Is there a program that allows someone to match the top bid without knowing what the top bid is ?
Here's my question: Let's say I'm bidding $20 all of the sudden I get a notice that I've been outbid only to find out that there is another matching bid for $20 making my bid turn red!
Now the puzzling part is that I was the first to bid $20. If so, my bid should stay green until the other party bids higher. Perhaps someone could shed some light on this.

Doesn't sound right, they should be at least $20.50 0r $21.00. I've seen this on the bidding history before when I have lost an auction, just doesn't make sense.

You've got it Wayne. Seems to be happening as if someone is fishing for the highest bid without initially topping it. This has become obvious to me when I picked a random top bid.
What I cannot figure out is how It's done.

Just put the max you are willing to pay from the start.

If you have bid a max of 20 and are the high bidder  presently setting at 18 you have not actually bid 20 yet.  someone bids 20  they are on 20 and you are out.

This explains it. Thank You.

Brian, I appreciate the effort, I was puzzled when this happened to me more than once! Now I know that eBay is like trading futures:)

The way I look at it, if I bid $20 then that IS my bid and no one should come along and take that bid away from me by bidding the same $20, I made a bid of $20 first, they made the bid of $20 after I did. I've seen on bid history as ME $20 HIM $20....winner HIM so they took my bid of $20 but I did not win. :(

Okay.  I'm confused.  If the current bid is $20, wouldn't the next bid have to be $20.01?  I don't know anything about stock orders and market orders, but isn't E-bay just Person A vs. Person B, everything being equal?

My last two cutting purchases on ebay had fishy looking outcomes. Except in my case it seemed someone or something was able to find out my max bid and milk every last penny from it. I never use even dollar amounts like $20, I always put in something like $20.18 for obvious reasons. After winning one auction at my exact full amount of something like $22.22 I feel fairly lucky. But when the next one also wins needing every last penny of my $18.66 max bid I start to wonder.

I am pretty sure if you place an automatic bid, this might happen.

If you were to place a bid and someone had an automatic bid that was "timed", if available like posting, could cause most of these circumstances.

Mike

Re;

 If someone else were to make the automatic bid.

I think it is because there is someone put higher bid earlier than yours. For example, the price were set at 20 and someone put 50 for it, when other person bid less than 50, they will get those message (outbid). But, if you put same as the 1st person highest bid, 50, eBay will automatic say your bid same with others and have to put higher than 50 to outbid him. If you put max bid 70 for it and no one else outbid you, you only have to pay 51 even if your max bid is 70. Hope that explain everything.

Hi Sas,
a stop is just another market order, just waiting for a price
to trade before getting excecuted,   all market and stop orders are time stamped, so if you have placed your stop before
a larger market order you are still supossed to be filled first.

as far as the ebay auction i think newbie is correct with his/her interpritation,
the same thing happened to me a while ago when buying a forklift.
i put a bid in well above the last bid, but one that i was comfortable with, no one else bid and i won,
i was expecting to pay what i bid but the price was just one incrument higher than that previous bid.

I have bid many many times on ebay. If you bid $20 you should win at anything $20 or less regardless. If that is not the case then you misread something or there is a "glitch". I woulld contact ebay for more help.

When you are bidding on something and you keep getting the "you've been outbid" as you go up to the max bid of the current winner... it almost sounds like a glitch that if you put down the exact amount as the current winners max bid you have technically not been outbid because its not less than the current bid so they are giving it to the new bidder. Maybe ebay just needs to change the algorithm to compare the new bid from just "less than" current bid to also include "equal too" in order to trigger the "you've been out bid" to force you to bid higher than the max bid standing.

But in the meantime just don't keep your max bid at an exact amount like $20. :)

The only bidder that will have a max bid higher than the present bid is the is present high bidder. If another bid had already been placed with a max higher than present bid that would be reflected in the current high bid.  Sniper programs that bid in the last seconds have not actually placed the bid yet.

I feel that one being outbid by a similar (earlier-max)$20/$20(later) bid is very, very unfair!
Maybe one may need to contact ebay for a more clear explanation,
'quoting' an actual exact experience/occurrence.
(Things could be hidden within the fine-print(s) in their TermsOfService (TOS) document?.

Ebay has an auto-bidding process that bids on your behalf when others bid up.  In my experience, whoever was the first to bid the amount (or higher) will get the tying bid.  If I bid $100, and it sticks at $90, and you bid $100, you will push the bid to $100 but I will have the top bid.  Now, if I had bid $110, and you bid $100, it should still outbid you at $101 and give me the top bid.  This is as fair as it can be for tying bids--first come, first serve.  I have always assumed it worked this way, but it is hard to verify w/o seeing everyone else's bid.

One thing to consider is that the above algorithm means that whoever outbids you will be paying exactly as much as the second highest bidder or possibly $1-2 dollars over.  The reason it can go over is to allow the bid to grow, but obviously it cannot do that if someone bids the same as you.