New eBay Tactic for the Skint Sailor

I've modified my tactics for ebay purchases now, after a few incidents over the past year or more.

First off let me explain: As with most people wanting an item, I used to click on the "watch" button and from then on the item stays in my list of watched items so I can keep track of it.

However, I have noticed that as soon as I watch an item, a number of bids appear on the item pushing the price up.

I've done some empirical and not very scientific tests on items, but I've refrained from clicking on the watch button for a few items now and just kept a note of the item number or bookmarked the link to the item instead.

In a reasonable proportion of cases the bids never come and I've been able to get parts relatively cheaply, as opposed to the times I've clicked on the watched button..

Now I'm not accusing anyone of any impropriety, but using the watch system on eBay signals to all and sundry that you are interested in the item. And we all know as in any auction, if one person shows an interest in an item, then there's always someone else who picks up and thinks the item is valuable and prepared to pay more for it. Even if it's only of personal interest to yourself. 

Although I'm sure as soon as someone watches an auction,  the temptation of getting your mate to bid on an item to push up the price is too much for some people, which is why sometimes when I've had a (not very expensive or prolonged) bidding war with someone and they win (or put another way "are lumbered with the part"), the part suspiciously gets re-listed. In rare cases I've seen the part re-listed up to three times, at which point I lose interest.

These days it could just be the fault of an algorithm: ebay's system could promote listings that have bids on them to more people. A single bid could spawn a round of promotion to people that ebay have identified an interest in similar items.

Anyhoo, my new tip for eBay bidding is not to use the watch system. Instead save the page in your bookmarks, set an alarm on your phone to tell you when the auction is about to end and avoid flagging your interest on an item at all costs.

Another option is to set up a saved search for an item or bunch of items and just watch the results of the search and refrain from that watch button.

Of course the risk is the person withdraws the item from the auction (no one wants to sell a yacht at 99p for instance), but at least only you know you are interested in the item and have a better chance of a bargain.

Setting the alarm for 5 minutes before the aution end allows you to log in and get ready to snipe a last second bargain-blagging bid.

Just think of yourself as the Submarine captain stealthily avoiding detection at all costs, ready to release a salvo of bid-winning torpedoes at the last second..... :-)

Until eBay gets wise and starts to publish how many times a page has been viewed by a particular user, these should be the tactics of choice for the bargain bagging bidder.