[AC1]

Well I rarely use Ebay, but I just finished an auction where the bid retraction was used to basically find my upper limit price that I set. What he did was put in a high price to see where my limit was and then retracted his bid and put in one that was just under my limit, so that I would essentially be paying the “max” of my set bid.
The person that did this, I later discovered from searching the archives, had won an auction for the exact same item not to long before but at a higher price. I personally really doubt that he wanted to “buy” this unit but only to keep up the value. It wasn’t a big deal since I only put in $15 dollars more than the next “real” bid and it was still a very good price compared to what that guy payed for it.
I wonder if this is a common practice, since I do not use Ebay all that much. It kind of defeats the purpose of the proxy bid since anyone can find your limit with no risk of winning the item. But this is just one of these other things that dissuades me from using it more often.

 

[vorlonix]

report the practice to ebay

 

[braillediver]

I'd report the bidder and ask the seller to cancel my bid. If he didn't I'd cancel it myself.

I have less patience than I used to. This behavior is wrong and counter to the listed rules and spirit of the auction process.


Mitch

 

[Music Fanatic]

This is, unfortunately, a good reason to snipe rather than bidding one's true valuation for a product.

 

[smokey]

Same exact thing happened to me on a pair of HP-1s a while ago. Have I learned my lesson? I try not to buy anything by auction anymore. So I guess I have.

 

[Stephonovich]

Quote:

Originally posted by Music Fanatic This is, unfortunately, a good reason to snipe rather than bidding one's true valuation for a product.

Yes, exactly. I used to be vehemently opposed to snipers, but after losing three different auctions for a game (Deus Ex; PC), I turned to the horrid practice. Since I'm on dial-up, I can't click in the last 5 seconds and expect to win. Especially since it has the dumb practice of making me sign in *again* to confirm my bid, even if I just signed in before viewing the item. So, two minutes before end, I signed in, waited, then put my bid. I won, too. So I guess now I'm a traitor or something

(-:Stephonovich

 

[AC1]

Quote:

Originally posted by Music Fanatic This is, unfortunately, a good reason to snipe rather than bidding one's true valuation for a product.

Too bad, it really does seem the only way to go now, though honestly I do not have time during the day to pay so much attention to auctions like that. Oh well.

Did look this up, and it is one of the examples Ebay gives for bid shilling, at the very end of their examples.

 

[Edwood]

That is a very easy case of Shill Bidding to prove to ebay.

Report it.

Shill bidding goes on all the time.

I love seeing bidders with 0 feedback bidding up the price with 5 days left to go. Gee, I wonder what they're doing?

Well, then there's those that just bid like crazy early on to raise the price because they have a lot of money to burn and are an ******. You know who you are.......

-Ed