This isn't a rant per se but an observation on ebay bids and reserve pricing.
If an item has an opening price of say, £20, and a reserve of, say £100, then if someone makes a bid (of however much) the bid only shows at the next increment above the opening price (say £22) - despite the bidder being willing to pay more - then if there's a second or more bidders then the price still only rises at the increments.
Given that there's a reserve and the incremental bids aren't going to win that seems pointless - the logic to me would be that if bidder 1 was willing to go to, say, £80 then the price would reflect that as he is "bidding against the reserve" - likewise subsequent bidders would see a more realstic price related to the reserve. [Or in the same vein, if the openng bidder pitched more than the reserve then the price would go straight to the reserve and therefore sell]
Perhaps my logic is faulty . . . . as a buyer it would be transparent, and as a seller ditto and weed out the tyre-kickers.