I was recently interested in an eBay item. High price, but well worth it and likely under-noticed.
My intended max proxy bid was a high price, 4-5 times the current price. This was mainly to discover and beat out any potential other proxy auto-bids. I was hoping not to pay that full price, but resigned to that as my max bid if I needed to.
I waiting until ~20 seconds was left in the auction and placed my bid. After briefly loading...
The bid was not accepted by eBay. I scrambled to make a similar bid. Same thing. Then the action ended, without my bid(s), which very likely would have been the winners. The error shown in the iOS app was:
Error
To ensure that eBay remains a safe marketplace, we limit the quantity of items that can be bought or sold by a single account at one time. These limits may change over time and are determined by your previous site activity and overall performance.
Currently, your account has reached the limit for bidding and buying.
If purchasing using web browser, you can increase this limit by providing additional verification by following the given directions.
If purchasing using mobile app, please re-attempt your purchase on a web browser to provide additional verification.
I "tested" this bid beforehand, all the way up until pressing the "confirm bid" button. There were no errors in the eBay app. No indication that my bid would not go through.
I was able to enter a similar bid twice in the closing seconds, so I'm confident that the first one (at least) went through in time and was for some reason rejected by eBay. They were not after the auction end time.
My decades-old eBay account is in very good standing with as both a buyer and a seller, with hundreds of Positive Feedback and no Negative Feedback.
- Why was my bid not accepted?
- What account limits rejected this bid, and for what dollar amounts?
- Is there any way to test that a bid will go through, prior to placing the bid?
