thoughts about a preforeclosure auction

I found one aspect of a recent preforeclosure bidding quite interesting: the bid amounts were blind. I asked the auctioneers why. They said it was to promote bid fairness-- they declared it unfair to publish the highest bids since someone could always exploit that information and just place their own bid of "highest bid + $1." Minimizing bid-sniper activity.

Perhaps it was because they didn't wish their customer service staff overwhelmed by last-second calls placing bids crawling up, dollar by dollar, as is usually the case with Ebay bids. I guess I'm still naive to fully understand why this is an issue.

Assuming the auctioneers published a clearly defined cut-off time to accept bids, and the bids were blind, what if Joe Schmoe had performed exhaustive analysis and determined just 5 minutes prior to the cut-off time how much he was willing to offer to buy the place? Let's say the bid would potentially definitely be the best bid the aucioneers would receive. So Joe tries calling his bid in. His phone (or the auctioneer's phone systems) goes ballstic. Cut-off time passes. Joe's still unable to phone through.

I don't see how this situation is ethically or morally different from the "unfairness of published bidding" argument.