eBay blues

I guess you know the typical eBay ads on TV, showing happy people cheering about their purchase. But what about reality? Who talks about the people who missed an item or were overbid by some software tool, which is against the TOS of ebay. But I don’t want to destroy any illusions, do I?

Honestly, I do. This article here should be a small report of my attempt to get an old IBM Server for my rack. To keep the price low, I usually don’t place a bid if the auction time left is greater than 1 minute, hoping to get the server for a reasonable price.

Last week I watched 30 Server. 25 of them even had a reasonable price and I could place my bid. Regarding those 25 bids, I was successful in 22 cases. But I wasn’t lucky at all: I have lost every box during the last 3 to 5 seconds. Missed it for 50 Cent to 1 EUR.

In other words I didn’t get a single box.