[meteorite-list] Is EBAY bidding fixed?

From: GREG LINDH <geeg48_at_meteoritecentral.com>
Date: Thu, 12 Apr 2007 11:32:03 -0700
Message-ID: <BAY118-DAV693A0CC10EF371EE5A1F9C95E0_at_phx.gbl>

       Hi Paul,

    I've gotten a lot of useful information from other members on the List.
I think I understand EBAY a lot more now. I still remember seeing bidding
that is hard for me to explain. If it happens again, I'll e-mail the item
number to you and perhaps there will be a good and logical reason for it.
    Thanks for your help.

    Greg Lindh




----- Original Message -----
From: <valparint at aol.com>
To: <meteorite-list at meteoritecentral.com>
Sent: Thursday, April 12, 2007 8:38 AM
Subject: [meteorite-list] Is EBAY bidding fixed?


> Greg, can you supply an ebay listing number where this has occurred? It
> would help clarify your question.
>
> Ebay introduced a new policy several months ago that does have a very
> negative impact on bidding, IMHO. On auctions that go over $200 bidders
> can no longer see who they are bidding against. Ebay replaces user IDs
> with "bidder 1", "bidder 2", etc. This makes it next to impossible to
> detect shill bidding. They justify this with a bunch of crap about
> protecting the ebay community.
>
> I found it very useful to know who the competition was for a particular
> item and it was educational to look at the bidders won-auction histories.
> Sometimes researching this led to new sellers of interest. No more.
>
> I wrote several emails to ebay about this and got the standard party-line
> canned-response about how "ebay is protecting the community from
> phishing". They didn't bother to respond to my last missile.
>
> When you think about if from ebay's point of view, they are most
> interested in keeping sellers happy and driving up prices because that's
> how they make money. They pay lip service to bidders by promising honest
> auctions and providing a process for dispute resolution but after a
> certain point it becomes a money loser for them. Their resolution process
> is akin to dealing with the IRS.
>
> As a bidder, you have to know what your top number is and bid it. Doesn't
> really matter if you bid it now or bid it later because ebay will adjust
> your bid to go only as high as it needs to.
>
> Paul Swartz
>
>
>
> > To all,
> >
> > I am new to EBAY and to meteorite collecting. I have purchased 13
> > meteorites total. I've gotten most of them by bidding on EBAY. I've
> > noticed that many times someone will bid for an item and continually bid
> > the
> > item up even though nobody is bidding against them. They may start out
> > by
> > bidding $10.00 for an item, then the same person raises the price to
> > $30.00,
> > then $50.00, then $80.00, etc., etc. They artificially and
> > unnecessarily
> > raise the price so that the item finally sells for a *much* higher price
> > than it would have gone for if this hadn't been done.
> > Either the bidder is a moron or he is working with the seller to up
> > the
> > price.
> > Can anyone explain this phenomenon to me?
> >
> > Greg Lindh
>
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Received on Thu 12 Apr 2007 02:32:03 PM PDT