Laurel B.

I'm finding all these reviews of 'ohmigawditsawful' quite silly; it seems that no one bothered to read the fine print, or to find out how the bid assistant works... or indeed to even look at the mechanics of the the site's sales at all.

1) Buy bids. These are $1 for each $0.01 increment of bidding.

This provides for $100 to be made for each $1 of the item's price. So those $900 Christian Louboutin shoes that you bought for $10.12 + 43 bids cost you personally $53.12... but earned the site a gross of $1053. 12. And if they paid $350/pair wholesale... awesome. They're making money and people are bidding competitively. It's fun for the whole family.

2) The Bid Assistant.
You can set the minimum price for when you want to start bidding -- you do not have to start at $0.00 and definitely should not start there! Look at the price ranges of similar items (in many cases, the same item) and see where the bidding range lies... then bid (aka bet) appropriately.
You can also set the maximum price that you'd like to bid up to, and how many bids you'd like to use to get there. Remember, you can theoretically spend $50 just to gain $1 in price; the site will not let you top your own bid, so that you can only get in 50 bids per dollar of price. In reality, there are so many other bidders, that this doesn't happen too often.

I am currently watching two auto-bidders with too much $$ duke it out, they have each spent over $300 just in bids for this one pair of $700 shoes -- the site has already won, especially when you add in the bidders like myself, who will probably spend ~$25 near the end to win/lose the shoes. Some of these $900 pairs of shoes auction for $55.00, i. E., $5500 gross for the site. Not a bad gig, eh?

3) Setting The Bid Assistant
You can limit how many bids the BA can use per your min-max range... it won't spend them all on one-upping $0.01; which is nice feature.

For every person who says 'how unfair it is,' there are a dozen who 'OMG, I love it! It's the best site ever!' -- for someone who just paid $44 for a pair of Louboutin heels vs. someone who paid $100 to lose a Gucci bag... because they did *not* understand the mechanics of the game.

Do you play craps when you go to Vegas? Or do you play Blackjack or Texas Hold'em? EBay is the Blackjack or Hold'em... welcome to craps, ladies.
Win, lose, learn and get some freaking wonderful merchandise at the same time. Just do not listen for me playing the world's tiniest violin when you don't read the rules and don't understand how to play the game. Don't whine when you don't know how to play...