Same max amount bid

Hi,

Thank you for reporting this. After investigation, allowing two different bidders to place the same maximum bid amount is actually normal and expected behavior in a Vickrey auction. When this happens, the first bidder to have placed that amount wins (first-come-first-served). This is already how HikaAuction handles it.

However, your report helped us identify a related bug: when two bids are exactly equal, the Vickrey price calculation was adding the bid increment on top of the tied amount, which could result in a winning price higher than what either bidder actually bid. For example, if both bidders placed a maximum bid of €100 with a €5 increment, the displayed winning price would incorrectly show €105.

This has been fixed for the next release and the winning price will now be correctly capped so it never exceeds the actual highest bid.

Hi,

Thank you for the suggestion! After consideration, we think adding a specific notification for tied bids would actually go against the Vickrey auction principle. It would reveal to the second bidder that someone else placed the exact same maximum amount, which leaks information about another bidder's secret maximum bid.

The current behavior already provides the right feedback: after placing the bid, the bidder will see that they are losing the auction, which naturally encourages them to place a higher bid. This keeps maximum bids confidential while still guiding the user.

Hi,

You're right, I understand better! Since the notification would be after the bid is placed, it wouldn't reveal anything the bidder doesn't already know. However, the page already displays "You are losing the auction" after the redirect, and with live bid updates enabled ( in the next version, which will be released soon ) this status also refreshes automatically, so we think an additional popup would be redundant for what is a rare edge case. But thank you for thinking it through!