Why don't you use proxy bids? (in General)

I've just been noticing in auctions, that some people will bid 20 times on an item, before they pass the proxy of someone else, or decide its not worth that much to them... I understand this for people who are bidding as soon as they get the money to do so, but isnt the proxy bid supposed to be so you can save the time/effort of bidding 20 times, and you can just put in how much ur willing to pay?

Why not just set your bid to what your last one would be?

Why does it matter how people bid? As far as I know this function was put in place so people with an odd time schedule, who don't want to have to stay up till 3 am to get that last bid in before it ends still has a chance on it. So they at least had an option. You can bid lower than their max bid though, and drive up their max bid.

I think the proxy bid makes it look like 20 bids from one person.

seeing as it bids the increment every time.

no, it doesn't

it has the same effect as that, but there is only one real bid in the system and you won't see multiple entries for it in the bid history

The way I heard auctions around here work, is like this. You put in the maximum you're willing to pay, but that doesn't necessarily mean you'll pay that much. e.g. There's an item for auction, with a starting bid of $20, with bids in $5 increments. You put in your bid of $100, but if you win you'll only pay $20. If someone else bids $25, then your bid will change to $30. If someone bids $50, then your bid will be $55. And so on until the maximum bid exceeds your max bid.

Just heard about this last month, not saying this is how CB's auction should work, just putting in an extra two cents ;-)

but why bid the minimum 10 times, instead of just putting what you're willing to pay. if you're not willing to pay a certain ammount, dont put that in your proxy, if your proxy gets outbid, then it should be over, as you're (supposedly) not willing to pay any more than that...

Good heavens, let people bid how they want to.

Glory, when did i tell people how to bid? i just asked what the purpose of it was :) Thanks for your criticality tho, it is well appreciated :)

Why do you care how people bid? If you think someone is being brainless in how they bid, you don't need to make a post about it, CM them and ask them if you are that concerned about it. This thread seems like spam to me, completely useless.

Duely noted. Shut up now :)

Glory, maybe he wants to know if there's something he's missing. Perhaps they know something he doesn't.

Thank you NS. That is why my thread was titled the way it was and not 'Your bids concern me, please stop'

Same stupidity happens on eBay as well.

Minimum increments several times is weird of course but some people end up bidding several times because they aren't 100% sure of a reasonable price.
I ended up bidding a few times on a couple of items in the past few days mostly due to not wanting to throw all of my money at a single item for that long and also because my valuation was lower than other people's but I still wanted it enough to pay the extra.
Things are never as black and white as people try and see them.

Another reason is people may be trying to raise the minimum amounts paid for these items, without neccesarily wanting to buy them.

Since we are on this topic, can I ask a question? If I made a bid on an item and someone bids more than me later on, will I get back the cash immediately? Or do I have to wait for the auction to end?

That depends on your definition for 'immediately'.

I mean do we need to wait for the auction to end before we get back the money or the money gets back to us before the auction ends?

from my experience it's been prior to end unless the end time is very short