Reply With QuoteWhat happens next? He revokes his highest bid and then rebids just below the other buyers top bid?
Check out the bidding history. Someone's clearly gone in early with their highest bid of $900 and someone else (possibly a friend of the seller) has plugged away at the bids until they're the highest bidder. 10 bidders, 55 bids, a day and a half in!
http://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/Used-Mens-...E:B:SS:GB:1120
I might make a screen shot of this to show to people who can't grasp why they shouldn't go in early with their highest bid.
"A man of little significance"
What happens next? He revokes his highest bid and then rebids just below the other buyers top bid?
Only if it is a friend of the seller. If someone wants it more they'll be sniped 7 seconds before the end anyway.
I don't use eBay that much but it's always seemed like common sense to bid the maximum amount you'd be willing to pay right at the end of the auction. Why declare your hand at the start?
This is the only item he's bid on from this seller by the looks of things. 466 bids across 121 items, 9% of them (!!) on this item but the rest spread between unique individual sellers.
Could be legit and he was just trying to find the biting point?
That said, he has a few bid retractions.
I hate buying on e.bay through auctions. I usually put my max bid on with a few hours left to go then forget about it!
Ebay is so full of Shill bidding. The sellers even use Snipe software I caught one out last year.
If I see a watch I want. I get the phone number call them and negotiate. If I can't have a conversation, I don't buy.
Exactly. I never bid until the last minute precisely so as not to encourage others to bid higher.Originally Posted by Foxy100
Precisely this! I was discussing this watch with a friend and suggested if he did want to go for it he shouldn't bid over £500 to £600. Original strap and buckle but the case needs lapping, new crystal, hands and dial presumably ok but the movement is the worry and the rust too, although it might just be on the outside. If the crystal is that far gone then maybe crown and pushers too. Lots of expenditure and the potential for a lot more. If the movement is rusted up the remaining parts will probably cover £500 of initial expenditure. It will be interesting to see where this one goes.Only if it is a friend of the seller. If someone wants it more they'll be sniped 7 seconds before the end anyway.
"A man of little significance"
What I think is good with Ebay is to forget the idea that you are ever going to buy anything for substantially less than it's real value. For every one time that you achieve that, there will be three or four horror stories. I try to avoid the whole weddings and funerals thing. I am only interested in buying at around the true value of the item. I don't want to pay way over, but I am not really interested in trying to pay way under.
I will talk to a seller and try to reach a mutual understanding of what the real value of the item is (Unless it is something in a very low price range)
I try to make a judgement about the seller and whether or not he is actually residing on the same planet as me, and holds the same perception of what truth really is. Then I try to arrive at some agreement on price. This has always worked for me.
That's most likely what's happened here.
There is an assumption that bidding at the end is the only technique. At one time in my life I was buying a lot at auctions (real ones not Ebay)
One of the techniques was the opposite of that one. I would sometimes bid early and have someone bid against me to get the price up to about 75% of my desired price very quickly. I would then take delight in watching a couple of competitors going off for a coffee in the belief that the item was causing too much excitement and would finish too high.
Even on ebay. It can sometime remove potential interest if the price of an item appears to have risen too much too early.
Not had that yet, I've had two remarkable bargains (the £400 Siffert with GF bracelet springs to mind) and some very good deals indeed, with no horror stories. Bar the two Seikos from the Philippines back when I started...
"A man of little significance"
I bid on something recently with less than 10 seconds to go and was flagged as the highest bidder, with 5 seconds to count down. I watched it count down to 0 at a value, but by the time I was confirmed as being the winning bidder the amount I had to pay had increased by £50! Any idea how that happens?
Happy to have won, just don't understand how a value displayed at 0 seconds can be translated into a higher figure I have to pay.
Last second snipes I assume?
Seiko and Philippines is a minefield at the best of times, let alone when you're just starting out.
I get a bit pissed off with sellers cancelling the auction before it ends simply because they haven't received the price they were hoping for - waste of everyone's time. If they don't want to take that risk they can easily set a reserve or higher starting bid.
For anybody thinking of bidding on that particular auction, be aware that the seller is using eBay's "Global Postage Programme", which means that you will have to pay circa US$271 in UK tax/duty/fees on top of the US$33.19 shipping.
Advantage is that you'll know the full cost in advance with no nasty surprises, but the disadvantage is that there's no chance of the watch getting through without getting caught for UK tax/duty.
(For what it's worth, the bidder i***4 on that auction does not appear to be a shill bidder, just a naive bidder who doesn't understand the difference between eBay's modified Vickrey auctions and a traditional "going, going, gone" auction. An effective shill bidder would just place one high bid - say $1000 - to see where the underbider's high bid was, and then retract it and place another bid just below the that level).
The problem with eBay is that it's not an auction.
Auctions do not end a particular time, they end when the price stops increasing.
Sniping does not help buyers who want to pay more, and it doesn't help those who want to achieve the best price for their product.
To counter this, eBay should publish an hour window during which the auction will end. Any bids received during this window will extend the auction by around 15 minutes. That would ensure that multiple bidders using sniping tools as well as those who don't get a fair crack of the whip.
This is exactly how Yahoo auctions work in Japan. Caused me some confusion when I initially started to try and buy MIJ Les Pauls on there a while back, my ebay last minute bidding tactics did not have the desired effect. Took me a while to work out what was happening as the translations and proxy support stuff was pretty dire at the time...
There are many different types of auction, including traditional "going, going, gone" auctions, Dutch auctions, etc.
eBay just happens to use proxy bidding (which is a modification of a Vickerey auction) - but it is still an auction.
Pointless. Regardless of when the bid was placed, at the end of the day, whoever places the highest bid on eBay (allowing for the vagaries of bid increments, of course) wins the auction.
Ditto, I did too, and shortly later I got a second chance offer, I told them to fcuk off lol
I thought I knew most of the ebay tricks. Can someone explain to me how this one works and how you can tell?
I don't see the problem.
Enter your max price at the last possible moment, you either win or lose, and that's it.
So what if someone uses sniping tools etc? If the price goes above what you are willing to pay, what does it matter?
An interesting perspective. It occurs to me that using this technique successfully would require a very good idea of the market value of an item.
That's true. I would be reluctant to buy anything without. I have always been obsessive about research and knowing the value of what I am buying.
There are various ways. But the biggest and easiest give away is when the seller has items for sale again a few weeks after selling them.
Sniping works well if (a) you know you are willing to pay more than others and want to avoid escalation of price, and (b) if very few people are bidding. Putting in a high bid early sometimes works, but it also may invite similarly motivated people to push the price up.
I like sniping services because I set my maximum price and then do not have to worry about getting caught up in a bidding battle.
Nothing to worry about. When you look at the bidding times they're all just seconds apart. I read somewhere this is how it's done when you're placing a bid on ebay using their mobile app.
It will be interesting to see what this watch finally goes for as i***4 is now the higest bidder at $910.
And you can wander off and forget about it, giving you a pleasant surprise when you win something or a not so pleasant surprise when you realise you must have been on eBay that night last week when you got very very drunk.
"A man of little significance"
What I find rather odd is that most of the bids are ONE SECOND apart, suggesting that software is at work here rather than a human agent...
ROFL
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