I've had it in the past where E-Bay would force me to log in EVERY DAY.

5 minutes before the end of the auction, it would take the bid amount, but then when I hit the "verify" button a few seconds before the end of the auction, it popped up with a password verification page.

The system seems to be less belligerent about repeatedly logging in now.

However, when it was doing the lots of logins earlier, the best thing to do was to log out, and log back in shortly before the end of the auction.

I don't use any auto-bid programs. If I miss a bid, then it probably wasn't that important anyway