Ever get the feeling that is a little... complicated? Americans seem to have a propensity to over complicate things. I'm "watching" a punchboard on , the Tavern board I posted a link to a few days ago, and tonight I logged into "my ebay" to look at it. There was a notice that the seller had lowered the reserve price and a blue colored "Learn More" link. So, I clicked on the link to learn about lowering a reserve price. (Why did I do that? Ignorance is, indeed, sometimes bliss.) Here's part of what I read (in red) and a link to 's full explaination.

When a seller lowers the reserve price, eBay lowers the maximum (proxy) bid 1.00 below the new reserve price.
A bidder must bid again to confirm interest in the item since the high bidder may have bid on another item when that bidder did not initially meet the reserve price. Whaaaaaaaaaaaat?

http://pages.ebay.com/help/sell/lowering-reserve.html?fromFeature=My%20eBay

I can just imagine the conversation at . "Gee, everyone's having fun and making a few bucks. We're making a few gajillion bucks... naaah, can't have that... let's fu** it all up!" Reminds me of "New Coke." Take the most popular and successful comsumer product in human history and mess wit it!

Maybe I'm just too tired this evening, but can someone explain this to me.