eBay Extended Bidding comes to Australia from 17th August

A year ago, eBay announced that they were testing Extended Bidding were auction durations increased by 2 minutes when a bid is placed in the last 2 minutes of an auction. This test initially applied to select items in the Trading Cards category. More recently wider tests saw any bid placed in the final 60 seconds reset the clock to 60 seconds.

Now this change is going live permanently in Australia. This looks like a little bit of eBay Live selling spilling over into eBay auctions on the core site and spells the end of sniping, a much loved practice of bidding late and bidding your one and only best bid when there were just seconds left before the listing closed.

Sniping is great fun – there’s literally nothing better than winning an auction by 1p leaving a stunned underbidder missing out, but extended auctions should be good news for sellers… that underbidder will now, at least in Australia, have a minute to come back an place another bid.

From the 17th of August, eBay Australia are rolling out Extended Bidding, which they say will help create fairer auctions and better outcomes for buyers and sellers. Extended bidding keeps the final moments of an auction open while bidding is active, creating a clear and confident close for both buyers and sellers.

This will align eBay auctions in Australia more closely with auctions in the real world where the auctioneer will give fair warning that the gavel is about to fall. If another bid is placed then the ‘Going, Going, Gone!” countdown will start again.

eBay has always been a controlled length of time (3-day, 5-day, 7-day or 10-day) with the precise time no more bids will be accepted known from the moment the auction went live. Now if there are multiple bidders, and auction could be extended by several minutes if there is interest from multiple buyers.

If someone places a bid in the final minute of an auction, we’ll automatically extend the auction by a short period. This gives other interested buyers time to respond, instead of relying on who can place the fastest last-second bid. The result is a fairer auction where the winning bid better reflects what an item is worth.

– eBay Australia When a bid is placed during the final minute of an auction, the remaining time will reset to 60 seconds until all bidding stops. The auction continues until no more bids are placed during the final minute, giving everyone who’s actively bidding the opportunity to respond.

What this means is that the normal bid the maximum you’re willing to pay no longer applies to eBay auctions in Australia… at least it does but it means don’t bid AUS$1000 on an item that you know is only worth AUS$100 because you might actually end up paying it!

You can still bid a silly amount if you absolutely have to win the item, but there’s always the chance that multiple bidders will now push the price up way above what you were actually hoping to win for. Currently this change has only been announced for eBay Australia.

It may will come to some of the larger eBay territories such as the UK, Germany, France and the US/Canada if it proves successful.