bidding against yourself on ebay

[dragonshoard]

Be careful about backing your bid on ebay. Even if you win at your first bid they will still up your bid.
Was winning at an item at $399 (our max bid – exposed) pushed up by someone else bidding $395. Just to make sure we had a chance at winning it, we put a backing bid at over $400. No one else bid on the item. When the completed auction page refreshed all of a sudden we won at $400.
Called in and talked to an agent and there is apparently a mystery invisible buyer who also bid $399 after I did (but he wouldn’t confirm the timestamp, that would be a privacy violation when I can quote you the amount and timestamp of every bid on the item right there on the bid history page) which justifies raising our winning bid to $400.
Agent wont pass me to a supervisor. Yes I posted to ebay’s facebook page (I don’t have twitter).

Anyone wants to see the bid history, it is for the Moonstone Fledge.

Hey at least give me the story that because I was willing to bid more than $400, I needed to pay a full bid increment above the next highest bidder or something. Seems strange to me. What if it was in the much higher bid ranges and I only had the bid by $1 and now you are going to up me by the rest of the bid increment? I had a winning bid at $399. Just because I backed it, it should not go higher in the absence of other bidders.

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