30th Annual Santa Cop Auction - 2020

Overtime bidding in place

To protect you against last second “sniping” (where someone swoops in at the last possible second and places a winning bid), we use “overtime” bidding. If a bid is placed in the last five minutes of an auction it extends the auction end time by five more minutes.

Note that the auction end time is not extended from the time of the last bid, but rather added onto the existing end time of the auction.

For example: auctions end at noon. If someone bids anytime in the five minutes before noon, the end time extends five minutes to 12:05. It does not extend five minutes from the time of the bid. If, after 12:00 and before 12:05 someone else bids, then the end time extends another five minutes to 12:10. It does not matter if someone bids at 12:00:01 or 12:04:59, the end time will extend to 12:10. Always.

Keep in mind that when an auction is in overtime that end times will always be in increments of 5 minutes, so 12:00, 12:05, 12:10, 12:15, 12:20, etc.  It can be extended up to 12 times (5 minutes each).

Auto bidding in place

To help you with bidding (and being out-bid), we use auto-bidding. Just enter your max bid amount when bidding and the system will bid up to that amount for you.

For instance, if the current bid is $5 and you know you would spend up to $25 for the item, simply bid 25 for that item. The system will automatically bid $6 for you to beat the current bid. If someone else bids say, $10, the system will automatically bid $11 for you and you will still be the highest bidder. This prevents you from having to babysit the items you are interested in and makes sure you win without paying more than you have to.

Getting outbid right away? Then someone else has already put in a maximum bid higher than or equal to yours. Please note that if you place a bid that is equal to someone else’s max bid, they will be the winner since they placed the bid first. For instance, if you bid $30 and someone had previously entered $30 as their max bid, then they will be the current high bidder.

Nebraska sales tax applies

Nebraska law mandates that sales tax be charged on all items sold via auction. Sales tax of 7.25% will be applied to your final bid at check-out.

Lowering your max bid

You cannot lower your maximum bid once entered, nor can you “stop auto-bidding” at a certain point. Bidding on an item means you are agreeing to buy that item if you win at the price you entered, so carefully decide before you bid if you are willing to buy all the items if they sell for the maximum bid amount.

For example, if you want one of three similar items but not all three, don’t bid on all three hoping to win one item. You may win them all and will be expected to pay for those items.

Abuse of this may restrict your ability to participate in future auctions.

Cancelling a bid

Whenever you place a bid, you’re agreeing to buy the item if you win the auction. However, in some limited cases you can have your bid cancelled – for example if you meant to bid $20, not $200. In this case, please contact us as soon as possible by one of the methods on the Contact us page (preferably by calling). Repeated requests to remove bids may result in losing the ability to participate in the online auctions.