Reply With Quotewho cares ? It's a few quid on an auction site , there's no way you can find out for sure and not much you can do about it anyway . just avoid that seller if you think they're dicking you about .
Hi
My wife was looking at some shoes on ebay and decided to place a bid. There was already one bid for 99p that had been there for a while - she put in her maximum bid as £11.99 and was promptly the lead bidder at around £5. So far so good. A few minutes later she got an outbid email as the bidding had gone up. I had a look at the bids and pretty much soon after she had placed her bid there was a lot of activity until the price was over the max she had put in. But there are only 2 bidders.
This is a private listing so difficult to see who is bidding.
She was telling me that stuff from the same seller always seems to get to around the £12 mark a day or so before the end as she's watched a few items.
I don't think she minds paying a reasonable price, but I think we both feel a bit annoyed if the price is artificially inflated.
Any thoughts or am we just being paranoid??
Cheers
who cares ? It's a few quid on an auction site , there's no way you can find out for sure and not much you can do about it anyway . just avoid that seller if you think they're dicking you about .
Good luck everybody. Have a good one.
Sounds like shilling, next time snipe it i.e. bid at the last moment either in person or via a sniper site :wink:
Sniping isn't necessarily going to stop the hammer price being upped by a shiller . I have really gone off eBay for a number of reasons . It's certainly not the enjoyable experience it was in 'the good old days ' :bigsmurf:Originally Posted by GraniteQuarry
Good luck everybody. Have a good one.
That's what I thought - looking through some of the other stuff for sale from the same seller it seems like there is some odd bidding going on!
Might get her to try the sniping route...
Cheers
This is why you shouldn't post a bid well in advance of the auction ending. All that you have done is to give the seller time to arrange for multiple bids to be posted to find out what your maximum bid was. If you post your maximum bid 10 seconds before the end of the auction it stops this procedure, although it won't stop snipeing if their maximum is higher than yours of course.
As long as you give your max price you are safe. You won't get the bargain you hope for though.
Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk
I have a few basic rules about ebay.
One of them is "never, EVER, bid on a Private Listing". These are so open to abuse with no comeback on the seller whatsoever.
Best Regards - Peter
I'd hate to be with you when you're on your own.
So what are your other rules?
Why automatically assume that it's shill bidding, in the same way that you received an email saying that you had been outbid the other bidder received one also. Has any of the stuff the seller 'sold' been re-listed?
Place your max bid and walk away, otherwise you get caught up in the chase!
It's all going wrong on Ebay, the comment about only dealing with companies seems to be the way to go, every private transaction seems to go wrong in some way recently.
The latest was I thought I had sold my old telly, the winner arranged to pick up and pay, then the day before collection i get a message saying the buyer is dodgy, they deleted the listing and all of the messages. buyer was paying cash, I never give my adress out untill the day of collection, so now he cant contact me or vices versa. what a waste of time.
1. Check against prices elsewhere, (if item listed as new), surprising how many new items are dearer on the bay.So what are your other rules?
2. Use BIN if bin price is reasonable, (takes the frustration out - yes, I may pay a bit more, but I won't miss something I want at a price I'm happy with).
3. Set max bid, place it now and don't exceed it by a single penny if outbid. If shill bidding is going to happen it will be evident quite quickly and I won't get caught out by it. It also makes it more expensive for snipers, (I don't like snipers - greedy people who are ruining the concept of ebay).
3a. Never bid in round pounds.
4. Never, EVER, bid on a Private Listing.
5. Don't get upset by losing, just like busses there'll be another one along quite soon.
6. Check the sellers feedback, then check it again in detail. Ignore the rating, READ THE WORDS.
7. If it seems too good to be true, likely it is. But look deeper before walking away, you never know - just be thorough.
8. Don't ask someone elses advice. Where there's blame there's conflict.
9. Use PayPal. It does offer protection if something goes wrong.
10. Turn down 2nd chance offers unless there's a VERY good reason for it being made.
11. If in ANY doubt at all, don't walk away............. RUN.
Best Regards - Peter
I'd hate to be with you when you're on your own.
+1 and also I never bid where there are zero feedback bidders in any auction
Brian
I agree with this way to much scamming nowadays :cry:+1 and also I never bid where there are zero feedback bidders in any auction
Brian
I cant understand why anyone bids early on. Just snipe.
Slightly OT, I`ll share this embarrassing anecdote:
Decided to bite the bullet and buy a 6 bar watch pressure tester for around £130 from the guy in China who I got the watch timer from. Scrolled through his listings and realised the ones he had listed on the UK site were for bidding (not Buy it Now). He had one on German ebay listed as Buy It Now in Euros and a similar one on the US site in $. Having looked at the first one (Euros) I`d inadvertantly committed to buy...then loooked at the $ listing which was slightly cheaper and commited to buy again
Almost ended up with TWO pressure testers!
Paul
I've had situations where they bid you up to your max in increments using two user names. Then retract the bid that took them past you.
Look out for bid retractions.
Also 2nd chance offers immediately after auction ends :evil:
I'm not sure what you mean by the "concept of ebay". eBay is a huge multi-national corporation - on April 18, 2012 eBay reported a 29% Q1 revenue increase to $3.3 billion compared to their Q1 in 2011. Net income was reported to be at $570 million for the quarter.
In any eBay transaction there are 3 parties - the seller (who wants to get as much money as possible for their item), the buyer (who wants to get the item for as little money as possible), and eBay (who want to maximise their income/shareholder value).
As a buyer, there is never any reason (other than BIN stomping) to place a bid any earlier than the final few seconds of an auction. I cannot understand any buyer who does not snipe.
The original 'concept of ebay was that of a buying and selling 'community', though I grant you it's lost its way somewhat from its original conception. And you've highlighted that very much in your "seller wants to get as much - buyer wants to pay as little as possible" scenario. When ebay first started, sellers were looking to get rid of items they no longer needed, buyers were looking for items they did need. Prety much all trade was between private individuals. Now it's largely business driven.I'm not sure what you mean by the "concept of ebay". eBay is a huge multi-national corporation - on April 18, 2012 eBay reported a 29% Q1 revenue increase to $3.3 billion compared to their Q1 in 2011. Net income was reported to be at $570 million for the quarter.
In any eBay transaction there are 3 parties - the seller (who wants to get as much money as possible for their item), the buyer (who wants to get the item for as little money as possible), and eBay (who want to maximise their income/shareholder value).
As a buyer, there is never any reason (other than BIN stomping) to place a bid any earlier than the final few seconds of an auction. I cannot understand any buyer who does not snipe.
You can't understand why any buyer wouldn't snipe? Well, to keep prices sensible for starters. Let's take an example or two.......
You see an item you want, opening bid 99p. I see the same item. We both want it. There are a couple of bids early and the bidding stands at £10. We both have set our maximum price of £100. I have placed my maximum proxy bid of £100, you snipe at the end.... and loose. So in this scenario snipping has no value.
Same scenario, only your maximum prices is £110 whilst mine is still £100. You win the item, but you would have done anyway. So again, snipping has no value.
So let's say we're both snipers in the above scenarios. In the first one, if I snipe earlier I win and if you snipe earlier you win; so snipping itself adds no value. Similarly, on the second one you win, but again you would have anyway, so snipping adds no value.
OK. So you've sniped and won some auctions and you've sniped and lost some auctions. You don't like loosing, so how do you make sure you always win? By snipping with a bid significantly higher than anyone else is likely is likely to, (i.e. more than the item is actually worth). But now I'm tired of being out bid by snipers so I do the same. One of us wins the auction, but pays more than they needed to. So yet again, snipping has no value.
I've seen items 'won for litteraly thousands more than they could have been bought for in the shops, (an Omega a while back and talked about on the forum was a classic example), though in practice it's doubtful if the seller actually received the 'final bid price'. Maybe one reason why ebay stopped sellers leaving buyers negative feedback and why so many items now appear to be re-listed?
You snipe by all means, I'll win enough auctions for my needs anyway - but you'll always pay the higher price.
Best Regards - Peter
I'd hate to be with you when you're on your own.
The problem with bidding early is that you can reveal your hand. Say you bid £100 on my auction & the previous highest bidder was £10: you'll now be winning at £11. I then use one of my other accounts to place repeated bids & each time you'll outbid me until I bid £101 (ish) & become the highest bidder. I now know your maximum was £100 so I withdraw my last bid leaving you as the highest bidder. You're now going to win unless someone else wants the item more than you did. It may be that no-one else wanted to pay more than £80 though so you've overpaid by £20. That's not 'keeping prices sensible'.
The same works with shill snipeing: If I accidentally win my own auction I'll just offer a Second Chance to the underbidder & if that doesn't work the item gets relisted.
You obviously didn't read all my personal rules in detail :roll:The problem with bidding early is that you can reveal your hand. Say you bid £100 on my auction & the previous highest bidder was £10: you'll now be winning at £11. I then use one of my other accounts to place repeated bids & each time you'll outbid me until I bid £101 (ish) & become the highest bidder. I now know your maximum was £100 so I withdraw my last bid leaving you as the highest bidder. You're now going to win unless someone else wants the item more than you did. It may be that no-one else wanted to pay more than £80 though so you've overpaid by £20. That's not 'keeping prices sensible'.
The same works with shill snipeing: If I accidentally win my own auction I'll just offer a Second Chance to the underbidder & if that doesn't work the item gets relisted.
I wouldn't have overpaid, I would have paid exactly what I was prepared to pay. Had you advertised it with a BIN of £100 then I would have bought it at that straight away.
I never accept second offers, (see my rules :roll: ).
Oh, and likely your feedback would catch up with you. From me it certainly would.
Best Regards - Peter
I'd hate to be with you when you're on your own.
I do tend to agree with Mr P here. Yes you were prepared to pay £100 but wouldn't you rather have had it for £80?
By bidding early you allow buyers, as in this case, to use another account to increase the bids until it is obvious that the next bid will overtake the original buyers limit. You can tell this as the bid increment changes.
I had this happen to me only last week. It seemed odd that I won the auction on my maximum. Did someone just happen to bid their maximun just lower than mine? No chance. A quick look at the bids shows a series of bids up to my maximum. I'm fairly certain I would have won this for £20 less had I not bid before I went out. I should have sniped and I'm sure I would have won at a lower price. Actually not sure why I didn't. Ah well.
In reality I can't prove what happened as if ebay were to look into it then I'm sure the bids were from a different account and a different IP address to the sellers.
But it happened all the same. Ebay is still fine I feel if you accept it at face value and play the game to your own advantage, but within the rules.
if you put a low bid on a few of the sellers items you can then go back to completed listings and see who has won them.
if the same person has won quite a few then its probably shill bidding but may just be a collector after several of that sellers listing. The later here is very unlikely in the sort of thing you are talking about.
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