Why is putting a single bid such a waste of time? Are you all so time poor that you can't afford ten seconds of button pushing? I have sold a few bikes with reserves in the real world.
I could say there are time wasters/ dreamers that put in $500 bids on bikes clearly worth thousands of dollars. Wtf is with that?
It's not about the time it takes to bid.
Its the time and the time and effort (and sometimes stress) of working out:
how much you're prepared to spend
vs
the effort to go and get it
vs
the time you can go and get it
vs
cash flow
vs
grief from the wife
vs
the other ones on the market
vs
a million other things.
The people that don't work all of that out before bidding are the time wasting dipshits of Ebay.
There's plenty of times when I put in low max bids on things. I do this for two reasons:
1. Because I find it heaps easier to keep track of stuff that I've actually bid on, rather than the zillions of things in my watch list.
2. I might just get lucky and win it at the stupidly low price.
Regardless, a low bid HELPS the seller and does not hurt them at all (unless the bidder wins it and doesn't pay - but that's not an issue with them being a low bidder).
I've lost track of the number of times I've put in a low bid, figuring "If I can get that for $500, then I'd be happy to own it" - knowing that it should sell for $1000 or more - and then the winning bid is $502... without my bid, the seller would have gotten the $200 starting bid...