Has anyone else experienced this?

[sarnone]

There is a very large internet shop that has an auction section on their site and this is what happened. There were three units of this item up for bid and I placed a max bid on this item with only one other person already having a bid in on only one of the three offered. So now there are two bids on this item. This site went directly to my max bid, which was $26 higher than the only other bid, instead of just adding the increment bid to the original and only other bid. After 3 emails of frustrating explanations, I called their customer service and it was like talking to a deer in headlights. They could not pull up a history of the bids and made no effort to try and understand my dilemma. I will never place a max bid again. I will only place individual bids at the assigned increment that is given and just keep an eye on my item. What a frustrating place to deal with.

This is not meant to be slanderous in any way. Just trying to protect my BOTL & SOTL. PM me for additional info

 

[dpricenator]

My guess is that the other person had bid on all 3 items and entered a max bid just under what you bid was. If I know the site you are pseaking of, you can see in number of items the person is bidding on. i.e. 1 of 3 , 2 of 3,or 3 of 3. If he already had a bid on all three, and he is using autobid, it will jump like this. It means you beat him out on 1 of the items, because your max bid was higher than his. I don't think you were "done wrong", but they should have more informed customer service reps with easily readable auction transcripts.

 

[sarnone]

He bid on only one of the three available items.

 

[dpricenator]

In that case I would do a little more bitchin to a customer service rep until you can get someone on the phone to explain. They should be able to read transcripts back to you regarding this. Because that sounds like some BS to me.

 

[sascha]

ok, let me get this straight, you bid on cbid and put your maximum amount in the first field instead of the one below and instead of slowly approaching your maximum bid it went right up to $26??
if this is so, damhikt, well, then it's your fault.

in the first field you put whatever is the next higher amount, in the second fiels, you put how many you want and in the tird, you put YOUR maximum amount.

 

[caudio51]

They have some weird theories about how the system actually works. I forget what the issue was but some friends had uncovered a strange calculation their bidding software does and all they could say was, that's how it works.

I'll see if I can find the details.

 

[sarnone]

Sascha, I never mentioned CBid.

 

[dpricenator]

Sascha, I never mentioned CBid.

True, but I think it was easily deduced from the previous text. Either way, I think you should be able to complain to the customer service dept and either get out of it based on unfair auction practices, or get back down to a reasonable bid.

 

[WhiteLightning]

if they don't have proof of other bids then why should you pay your max?

 

[Volusianator]

If it was c-bid, then there are two different ways to post a bid, like Sascha said, if you choose the wrong one, it just automatically places your max bid, if you do it the other way, it'll increase with additional bids. Now granted, I don't recall exactly how it's done as I don't use c-bid anymore. But there are other auction sites, Famous Smoke has one, hell, maybe he's talking about Yahoo, in which case, then I don't feel all that bad.

 

[blessednxs65]

Sorry to hear of your troubles. Thanks for warning us as I have yet to pull the trigger on anything on there only because of my fascination with the dark side...

 

[sarnone]

Gang, I never said this was CBid!

 

[sarnone]

but it's been a week now that I haven't heard from the VP who comitted to looking into my problem with the auction board and getting back to me.
I was in telecom/datacom sales for 20 years and if I dealt with any of my clients like this, my feet would be held very closely to the fire.

I will approach any of this retailer's auctions with much caution on a go forward basis.

Again, pm me for further details if you are interested.

Sam