today i was hyped up and ready to bid on a fabulous green beatles shirt on ebay. I logged in, set my mobile phone timer to countdown the seconds til the auction ended, and already had a lovely 3.74 US dollars pre-typed into the bidding box. Now to wait for the ambush. I decided not to confirm my bid until there was only 1 min left, cleverly thinking that 40 seconds would hardly be enough time for my opponent bidders to make a comeback. 1.20, 1.10, 1 min… and then I pressed the button. Huh? Another step? “Please type in 15 US dollars or more”. 15 US dollars? Maybe I have to type in the amount including postage, I thought! So I typed in 15 US. No hang on, that doesn’t include postage… woops… and the bidding ended. Crap! What? How did it get from 3.49 to 15 dollars? There’s something iffy about this seller, I immediately thought. But no… upon checking the bidding history I realised that the another bidder had entered in 14.50 at the last minute. $14.50 US? That’s 23 something Aus, plus 7 postage… 30 bucks?! I wasn’t prepared to pay that!!! I wanted a bargain as well… nice-looking bargain! sigh Maybe i am just used to buying 10 dollar shirts :P and I am asking too much of ebay… but then again, I do not want to be ripped off! So on the hunt goes.
PS. By the way, if anybody has some good ebay tips, I’d really like to hear them. I suppose what I learnt today is that I must refresh, refresh, refresh!
