Susan C.

You spend money to buy bids and then get in bidding wars that either make the item you are bidding on not much of a bargain or you never win! The screen refreshes and moves the bids around so you have to keep looking to see where the things you are bidding on have moved to, the bidding goes on for HOURS since every 1 cent bid refreshes the time for another 15 seconds. If you keep bidding the cost goes up and you don't forget to check for "transaction fees" that are added to the cost or the item ( you have to click on the item and scroll to the bottom of the page to see this charge), and remember you BOUGHT the bids, so bidding wars also push up your price of the item plus you need to consider that each click to bid costs you a bid that you BOUGHT! The Bids are gone wether you win the auction or not! But if you wait till the last second to put in a bid so you are not wasting your bids in the fruitless bids - you get invalid transaction and don't win anything! So you either spend a fortune on bids to be able to stay in the race and drive the cost of the bid item up so it isn't such a great price or you don't win anything because last second bids are always "invalid transactions".