eMoviePoster.com

Revised on 4/24/2017

Here is what "time extended bidding" is and how it works:
     The bidding in our auctions is similar to how it is on eBay (it includes proxy bidding where you can bid the most you are willing to pay and the software will bid on your behalf until you have been outbid).

There is one major difference. These auctions use time extended bidding. Here is an explanation of how that works. Let's say that an item you want to bid on ends at 7:00 PM. If you bid at 6:56 PM, the auction will now end 5 minutes later, at 7:01 PM. If another bidder bids at 7:00 PM, the auction will now end at 7:05 PM. So as you can see, the auction will always end when 5 minutes have passed after the last bid was placed.

Some buyers have voiced a concern that the auctions could last "forever" with time extended bidding, but this does not happen. We know this because we have held well over ONE AND A QUARTER MILLION auctions, and it is very rare for an item to be extended more than 10 or 20 minutes (and even this happens rarely, with the majority of the items closing at the original end time). This is because buyers quickly realize there is no benefit to waiting until the very end to bid (because they can never "bid at the last second" as they do on eBay), so most buyers bid on whatever they are interested in well before the end of the auction, but at the latest, in the final few minutes.

In a way, this is the exact reverse of eBay "sniping"! There is no advantage whatsoever to bid in the final seconds, because the auction will be extended for 5 minutes after you bid, whenever you place the bid. And you have a lot to lose if you try to bid in the final seconds, and your bid is not accepted (either due to a problem with your computer, or with the auction software), because if you try to bid with seconds to go and fail, then the auction ends, but if you tried to bid with minutes to go and fail, then you can try again until your bid is accepted.

Or to put it another way, a time extended auction is very much like a live auction. The auctioneer takes bids, and when no one bids for a short period of time (in this case, the "time extension"), the auctioneer says "going once, going twice, sold!", and the auction is over.

So, there really is no purpose in having snipe (last second) bidding in an auction that is time extended because the auction would be lengthened when the snipe bid was placed, eliminating any benefit to last-second bidding. Therefore, all bidders should understand that our auctions are more like a live auction and should either bid in advance or within the last 5 minutes of the auction (the ideal time to bid is with exactly 5 minutes to go, because that way, you don't extend the auction, and if those last 5 minutes go by without another bid being placed, then you surely win the item).

To any of you who think "without sniping, I will never get anything (or I will have to pay way more)", we ask you to wait and see these auctions in action! There WILL some auctions where you will lose the item (or pay more) and that will seem attributable to the "time extended bidding", but we guarantee you that there will be many other auctions where it seems that you get the item for less than you would have, had you placed a high snipe bid. And you can NEVER have even one item snatched away from you in the final seconds by a "sniper"!

If you are fairly new to our auctions, this time extended bidding will take some getting used to, but over time you will see just how much better it is (and how much more fair it is) than eBay style "fixed time" ending auctions! Here is a comic strip we commissioned by the super talented cartoonist Erik Andresen, which beautifully illustrates the advantages of time extended bidding!