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Ebay Auctions

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It's made more complicated than it needs to be by Ebay but the key thing to remember is that you cannot outbid yourself. If you bid again when you are already the high bidder it just increases your maximum bid but does not increase the current price.
 
Have you thought about waiting for something local, organising a viewing, then trying to stuff 20 quid notes in their general direction.
 
Rus121 said:
Had similar experiences myself. I can however, fortunately, spot a shill a mile off. With the same tactic being deployed with the Dirty Harry, I can safely assume the seller is a c*nt. Not Pin paradise level of c*nt, but a c*nt non the less.
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Dirty Harry only had one bid last time, so wouldn't have been a shill bid.

As for WOZ, I'm not so sure...could be genuine but also don't think the seller would want to be out of pocket as it was obviously bought as an investment.

Biggest problem with time wasters on ebay - the moment that ebay decided that sellers can no longer leave negative feedback, so you can bid on what you like and walk away from it, no comebacks...madness
 
not necessarily, no. but if i list an XFiles, say, and log in on another account with a top price of 2K, then anyone else tryinghonstly to get it for it's true 500 pound value will be priced out. this is what PP have done for years - if it doesn't sell, all they pay is pennies for the listing fee, then they wait patiently like a fisherman after a big fish. every so often, along comes some knob end with loads of money and no idea of the pinball market value. he has in his head that he wants an Xpiles, has plenty of cash, and bids it up to 2001 quid. this is when the PP guys get really nasty, they use that fake account to try to squeeze an extra 500 out of him, or try to deal outside ebay to (1) save paying any fees, and (2) have no legal obligation when it all goes tits up.

i find it suspicious just as Rudi does when the same bidder is listed several times in a row and going up beyond market value. especially on a non-rare item
 
cooldan said:
i find it suspicious just as Rudi does when the same bidder is listed several times in a row and going up beyond market value. especially on a non-rare item
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But if I bid £100 on a 99p start game and you come along and chip away at it by bidding £10 (outbid) then £20 (outbid) etc etc, the listing will not show this. It will just show me as having bid 3 times. But I haven't done anything dodgy.
Prehaps the guy that has the first 5 bids on the SOF did not bid over the market value. It's more likely that a chancer came along and put a few cheeky low bids in.
 
Fintan Stack said:
But if I bid £100 on a 99p start game and you come along and chip away at it by bidding £10 (outbid) then £20 (outbid) etc etc, the listing will not show this. It will just show me as having bid 3 times. But I haven't done anything dodgy.
Prehaps the guy that has the first 5 bids on the SOF did not bid over the market value. It's more likely that a chancer came along and put a few cheeky low bids in.
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bids to 100 quid (sorry, no pound sign here on dodgy Dutch laptop) on a pinball machine wouldn't make anyone suspicious. but please, let's hear some good tips of how to spot shill bidders. the only ones i know are if i click on the bidder and it shows that 75% of their activity was with this seller etc
 
First thing to look for is..... Is the machine located in Blackpool.

Just kidding of course! The bid percentage that you mentioned is the best tool. If somebody has bid on 10 different items in the last 30 days and has a 90% bid activity with 1 seller then that is immediately suspicious.
Looking for cancelled bids is another good one. That is normally when a shiller has got too greedy and have become the highest bidder.

It's a lot harder to spot these days since Ebay started concealing IDs etc.
 
cooldan said:
bids to 100 quid (sorry, no pound sign here on dodgy Dutch laptop) on a pinball machine wouldn't make anyone suspicious.
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But that is exactly what Rudi was suspicious off. The bidder he was talking about bid exactly £100. (He was finally outbid by somebody who bid £100.01!!)
 
Look for bidders with next to nothing feedback, good sign that the user Id has just been created for the purpose.

Also items that are relisted straight away, I mean how long can it take to decide someone is a timewaster? I normally give people 3 days for contact by email and 2 weeks max for collection before I relist.
 
I am out of touch these days!
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Your not that out of touch mate, £600 to £700 for a good working example is spot on for a SOF IMO. I was interested in this at £200 to £300 but once it went north of that your past the point of it being worth taking on the project. Whilst I'm not in it to make a profit, I'm also not about to spend a load of cash and time that I'll never get back.....Ebay is pretty much a no go area for project pins these days.
 
SoF is cool it is on my longer term want list.

Lets discuss another eBay practice that gets people backs up. Snipping. The act of someone only putting in a single last second bid and securing the item. It annoys people who have been slowly bidding that someone else ruins their attempts to get a bargain. People have described it to me as unfair and cheating. I will admit that I do it because it is the best of ensuring you pay want you want to pay for an item or you don't get the item. You might pay less than you expected if the other people weren't doing the same thing. If everyone snipped, the person willing to pay the most would get it.
eBay has time limited auctions, unlike real auctions where it is offered until bids stop, eBay auctions come to an end when the counter says ZERO. If everyone snipped, items would be listed, someone would put in a cheeky low bid hoping no-one else saw it and then during the last minute, we would rush to our devices (or set an automated tool) and have a fun 60 seconds setting up a bid and waiting until 5 seconds to submit. Then a few tense seconds as you wait to find out if you won/lost. The person who was willing to submit the highest bid would win it. It doesn't sound too unfair to me and to eBay they get their money so don't care to change the rules.
 
Ebay has not logic.

That SOF would sell or 320 one week, 900 the next, 600 the week after.
 
That is all down to the volatile market, ebay doesn't help it but neither do the buyers and sellers.

I think we either reject eBay or we recognise where it works for us and use it in a limited way. But don't let that stop us bitch and moan about it all the time. ;)
 
I snipe, what does anoy me is people that start bidding when there is loads of days left on it thus starting a bidding frenzy upping the price
 
RudeDogg1 said:
I snipe, what does anoy me is people that start bidding when there is loads of days left on it thus starting a bidding frenzy upping the price
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But you could look at that another way. Say a seller had had a game on for 2 days and either nobody has bid or the current bid is very low. Somebody comes along and makes the seller an off-eBay offer. The seller is more likely to take it and close the auction if they are worried it's going to end low. If it's already had a few bids they are more likely to see it through to the end.
 
I also snipe, but using auction sniping software to place bids 0.5seconds from the very end (try doing it manually, its almost impossible). Sniping is used to ensure you don't pay over the odds and also to ensure that no one can place a higher bid after your own highest bid. Giving people time to think when a desirable item is up for sale is not a good idea when you want that item for yourself.
 
On the shilling issue, the below site seems to cover all the things I'd look for on eBay, but without me having to write a wall of text:

How to spot shill bidding...

I use a snipe tool. It saves me from being post-bid shilled and I'm free to decide what I'm bidding in advance without pushing the price up and giving a competitor a chance to put a second bid in if I beat their initial high bid.
 
Fintan Stack said:
But if I bid £100 on a 99p start game and you come along and chip away at it by bidding £10 (outbid) then £20 (outbid) etc etc, the listing will not show this. It will just show me as having bid 3 times..
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Not to the general public, no. Place a single bid on an item though and the listing will show all bids to those that are bidding on it. That includes peoples 'chipping away' bids. People use that tactic to see where the ceiling of the previous highest bidder is when they are deciding how much they want the item they're bidding for.
 
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