With 2 seconds to go, another buyer scooped in and knew exactly, to the dollar, just how much to bid

[cooperbrown]

With 2 seconds to go, another buyer scooped in and knew exactly, to the dollar, just how much to outbid me. How? The buyer did the exact same thing to another buyer looking at items from the same seller. Having purchased from this seller before, this was the first time this happened.

How can this happen? Even the 1 bid option didn't work from me as I had 1 second left to 1 bid and then confirm the bid.

As well, I cannot find the help option for Ebay, all I get is a continuous loop to narrow down my concern. I follow the instructions and cannot locate a simple HELP button to click.

[owlgebra]

It is unlikely that the other bidder bid exactly an increment higher than you did.  Any bid higher than yours will appear the same to you, which is automatically your maximum bid plus one increment as set by eBay.  The buyer had no special knowledge.  All it took was to enter any bid higher than whatever your maximum bid was, as long as it was at least as big as one increment bigger as set by eBay.  The increments depend on how big the current showing top bid is, and so could be exactly a dollar for example.

[bestchoicebrand]

ebay Help page:

How does bidding work?

http://ocsnext.ebay.ca/ocs/sr

[owlgebra]

A strategy for you to try is to bid whatever your absolute maximum comfortable value you could ever want to pay is and then forget about it until the auction ends, and see what happened.  The time that you make that bid is not so important, as a last-second bidder could bid their absolute maximum that happens to be smaller than yours and so does not come out on top.  However, a general rule of thumb is to bid later than sooner, as bidders with a nibbler style of bidding can bid up the price before giving up.

[nubian_treasures]

This may help you in the future:

http://pages.ebay.ca/help/buy/outbid.html

[femmefan1946]

Electronic snipe bidding.

The buyer may have been asleep in her cozy bed when she won the auction.

DH uses this a lot since he buys from Australia and the time difference makes live bidding difficult.

Basically, he pays a service (esnipe.com) to bid his maximum at the very last nanosecond. Even so, he sometimes loses to a higher bidder who bid earlier.

Sniping is an established part of eBay auctions.

Bid once, bid your maximum (and don't forget shipping costs). Some also say 'bid late'.

If someone outbids you, hey, he overpaid didn't he?

[vitaeterna]

That is probably just bad luck that they happened to outbid you.  They are probably using software that does the bidding for them at the last second.  There used to be one called bidsniper I think.