[Mindi]

Although my analogy isn't exact, if you give an agency a maximum bid you are willing to pay and someone bids over that, if the agent doesn't have you on the phone while they are bidding for you and can ask you if you want to up your bid, you will lose the item as the agency isn't going to risk eating the price of the item if you didn't want to go higher. If an item is that important to you then you place your high bid accordingly. It's as simple as that and that's the way ebay wants it to work.

Now if you think someone is bidding just to drive up the price at then end of an auction to make you reach your high bid amount, that IS against ebay rules (see Shill Bidding).

The problem is with ebay that you used to be able to get a lot of great deals because people weren't always camped out for the end of the auction, so if you were there you might get a great bargain. But ebay has become so popular and with the use of proxy bidding that the true bargains to be had are getting few and far between. Especially once you add in the S&H that some ebayers are charging.