Wow! It's almost as much fun as driving on the freeway at rush hour! Except you get it in writing! (It's even better when they misspell the expletives) [Yes, you can message others on ebay, you just can't get their email address unless you complete a transaction with them.
Yes, I have received some nasty ones. They usually go something like this:
"Thanks for outbidding me at the last possible second, you expletive expletive. You're the biggest expletive expletive on ebay. Expletive expletive expletive. Go expletive yourself and die."
It's when the item is hard to find or normally sells for a much higher price than the auction closes at when I usually get the nasty messages, especially when it's a long auction and the high bidder got his bid in early and the price didn't change until I put my bid in at the end. Some people get their hearts set on winning an item cheap, so when a snipe comes in it really makes them furious. The last nasty message I got was for a Mac OS 7.6 CD that I outbid the high bidder by 1 cent to win. [Never had an email like that, nor have I wanted to send one. Getting outbid sucks, but it is not the end of the world especially when the stuff I tend to get outbid on are the items that pop up daily anyway.
I have had a single instance of winning by one cent, and one in which I won by zero cents, but bid the winning amount two seconds earlier within the last 5sec.... The last nasty message I got was for a Mac OS 7.6 CD that I outbid the high bidder by 1 cent to win.
Someone may have gotten another snipe in slightly before you did that raised the bidding to the point where your increment was no longer enough to meet ebays minimum.I have had a single instance of winning by one cent, and one in which I won by zero cents, but bid the winning amount two seconds earlier within the last 5sec.... The last nasty message I got was for a Mac OS 7.6 CD that I outbid the high bidder by 1 cent to win.
What did £#@% me off was eBay's disallowing my winning bid within the last 10sec on one occasion. The 'reason'? It wasn't their ordained increment above the second-highest. How the hell does one know the second-highest bid under the bums-rush conditions of the last half-minute? That action takes pride of place in eBay's pettifogging. Highest bid is highest bid is highest bid, by any rational standard. That stupidity can only give rise to automated sniping, supposing that software can be written to 'read' pre-existing bids from the selling page.
In a live auction everyone present knows the current highest bid, and a standard increment can be understood as a convention of the auction, but it makes no sense on-line.
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My point was that a highest bid is a highest bid, regardless of the increment over the second-highest. One unfailing principle of auction is 'highest bidder wins'. Under the 'blind' circumstances of on-line bidding it makes no sense to use a convention of increments that may apply (but not invariably) to live auctions, where everyone present knows the state of bidding. This is certainly not the case in eBay's on-line auctions, because bidders are not 'present' in the sight and hearing of their competitors and the auctioneer.Someone may have gotten another snipe in slightly before you did that raised the bidding to the point where your increment was no longer enough to meet ebays minimum.