Jim K wrote:

On 11 Jan, 22:53, Mike Barnes wrote:

if people just bid their maximum
and then sat back rather than fannying around upping their bids.

Better to use a sniping service last thing.... as is shurely obvious,
bidding early is dumb.

The way eBay auctions are run, that's true. I'm quite surprised they
haven't experimented with different types of auction, e.g. a single
sealed bid format, where no-ones' bid is revealed until the end, no
point in people trying to create multiple accounts as they'd out-bid
themselves, it would make genuine bidders *think* what they were willing
to pay for an item, rather than see if they could sneakily get something
cheap ... you only get a bargain if nobody else wants it.