the guy who won the item.

Haha true I'm not saying that it was some sort of injustice that happened, I'm just saying that it sucked

My sister spent over 4k buying a 1960's Mustang off ebay. She's such a dummy because the car turned out to be a lemon. If you're gonna by something off the internet, especially from an auction like ebay, you better know what you're getting yourself into, epecially if its a car!

May be too late, but she should be able to get her money back if none of the problems were reported in the ad.

Yeah, it's too late for that. I think the ad also mentioned that the car was a "fixer upper".

Also, I guess that reminds me of my I never buy anything from ebay, I don't trust anyone enough to believe I actually get what I want Also, I mostly look for old synths and they're always too expensive (or the seller lives in the U.S and doesn't want to sell it to Europe, grr) :p

To be honest, I think its your own eBay tactics that are at fault, and nothing else. Not eBay, and not the guy who outbid you. Your mistake was making your bid 2 minutes before. If you really want it and you think there is any chance of competition, dont even think about making a bid until there are just seconds left. If you do, you are just pointlessly upping the final price which you could eventually pay should you win. You have to time your refreshes, hope your browser doesnt decide to do one of those little weird "slow loading" semi-lockup things (you know what I mean), and calculate how long it takes you to click "place bid" and go to the next confirmation screen, etc. I usually click place bid with about 7 seconds left, and by the time the next page loads and I type in my bid and confirm it, the actual bid doesnt go through until the final second or two.

$niped

And also, he most likely didnt bid "a dollar" higher than you. On eBay you dont "place bids", you place your MAXIMUM bid and eBay will bid instantly on your behalf up to that point, in like dollar increments or something. So he could have put $7 million as his max, but eBay only bids what is necessary to win the auction, in your case $1 more than what you bid. The cool thing about this is if he bids much higher than you, and you make a counter bid even if your bid is NOT enough to beat his max, you still up the price he has to pay in the end. So if you put $50, then he puts $100 and it ends like that, he only has to pay $51 and you lose the auction. However if you bid $50, and he bids $100 (in which case the price would show as $51) then you can go and bid $98 and he will still win but will have to pay $99 instead of $51.

Also, a lot of times snipers don't come through with their payment. I've won quite a few auctions simply because the person that outbid me didn't pay up.

You know there are programs that make automated bids at the very last possible second?

http://www.download.com/eBay-Auction-Sniper-and-Auto-Search/3000-6905_4-10365985.html?tag=lst-0-2

It was a story, I get the picture, I know what a maximum bid is. I didn't realize people would hone in on my word choice like that, I don't need a intense breakdown.

Thanks for the link Whelly, that looks really handy.