Andy, in your example, A was willing to pay higher. So, to win even one bottle, he has to meet B’s max price. If A’s max was only 50, he would have lost both bottles (and B would have won both at 51).
I think, in this example at least, that’s a straw man. B was willing to pay 75 each for two bottles, regardless if they were in a lot of 2, or 2 individual lots of 1.
If there is a different example that illustrates your critique, I’m open to it, but your interpretation of this one is wrong, IMO.
I guess the “anomaly” for me was learning how the multi-bottle lot rule actually functioned in practice. In most auctions, if there is a multi-bottle lot, you are bidding on the lot as a whole, not parts: you either win all of the bottles at the winning bid, or you lose all of the bottles at a losing bid. Wine Bid permits partial bids, so you can bid on any where from one to all of the bottles in the lot. That seemed all to the good to me. It’s just that Wine Bid had a different rule for winning in multi-bottle lots than I had expected. I had expected the winning bid to function as if the bottles were in separate lots, since the partial bidding possibility suggests that would be the case, but it does not so function.
The problem is that lots are not getting split up if there are multiple bids. So in the example above, there’s no way for A to get both bottles other than paying $101 for each. But there’s a way to get one bottle for $50. I’m not saying that the system works not as intended, I’m saying it shouldn’t work that way in the first place.
I know you’ve been on WineBid’s side in both threads, but if you were at my point in your “wine career” you’d see it differently
If it’s a larger lot (say 4 bottles), and someone bids higher on only 2 of them, my experience is that the other two don’t get pushed up. Am I wrong? But if someone bids for all 4 bottles, the price has to rise to at least that bid amount for anyone else to take a bottle.
In the multi-bottle scenario, B max bids $75 on two bottles, loses one bottle to A, and wins one bottle at $75. If they were separate lots and B max bids $75 on both lots, B loses one bottle to A and wins the second bottle at $50 (or whatever the next highest bid is in the example). It’s the exact same bidding behavior, but with two different outcomes for B, based solely on the application of the multi-bottle lot rule vs. the individual lot rule.
You are partially wrong. If the first bidder bid on all four, that person’s bids on the other two bottles get pushed up. If there are four individual bidders on each bottle, and someone bids higher on one, you are correct that it would function like the “normal” rule where essentially the new highest bid would force out the lowest bid.
[Edit]: Actually I think they all get pushed up. Let’s say four bottles, four bidders, one bottle each. Max bids for the four are: $50, $60, $70 and $80. Currently, all are winning at $50 (the minimum bid). A new bidder enters, max bidding $70. I think what happens is that the winning bid on all four bottles is $51 (or whatever the next increment is above the previous winning bid).
Chris, I’m still missing something. A placed a 100 max bid, B bids 75, so A has to pay 75. I’m either misunderstanding the problem, or your and Andy’s logic is wrong.
This is all dependent on B wanting 2 bottles. If B only wants 1, then I may agree with you two.
Here’s a current bid (note that it will probably change later, so may not be pertinent to this discussion)
THX obviously has his max bid at the reserve. But if he did have a higher max bid, what I don’t know is if all the bottles would be pushed up, or just 1. If all the bottles get pushed up to joab’s bid, then I agree with you guys. But the scenario Andy laid out is different.
The scenario we are discussing (which is what happened to me last week, which prompted my question beginning this thread) is where bidder B wants two bottles, and bidder A wants only one. The “current” price shown is $50. A max bids $100 for one bottle; B max bids $75 on two bottles. A bid higher for the one bottle, and thus wins that bottle at $76 (i.e., beating B’s max bid of $75). No one has any issues with that outcome. According to the multi-bottle lot rule, though, B wins the second bottle at $75 rather than $50, even though A did not bid on the second bottle.
If THX1138’s max bid had been $120 (which doesn’t seem to be the case) and the winning bidder for the one bottle was $130, THX1138 will pay $120 for all 16 bottles won.
I wonder if it was a 2 bottle lot, with 3 bidders each bidding for a single bottle, when one of them increases his bid, do all the others rise to match? Is it unique to one bidder wanting multiple bottles, so his “line” increases for all of them? Or every bid increases, regardless of quantity?
I don’t think that’s right. Just last week there was a 3 bottle lot I bid on late in the auction. The bid was $45 for all 3 bottles by one person. I put in a max bid of $61 on one bottle. The lot closed at $46 for me and $45 for the other two bottles to the other bidder. His max bid was clearly $45.
If what you are saying is true, then it is messed up.
Sorry late to this thread. I see the issue. It’s not my scenario. It’s if the second bidder in my lot had max bid $46, his bid would have come up to his max. And I would have gotten my bottle at $47 even though I only wanted one bottle.
