domtyler said:
The whole point is that your max bid should BY DEFINITION be A. reasonable (actually that's between you and your bank manager), and B. not an amount which you would want to increase either by "reseting" or "counter-biding". That's why it's a max bid. By extention there would be no advantage to lulling early bidders into a false sense of security if everybody used the max bid PROPERLY, as whether or not they felt secure would have no bearing on whether they will increase their maximum bid.
Am I beginning to sound anal about this?
OK - based on your system, lets say someone sees a record they want for £2.50 on an auction that still has 7 days to go. They bid first with a maximum bid of say £15. the actual price goes up to 3.50. The next day, a guy then comes along and bids for the item, setting his maximum bid to £20 - the actual price shoots up to £15.49 or something. Next day someone comes along, and trys to buy it for a max bid of £18, setting the new price to £18.99, folowed by another bidder who sets a max bid of £35 (to be sure) - price goes up to £20.99 and we are now only 3 days into our auction... If those other bidders had been snipers, depending on how good they are, they all could have held back and gotten the item for 15.99 or 18.99... in the 'max bid' scenario, the price will just keep going up, as basically, the only real limit in a potentially infinite global market is the time constraint on the auction....
So ya see - sniping at the end
may result in getting it at the same price - but human nature being what it is - it usually doesnt .As theres less percieved demand for the item in question, and therefore less competition you get lower prices as a result. Theres also the fact that no-one actually wants to hit their max bid ceiling (I usually add aboout 20% for something I really want). A penny saved is a penny earned after all.
Everybody gets burned by this at some stage, and the only sensible response is to do it yourself. Theres nothing 'dishonourable' about it at all... though I do prefer to be bidding against a human and not a machine myself!
That's exactly why we are all going to hell-in-a-hand-basket.
Thats Capitalism for ya!