Welcome to English as a Second Language podcast number 1118.
Bidding on online auctions.
This is English as a Second Language podcast episode 1118.
I'm your host, Dr Jeff McQuillan, coming to you from the Center for Educational Development in beautiful Los Angeles, California.
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This episode is a dialogue between Jermaine and Bethany about buying things online.
Let's get started.
Wait.
You shouldn't bid on that auction right now.
Wait until the last minute.
This auction has a buy it now price of $25 and free shipping.
Don't pay the buy it now price.
The minimum bid on this item is $10, and the current bid is only $12.50.
There's no reserve, so if you wait to bid, you may snag it for a much lower price than $25.
Okay, I guess I can wait, but why can't I place a bid of $15 right now?
First of all, the bidding on this auction goes up by increments of 50 cents, so the next bid would be 1300.
You could place a maximum bid of $15, but someone might outbid you at any time.
But couldn't that happen anyway?
Even if I wait until the last minute, someone could sneak in and bid a higher price.
You mean they could snipe you?
They could, but not if you snip them back.
It's all in the timing.
You seem to know a lot about online auctions.
That item you're bidding on?
Guess who listed it?
Jermaine says to Bethany, wait, meaning stop, don't do what you are about to do.
He says, you shouldn't, you should not, bid on that auction right now.
Wait until the last minute.
To bid B-I-D is to say how much you are willing to pay for something, usually in a situation where there is more than one person interested in buying.
Whatever it is you're interested in buying.
Normally we bid at an event called an auction, A-U-C-T-I-O-N.
An auction is where either someone in person standing in front of you or online is selling something and a number of different people are interested in buying it.
Each person says how much he or she is willing to pay for it.
When you say how much you want to pay for something, when you are, in effect, offering to buy something.
That's called a bid.
So you're not just saying, oh, I would pay $50.
You are saying I will pay, because if your bid is accepted, if you what we would call win the auction, then you have to pay 50 to buy whatever it is you bid on.
To bid on means, to give a price that you are willing to pay for a certain object, to make an offer on a item.
We use the preposition on after the verb to bid to describe the item that you want.
I bid on a car.
I bid on a house.
I bid $30.00.
If you're just giving the actual price that you are offering or willing to pay, then there's no preposition on after the verb.
Anyway, back to the story.
Jermaine says to Bethany, you shouldn't bid on that auction right now.
Wait until the last minute.
Now Bethany is bidding on an online auction.
Online means, of course, on the internet.
One online auction website is eBay, E-B-A-Y.
Germain says that Bethany should wait until the last minute, meaning wait until the auction is just about to end.
Bethany says this auction has a buy it now price of $25 and free shipping.
On some websites, such as eBay, you don't have to bid against other people for certain items.
Some sellers people who are selling things will say well, here's a price that I will take and give it to you right now.
I won't worry about taking any bids.
That's called the buy it now price.
Pretty logical, right?
Free shipping means that the seller won't add an additional cost onto the price of the item to pay for the shipping, the process of mailing something to you.
Now, not everything that you buy is shipped.
Sometimes you buy things that are virtual, V-I-R-T-U-A-L.
Virtual items are things that you download or you access on your computer.
So this item, this auction, has a buy-it-now price of $25.
I say this auction, I mean this auction for an item of $25.
Germain, however, says don't pay the buy-it-now price.
The minimum bid on this item is $10, and the current bid is only $12.50.
What happens when you put an item into an online auction site such as eBay and I'm using eBay because I'm familiar with it and it's popular here in the US you are given the option of putting a minimum bid.
That means you say this is the least amount of money I will accept.
You're hoping for more, but you won't take any less than this amount.
That is your minimum, M-I-N-I-M-U-M, bid.
Minimum means the least.
The opposite would be maximum, M-A-X-I-M-U-M.
But nobody has a maximum bid.
Sellers will take however much money you want to give them.
Germain says that the minimum bid on this item is $10.
What he's saying is that the buy it now price is $25 and so far the highest bid is only $12.50.
So maybe you can get it cheaper.
Germain is saying, if you bid on it rather than paying the buy it now price.
Why would you buy it now rather than bid on it?
Well, it may be because you want the item right away.
You don't want to wait.
And some of these auctions last three or even six or seven days.
I'm not sure exactly how many days the typical eBay auction lasts, but usually it's more than a couple of days.
Germain continues, there's no reserve.
So if you wait to bid, you may snag it for a much lower price.
The minimum bid I mentioned earlier is the least amount of money that you will accept for an item.
However, you actually can put into the auction system what's called a reserve r-e-s-e-r-v-e.
The reserve is your secret, if you will.
Minimum bid.
So if you say to someone the minimum bid is ten dollars, that doesn't mean that if they bid ten dollars you will say yes, You could also put a reserve.
Now, you don't tell people what the reserve is, but the reserve is the minimum price you will actually accept.
It's a little confusing.
The minimum bid is what you tell people on the website is the least amount of money that you can bid.
That doesn't mean if you bid the minimum bid, you will get the item, because you could also have a reserve, which is a higher price that you will have to get in order to agree to sell the item.
You can tell on these websites often whether someone has a reserve or not.
If the person has no reserve, then the minimum bid is in effect the reserve.
It's the minimum price the seller will accept.
Germaine says that Bethany could snag, S-N-A-G, the item for a lower price.
To snag something is to buy it at a very low price.
To get something cheap, usually due to some sort of luck.
Bethany says, okay, I guess I can wait, but why can't I place a bid of $15 right now?
To place a bid means the same as to bid.
Germain says, first of all, the bidding on this auction goes up by increments of 50 cents.
Increments, I-N-C-R-E-M-E-N-T-S, are intervals, small increases in the value of something.
You can't, for example, bid on some items $10.05.
You in many cases have to bid only in 050 or 1 increments, meaning the next highest bid has to be 050 above 1 the previous bid.
So the next bid after $12.50, if you're still awake out there, is $13.
You could place a maximum bid, Germain continues, of $15, but someone might outbid you at any time.
The maximum bid is your secret price, the amount that you will pay, the most that you will pay, I should say, for an item.
So I put into the website the maximum amount I will pay.
Now, why would I do this?
Well, because people may come on later when I'm sleeping and bid more, more than what my bid was, the auction site will automatically add a bid for me up to my maximum bid.
The verb we use when someone bids more than you and ultimately gets the item is outbid, O-U-T-B-I-D.
I was outbid by this person or this person outbid me.
Bethany says, but couldn't that happen anyway?
Even if I wait until the last minute, meaning right before the auction ends, someone could sneak in and bid a higher price.
To sneak S-N-E-A-K in means to do something secretly, in a hidden and unnoticed way, when you don't want to be seen.
Bethany is complaining that someone could bid higher than her right at the very last minute, right when the auction is about to end.
Jeremy says, you mean they could snipe you?
To sneak in at the last minute in an auction has a special verb, and that verb is to snipe S-N-I-P-E.
I'm not sure if this is a verb that was invented for the internet age, but but it is the verb that is used by people on online auction sites.
To snipe means to get the highest bid immediately before the auction ends, sometimes just seconds before the auction ends.
Jeremy says they could, meaning someone could snipe you, but not if you snipe them back.
Meaning not if you get in before them with a higher bid.
It's all in the timing, Jermaine says.
Timing, T-I-M-I-N-G, is when you should do certain things, especially as part of a plan.
We often talk about comedians having good timing or bad timing.
It has to do with how long they wait before they tell the next part of the joke.
Bethany says to Germaine, you seem to know a lot about online auctions.
Germaine says, that item you're bidding on, guess who listed it?
To list L-I-S-T something on an auction site is to put it on the website to sell, to upload information or put information into the website so that people can then later bid on your item.
Germain is saying that the item that Bethany is bidding on is one that he himself listed.
That's why he says, guess who listed it?
The implication here is that Germaine listed the item.
Now let's listen to the dialogue, this time at a normal speed.
Wait!
You shouldn't bid on that auction right now.
Wait until the last minute.
This auction has a buy it now price of $25 and free shipping.
Don't pay the buy it now price.
The minimum bid on this item is $10, and the current bid is only $12.50.
There's no reserve, so if you wait to bid, you may snag it at a much lower price than $25.
Okay, I guess I can wait, but why can't I place a bid of $15 right now?
First of all, the bidding on this auction goes up by increments of 50 cents, so the next bid would be 13.
You could place a maximum bid of $15, but someone might outbid you at any time.
But couldn't that happen anyway?
Even if I wait until the last minute, someone could sneak in and bid a higher price.
You mean they could snipe you?
They could, but not if you snipe them back.
It's all in the timing.
You seem to know a lot about online auctions.
That item you're bidding on?
Guess who listed it?
The scripts for our episodes are, I think, priceless.
Thanks to the wonderful work... by the wonderful Dr. Lucy Say.
From Los Angeles, California, I'm Jeff McQuillan.
Thank you for listening.
Come back and listen to us again right here on ESL Podcast.
English as a Second Language Podcast is written and produced by Dr Lucy Say, hosted by Dr Jeff McQuillan.
Copyright 2015 by the Center for Educational Development.
