When did Ebay start automatically inflating bids in reserved auctions, despite no other buyers bidding?
None of the obvious help pages flag this up, nor does the bidding process itself.
I've just seen Ebay automatically inflate a bid by 100s of Pounds despite no other bidders bidding. I presume it was to the seller's reserve price?
For the sake of an example, the previous bidder bid up to £250, the winning bid wasn't just the next increment of, e.g. £10 more or £260, it jumped up £100s more. Ebay inflated the winner's bid to £550 (presumably because that is what the seller set the reserve at?).
In the old days, failed auctions would calculate what real world, market values of items were. If someone kept put up an item with too high a reserve, it would keep having no winners, but at least set what the market would bear for the item.
Now, Ebay decides themselves what that price will be. It's clearly yet another gouging of buyers' wallets, helping themselves to even more money.
Warning: You are no longer bidding against other bidders. If you put in a too big bid ... Ebay will help themselves to it.
Were is the policy page referring to this?
