MTS

Don't stay away because of this incident. You just have to learn to read the information that eBay provides (and, granted, it's less than it used to be), but it can still be enlightening.

Here's how the bidding looked at the end of the auction:

Bidder3 --- US $70.99 --- Mar-20-11 --- 10:54:37 PDT

Bidder2 --- US $69.99 --- Mar-20-11 --- 10:19:44 PDT

Bidder1 --- US $45.00 --- Mar-19-11 --- 15:39:21 PDT

Starting--- US $39.99 --- Mar-13-11 --- 10:54:46 PDT

When Bidder1 put in his proxy bid of $45 on 3/19, anyone looking at the auction would have seen the current bid price at $39.

Bidder2 comes along on 3/20 and places his proxy bid of $69.99.
That bid would automatically cause Bidder1's proxy to max out at $45 (note the time always remains that of the original proxy bid), and the bid price would automatically go to $46 from Bidder2.

35 minutes later, Suzi (Bidder3) comes along and attempts to put in a proxy bid of $47.

Now if that bid would have gone in correctly, the minute she hit enter she would have been outbid, as Bidder2's proxy would have jumped to $48 immediately.

However, because of the boo-boo, Suzi's proxy bid of $4,700 was in effect. So when she hit enter, Bidder2's proxy kicked in and maxed out at $69.99. The system automatically raised her bid to one bid increment more, bringing it to $70.99, where it stayed until the auction ended.

So, to my previous point about it not being exactly kosher for the Seller to offer the quilt to Bidder2 for $69.99, that bid didn't exist unless Bidder3's proxy was higher.

And an experienced buyer would have been able to easily see it on the bidding history and know that if the Seller was offering it the second bidder, that means something went wrong with the top bid. So if you back out that top bid, the high bid drops down to $48.

Hope that was understandable, and easy to follow. :wink: