ebay

[tamborine]

what does 'buy it now' mean, is that a reserve price or can you bid below ?

[ginvodka]

You buy it at the price shown, rather than watching bidding(which can be days/hours)

[roslyn251254]

you can buy it immediately, no bidding or waiting for the auction to end. Good if you want to buy something immediately

[tamborine]

or you can take a chance & bid cheaper at the end - is that right?

[roslyn251254]

No the price won't come down, that's the price they want. If it doesn't sell they usually just relist it (usually a relist is free until it's sold)
If you want it buy it now , if not look for a cheaper option

[boxtops]

usually the Buy it Now price is more than the auction start price. If you bid Buy It Now the auction immediately closes, and you have won that thing.

You can indeed wait until the end, but sometimes, if several people are bidding, the end price is more than the BiN price.

[roslyn251254]

Sorry, misunderstood - i was thinking the item was just buy-it-now. Yes some have both options so you could take a chance and bid low, but then other bidders may come in and the price may go over the original buy-it-now price. You take the chance and decide!

[boxtops]

..and btw you can't do both - as soon as someone has put in an auction bid on the item, the BiN option disappears.

[boxtops]

roslyn, a relist is only free once, you have to pay to relist but you get your fee back if it's sold on the second listing. After that you have to pay (unless of course it's a free listing weekend!).

[Clanad]

However, at least here in the U.S., Ebay is offering a plethora of opportuniteis to list items at 1Cent... usually the offer is for only one day.
Secondly, there are, unfortunately, computer programs people subscribe to that "sees" the bids in the final seconds of the bidding and automatically outbids those (up to a pre-set amount)... I've seen items (icncuding some of my own jump tens or even hundreds of dollars in just a few seconds... much faster than one can bid even with the "one-click" option...

[boxtops]

We have that here too, Clanad - it's called Sniping over here. I'd much prefer to make a bid (if I really want something) which is the maximum I'm prepared to pay, then let the bids rise up to that ceiling - I couldn't be bothered with sniping.

[Old_Geezer]

Buy it now means what is says.
Make an offer is where you can offer a lower price.
Otherwise it tends to be a normal auction with bids rising.
Nowt wrong with sniping (you may disagree if you are a seller though). If they beat your bid then you didn't enter the bid that was truly your maximum. And if 2 snipers opt to set very high maximum on the assumption they won't get near it and wish to ensure a win, then one is going to have a nasty surprise.