We’re currently testing extending auction durations by 2 minutes when a bid is placed in the last 2 minutes of an auction. This test will apply to select items in the Trading Cards category. Please make sure you’re on the latest version of the app to see this feature.
– eBay
While extending auctions is new to eBay, it’s pretty standard across a huge number of general auction platforms, both online and offline. Ending an auction at a set time is actually pretty unusual – you’ll never have been to an in-person auction and be told it’s too late to bid until the hammer actually falls. If you’re outbid, the auctioneer will always come back to you to see if you want to bid again.
On eBay however, sniping has been a way off life for 30 years. There’s nothing quite as satisfying as entering a manual bid in the dying seconds of an auction and beating off the other bidders who have no time to respond… and many sniping tools have been created over the years to automate this process for those that don’t want to be sat at their screen and potentially miss out.
What extending auctions does however is increase the chance that you’ll have to pay more, and you certainly won’t ever want to bid a stupid maximum again. In the past when I really wanted an item, I’d sometime bid hundreds of pounds over the asking price on the basis that I almost certainly wouldn’t have to pay that much. I’d also add a penny to my bid, so if I bid £100.01 and someone else then bid £100, I’d win the item for just a penny more than they were willing to pay. Chances are, that if extending auctions was routing that they’d come back and bid £110.00 and I wouldn’t win!
Automatic bidding on eBay would of course still be in play, but the difference with extending auctions is more opportunity for bidding up if a bid was unsuccessful. Adding on 2 minutes would give someone the chance to bid multiple times until they gave up and decided the price was too high.
Obviously as a buyer I hate the idea of competitor trying to outbid me on an auction, but as a seller you’re probably all in favour of achieving the highest possible sale price and that’s perfectly understandable. With most buyers having the eBay app in their pocket, 2 minutes is probably long enough to be pinged an outbid notification and pop another punt in to see if you win.
Extending auctions is probably good news for sellers, not so good news for buyers, but don’t expect me to bid late and bid high, I’ll be joining the game of bidding conservatively and only increasing my bid if I’m outbid… and if it looks like it’s going to be a silly game of a never ending bidding war, I’ll just back out and look elsewhere.
