Wine Bid anomaly (?)

Something odd happened last night to one of my bids I have never seen before. I put in bids on a two-bottle lot with a max bid of $150 (first bid was $135). Later in the week, someone bid the next increment, $145, on both bottles, but I was still winning both bottles at $145. Late on Sunday, someone bid the next increment, $155. It showed that I was winning one bottle at $145 and losing one at $155. No one else put in a bid. I was charged $150 (my max bid) for my winning bottle. Although someone did bid more for the one bottle, I don’t know why the price for the bottle I won was adjusted to my max bid. I’ve never seen this before, but I don’t think I’ve seen what happens when you win a partial bid before. Has anyone else seen this?

A third party could have bid $150.

There were no other bids. Anyway, the next increment was $155, so if someone else had put in a bid, I would have lost the second bottle, too.

i think something like this happened to me.

I was bidding on a lot of three wines. Someone outbid me on two of them. I increased my max bid on the third one, and now my new max bid was the price shown. (and price I paid). The other person only bought the two (at a higher price point)

I was looking at a few bottles to bid on in last weeks WineBid auction as well, and I had a few questions, so I went on their FAQ page. I think your question is answered there. BTW, I don’t agree with their practice of increasing your bid on the one bottle that you won…

On a separate note (sorry to hijack your thread), here is the question I had:

If there is a lot of 6 bottles priced at $50/bottle, and someone bids $50 on 3 bottles, and I bid $50 on 6 bottles, do we each win 3 bottles? Or do I win all 6 bottles because I place a bid for the entire lot?

Paul, I believe you’d both win 3 assuming the other bidder got their bid in first.

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I didn’t see it answered per se in the FAQ. One possible explanation I came up with, though, does relate to the multi-bottle lot FAQ. Because you are deemed to have bid the same amount for each bottle in a multi-bottle lot that you bid on, my actual bid on both bottles was deemed to have been increased to my max bid in order to try to match the overbid from the new bidder on the one bottle. My max bid was not high enough to beat out the new bidder (so I lost the first bottle), but the bid on the second bottle was still raised to the new (maximum) level. If true, that is an interesting wrinkle on the max bid concept I was not aware of. That could be costly in different circumstances.

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A numerical example of what I think the rule is:

I bid on all six bottles of a six-bottle lot. The initial bid price is $100 per bottle, but I put in a max bid of $150 per because I really want the wine. Another bidder also really wants, the wine, but only one bottle. That bidder goes up to $150 on that one bottle before tapping out. No one else puts in a bid. I win all six bottles at $150 per because you can’t win one lot at two different bid prices (the rule stated in the FAQ), so I will pay an extra $250 for the five uncontested bottles because of the one other bid. I think what happened to me (using this example, the new bidder on the one bottle bid $160, so beating my maximum) is just a variation of the first example.

If that is the rule, that doesn’t really make sense. The other five bottles were uncontested; why should I pay more for the uncontested ones just because one bottle was contested?

Hi all, just wanted to let you know that we have seen this and are looking into the log files to see if there were any anomalies. If so, we will contact you privately. FWIW, I’ve made it clear many times that we’d prefer to not use WineBerserkers as our public customer service forum. We have a well established email, phone number and online chat, and our team immediately picks up the phone and chat and replies. We’re not a big business like Amazon, we’re a small business and happy to take care of customers individually and personally!

All that said, HoosJustin is 100% correct in his example, and Crickey is correct in his. The rule makes sense in your last example because:

  • You really wanted all six bottles, and you were willing to pay up to $150 for all six.

  • Even though the competitive bid was $150 for only one bottle in that lot, it’s not targeted at a specific bottle in the lot. Just as you note that “you can’t win one lot at two different prices,” you also can’t lose one lot at two different prices- you had bid on the whole lot. One person can’t pick off one bottle from you at $150, and then another pick off another bottle at $150, etc. All the bottles necessarily go to $150, and then to actually win something from you, someone needs to bid OVER your max bid. And then if the competitor decides to go to the next increment above your max bid on one bottle, then at that point they win one and you win the rest at your max bid.

  • You did help me realize that I mis-stated the rule in the other thread, reproduced and corrected below.

  • With regard to the multi-bottle lot behavior: This works exactly as intended- which is exactly the same as it behaved up to 7pm, but now simply in overtime. As Alan notes, if any one bottle in a multi-bottle lot goes into overtime, it sends the whole lot into overtime, as individual bidders or trackers may at that point want to bid on the entire lot or some quantity lesser than the entirety but more than those spoken for, at a price higher than the bottom price. In order to take away one or more of the lower bottles, they need to bid at or above the current reserve. If all the bottles in the lot are at the same reserve, max bids take priority over earlier bids, and earlier bids take priority over later bids. Important point- if 4 bottles are currently sitting at $50 and you have a max bid of $55 on all 4, then if someone bids $51, it necessarily upticks all your bottles to $51. Just as it is not possible to steal (or lose) bottle with a lower bid for one bottle than the max bid set across the lot, it mathematically equates that the entire lot must uptick by $1 per bottle. However, if a bidder bids $56 on one bottle, then they win one bottle at $56 and the original bidder wins the rest at $55 [Edited- the original bidder pays their max bid on 3 of the 4]. Thus, to Wes’ question about whether to bid high on 1-2 bottles that you really want, or low across all the bottles in the lot, if you really want just one or two, then bid your max bid early on just 1-2 and you will more likely win at least one or two, and probably at much lower than your max bid, than bidding low across many and then having the reserves keep ticking up across all of them. If you are really just looking for a deal up to a certain price but then walking away, then bid lower across all lots and see if you end up with several at the price you want.

I’m not surprised you want to keep this to email/phone call, because this rule makes zero sense. I’m glad it’s called out here.

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nevermind- addressed above

Thanks, Russ. I wasn’t complaining. I genuinely didn’t understand what happened (that’s why I had a question mark in the title), and was curious if anyone could explain. From the responses, I was able to work out the rule.

I still don’t think the rule makes sense.

This rule also undermines the argument I was making in the long thread on the OT bidding. I said that there is no downside to putting in an early maximum bid. With the rule demonstrated in this thread, there is, and a potentially costly one.

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This “strategy” Ross has been promoting is helping his company, the seller, and of course maximize the quantity of bottles you win. It’s clearly not the best strategy to get a good price as a buyer and I find it mildly insulting Ross thinks people can’t see through it.

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Wow!
This is actually quite disturbing.
I would never think that this would be the answer. This makes no sense.
Moving the price up on bottles that weren’t bid on is wrong.
Thank you for posting!

While I get the disappointment in this, I’m not sure how Winebid could figure out a way to do this short of some type of array bidding. For example, let’s say there were 5 bottles of a wine starting out at $25, and you set your max bid on all 5 to $30. What you guys are wanting to happen is that one person bidding on one bottle at $26 shouldn’t increase the price of the other 4. But how does Winebid do that when you have said you wanted all 5 bottles? If you really only wanted 4 bottles at up to $30, then you should have bid on that. And what if three other individual bidders come in and bid $27, $28, and $29 each. Would you be happy only winning the one bottle at $25 when it appeared to them you wanted all 5? How does Winebid know what your desired number of bottles at a particular price is if you bid on all 5?

What would be cool would be some type of array bidding on multiple bottle lots. For example, say there are 5 bottles of a 1975 CA Cab starting at $50. Since I might be looking for a birth year wine for my wife, I would be interested in 5 bottles at the $50 price if no one else bid. But if I really wanted at minimum one bottle of that wine, I might be willing to pay up to $100 for just one bottle. It would be nice to be able to find a way to bid where I could say I would take 5 bottles at up to $55, 3 bottles at up to $70, and 1 bottle up to $100. But I imagine that would be much more difficult to program.

If we aren’t careful, Winebid may just move everything to individual bottle lots [oops.gif] .

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It’s not rocket science, what you describe is not hard to implement at all. While someone may be willing to take all bottles at the max bid, it doesn’t mean they should have to if a different user just wants a single bottle. It just makes no sense to me at all.

In your example, why wouldn’t it just raise the cost of one bottle to $26 while the rest stays at $25? If then another bidder comes in with a $27 bid, I would argue it makes most sense to take the cheapest bottle and increase the bid on that. Then you’d win three at $25, one at $26 and one at $27. Where is the problem?

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I would think there would be a way to program in order to achieve fairness.
If this is the only way I would rather that they require you bid on the entire lot or if not break the lot into 6 individual lots.
Why are you against individual lots?

Anyway most of the time the dollar amount is small. For Chris it was $5.00 not a big deal but still unfair…imo.
However in Chris’s example the difference was $250. That’s significant. Knowing the details is critical when bidding. Most of the time the rules are logical. Here they are not. Again raising the price on bottles that were not bid on is nonsensical.

this is even weirder than the last thread. putting aside the inevitable confusion, it’s not clear what benefit anyone has to a multi-bottle lot that isn’t actually a lot (if you can buy some portion of the lot but not all of it).

Thinking about it.
Your exposure is the difference between your initial bid and your maximum bid.
The greater the difference the greater the exposure or risk.
Crickey example where initial bid is $100 and maximum bid is $150 exposes a $50 difference.
If the lot size is large say 6 or 12 then the exposure is large. $50 times 6 or 12 is $300 or $600.
Russ…you really need to address this!
Thanks
Ken

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I ran into this issue yesterday trying to bid on a two bottle “lot” (can’t remember the exact bid amounts, so dollar values are for illustration purposes only):

I placed a bid for both bottles at $50 per bottle, but there was another bid in for one of the bottles that was higher than mine. Therefore, I was winning a partial lot (= 1 bottle) at $50. If I then increase my bid to $55 and that bid is still lower than the max bid from the other bidder, I essentially increased the price for the bottle I was already winning by the amount of the increase. In other words, I’m bidding against myself. How is this a “correct” behavior?!