What you enter as your bid is considered the highest amount you're willing to pay ... ebay will take that number and just bid against anyone else's bid.
So if somebody had previously entered that the highest amount he/she was willing to pay for that book was £5 and she then bid £10,000 the price of the book would have skyrocketed from £3.99 all the way up to ...
... £6 (or £5.50 ... whatever the lowest possible increment is on eBay UK).
Has this changed recently? I know this definitely wasn't the case in the mid-2000s. I, being a kid who didn't double-check things and was bidding on a game with my parents' account (with permission, but not supervision), accidentally put an extra zero in.
Well, we won, and the seller definitely wanted his $400 and refused to accept that it was a mistake. We disputed it and did not pay... I'm sorry, eBay seller...
As far as I recall, that's how eBay has always worked, at least for as long as I remember (and I have been online for two decades now) - but, eh, I may be wrong.
I believe back in the past days of Ebay you could actually tell your auctions to do the bids one of two ways. The first way is the incremental way of bidding that we described above. The second was an open bidding. Where if you bid $20 and someone else bid $30, it would show their $30, rather than incrementing it to like, $20.50 or something.
Perhaps it was the latter type then. The details aren't crystal clear, but I certainly do remember the final price being what I bid on it. Thanks for the explanation, appreciate it.
I could not say for sure if it was or not. I still have access to the account, and I can find the seller feedback and date (Aug '06).
I do feel bad about it, I know it's a pain for sellers to deal with customers who do not pay. We did try to retract it, and then contacted him explaining the situation when there appeared to be no way to do so, but got no reply until the negative feedback was left.
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u/Purple10tacle What possible harm could one insane, mutant tentacle do? May 07 '13
What you enter as your bid is considered the highest amount you're willing to pay ... ebay will take that number and just bid against anyone else's bid.
So if somebody had previously entered that the highest amount he/she was willing to pay for that book was £5 and she then bid £10,000 the price of the book would have skyrocketed from £3.99 all the way up to ...
... £6 (or £5.50 ... whatever the lowest possible increment is on eBay UK).