why wont ebay accept my bid?

[John Ashtone]

Because you are not outbidding other people.

Lets say I see a Book, I think it is worth paying £10, I then say to myself if I get out bid at £10.01 would I be peeved, answer yes, so what is the maximum I would pay, and I decide on £11.50, in actual fact I would bid £11.56 just to be safe from the other penny, but after that any one is welcome I have gone to my limit.

So I go and find someone has already bid 99p, I put my maximum bid £11.56, and the price goes straight to £5.20.

This tells me two things, one I have the highest bid and two the other person had put a maximum of £5.00.

I then see the price go to £6.70 and then £7.70, both from the same bidder, this tells me that that person put two bids in and I outbid them without doing anything, my absolute bid is still more than the other buyers. Then it gets to the end of the auction with five seconds to go. The sniping bids go in of £9.01 and £10.50 which is outbid by my Bid and I get the item for £11.00.

My 56p wasn't needed, I out bid the sniping bids (because I knew what the Maximum I wanted to pay) and the other bidders were nowhere, as they didn't value that particular book as much as me.

You are learning that it is no good thinking you know what you want, you need to put a value on it.
You can get sniping softaware to put last minute bids in, or you can know the worth of something, however what is worth £10 to you might be worth £20 to someone else, in that case you lose the auction.

Also don't worry about putting in the maximum amount you are willing to pay, I got a Hard Disk Drive for £16.80 I had left a bid of £25.56 on it, bargain, but a couple of days earlier a similar one had sold for around £24.00.

What is the Movie worth to you.