You set a maximum, not an offer
When you bid, you enter the most you are willing to pay. The system then bids the smallest amount needed to keep you in front, and only goes higher when somebody pushes you.
Maximum $80, current bid $40: you lead at $45, not $80. Someone sets $60 and you go to $65 automatically. They set $90 and they lead at $85, with you notified in seconds.
Nobody can see your maximum
Not the seller, not other bidders, not the public bid history. Only the amount your proxy has actually reached is visible.
This keeps an auction from becoming a war of attrition. Three days of nudging each other up one increment at a time is how sites get abandoned.
Bid increments
The minimum step depends on where the price currently is:
| Current price | Minimum increment |
|---|---|
| $0.00 – $50.00 | $1.00 |
| $51.00 – $199.00 | $5.00 |
| $200.00 – $499.00 | $10.00 |
| $500.00 and up | $25.00 |
Sniping does not work here
Any bid placed in the final two minutes pushes the closing time out by two minutes. There is no cap on extensions: the auction ends when two full minutes pass with nobody bidding.
Without it, price discovery collapses into the last three seconds and honest bidders stop turning up.
Reserve prices and Buy It Now
- A reserve is hidden but never denied. You are always told whether it has been met, just not the number. An unmet reserve means no sale, and the seller may relist once, free.
- Buy It Now disappears at the first bid. Once somebody has bid, the item is in an auction and stays there.
- Auctions run for 1, 3, 5 or 7 days. Three is the default and the most common.
What happens to your money
- You add a card when you first bid. It is saved with Stripe and not charged.
- When the auction closes and you have won, that card is charged for the winning amount.
- The money goes to RoAuction, not to the seller. The seller cannot touch it and cannot see it.
- A failed charge is retried once after 15 minutes. Then the item goes to the underbidder at their own maximum and the winner takes a non-payment strike. Two strikes suspends bidding.
- The seller is paid seven days after you confirm delivery. Three once they reach Established.
Confirmation comes before delivery
Your download unlocks after you click "I've verified this is what I bought". That click is timestamped and recorded with your IP.
The order is deliberate. Confirming before delivery produces a record on every transaction. Asking afterwards only produces one when someone bothers, and those are never the transactions that end up in dispute.
- Download links expire after 15 minutes and are regenerated each time.
- Five downloads per order; support unlocks more if you genuinely need them.
- Every download writes a row with the time, IP and byte count. That log is what a dispute is decided on.
- Each archive contains a
LICENSE.txtwith a licence key unique to you.
Retractions and cancellations
- Bids cannot be retracted, with one exception: an obvious entry error, ten times or more over the previous bid, caught within 60 seconds. Every retraction is logged.
- A seller may cancel a listing with zero bids. After the first bid it takes support, and it counts against their seller record.