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Why am I not getting some of the OutBid Notifications even though the buyer was outbid several times?
When you place a bid, you enter the maximum amount (Proxy Bid) you are willing to pay for the item. If another bidder has a higher maximum, you will be outbid automatically. Outbid notifications are not sent when this automatic outbid happens.
Let us walk through a scenario to see how this happens:
Seller1 - lists an item with starting price of $1
Buyer1 - places a maximum bid of $5. Although the max. bid is $5, the actual bid at that time is $1.
Buyer2 - places tries to place a bid of $2.
At this point, since Buyer1 has a max. bid of $5, his bid is set to $2.25 (bid of buyer 2 + the minimum increment required) and Buyer2 is outbid automatically.
If the buyer uses the website to place the bid, this is the message that they will see:
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Bid Confirmation | Item number: 4508629481 | ![]() |
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If the bid is made by an application using the PlaceOffer call, then you will get a response similar to this:
<?xml version="1.0" encoding="utf-8"?>
<PlaceOfferResponse xmlns="urn:ebay:apis:eBLBaseComponents">
<Timestamp>2006-04-28T21:14:26.945Z</Timestamp>
<Ack>Success</Ack>
<Version>457</Version>
<Build>e457_core_Bundled_2818483_R1</Build>
<UsageData>NDM0NDE3LzEzMjY2Ow**</UsageData>
<SellingStatus>
<ConvertedCurrentPrice currencyID="USD">2.25</ConvertedCurrentPrice>
<CurrentPrice currencyID="USD">2.25</CurrentPrice>
<HighBidder>
<UserID>Buyer1</UserID>
</HighBidder>
<MinimumToBid currencyID="USD">2.5</MinimumToBid>
</SellingStatus>
</PlaceOfferResponse>
From the response, you will see that: