I noticed that on Ebay when I bid on an item sometimes I get outbid but if I bid again I automatically get outbid everytime by the same person who bidded before me. If I repeat the process over and over, I keep getting outbid again and again instantly. It seems most people are using bots on Ebay to make sure they have the highest bid on everything, making it impossible for legitimate buyers to get the item. I am wondering if there is a legit way to get around this? Because it is an even bigger problem for me in Canada when I search for an item in particular, about only 5 out of 50 ships outside USA, leaving me with very few choices and often the "Buy Now" items are ridiculously expensive and I wouldn't want to have to resort on getting someone else in USA to buy an item that won't ship in Canada for me then I pay the person and he ships it back to me because it might take ages to arrive and be extremly expensive in term of shipping costs. ATM I am trying to get a TI-80, 82 and 85. I got lucky with the TI-80 because there was a very cheap one that I could buy instantly but so far 82/85s are a big challenge

I'M sure these bots has a max bid settings defined by the member, I wouldn't take any chance, but it would be funny if it wasn't the case, it would teach the bot users a lesson since if I saw correctly it's against Ebay rules to use bots to bid

That's the max bid option...If I put in a max bid of say 200 and the bidding is only at 2 dollars and you bid 2.50 it automatically kicks it up just enough to beat you out say 3 dollars and so on and so forth until that 200 limit is reached. That's done right by ebay there is really nothing you can do except out bid the seller who has the max bid set

That's the max bid option...If I put in a max bid of say 200 and the bidding is only at 2 dollars and you bid 2.50 it automatically kicks it up just enough to beat you out say 3 dollars and so on and so forth until that 200 limit is reached.

@Madskillz
I can't belive I forgot about that, although I rarely use ebay.

@DJOmnimaga
I wouldn't worry about it too much though, just be paitent. I find if you wait long enough you will eventually come across the right item with the right price. That's how I got my 83+ SE. =)

True, I also think lot of people will try to sell their stuff at higher price on ebay to make more money so they can still afford essential stuff and other less essential stuff due to economy. So far I never saw a TI-73 under $80 (with shipping included)

That's a useful trick to know, Rowan_Dark, and welcome to Omnimaga! But I'd suggest checking the date of the last post (under each post title) before posting -- this thread was from three years ago.

Holy necropost batman! (unless it's a bot?)

That said I found out that the auto-bidding stuff for the most part is because Ebay allows you to setup automatic bidding up to a certain amount of money, so for example if someone tries to outbid me with $100 on an item but my max bid is $1200, then he'll automatically be outbid until he reaches an higher amount. However he won't know the max that I bidded for so to most Ebay users it might look like it's a bot or something and that it'll autobid forever. THere are also troll bids, like that one copy of Battletoads on which someone bidded $10000 once.