Another eBay scam

[Gib Bogle]

Why would you always pay the maximum you're prepared to pay? I'd like to pay the smaller of what I'm prepared to pay and what the seller is prepared to sell for.

[Bruce]

That's true. I have a friend who has moved all his eBay selling to Amazon only this week. He tried Amazon for about three months with a small range of items and found they sold faster than via eBay.

I'm not selling much at the moment because this is a dead period for what I sell. It usually picks up around Easter, so I am going to try Amazon and see how well it works.

Please explain?

That's been the case for years. The advantage of eBay is the huge choice and easy availability. The days of the real bargains have long gone.

Isn't ebid deader than a Dodo?

[Bob Eager]

Yes, I got the lifetime thing for ebid so no further charges... .-)

[Mike Barnes]

You wouldn't. You don't. You pay enough to (just) beat the next highest bidder. That's how eBay works.

[Justin Credible]

A voice of common sense in amongst the noise of idiocy.

This thread is a real eye-opener as to how people actually perceive that eBay works.

[Justin Credible]

Alas, no traffic over there - I had a phone up for 7 days with a £0.01 start price and got.........1 view.

[Chris J Dixon]

Since you have already decided your limit, how does late bidding work to your advantage?

Chris

[Mike Barnes]

Late bidding works to your advantage because other people often don't bid logically. They have a price in mind, they bid it, and when they are outbid, they make a higher bid. By bidding late, you don't give them time to do that to you. Therefore you often end up winning when you would otherwise have lost, or paying less than you otherwise would. And they often end up losing when they would have won if they'd submitted their maximum price in the first place.

[Clint Sharp]

In message , Chris J Dixon writes

Because other bidders may not have decided on theirs and will often place bids in small increments until they work out your maximum bid. If you don't watch or bid late then you can lose the item for pennies. If you can be last to place a bid then often you will win the item for less than your limit purely because other bidders don't have time to react.

[Alan Braggins]

Unless someone else was prepared to pay £30, and put a bid in earlier, in which case the earlier bid wins. On the other hand, if one of the other bidders was actually prepared to go to £35, but was only ever bidding 50p more than the highest bid he has seen, he loses (unless he can get a bid in manually in 10 seconds).

Sniping is generally only worthwhile because there are bidders who don't know how the system actually works.

[Adam Aglionby]

Can`t find the refernce easily but Epays new policy on new sellers is that they won`t release the Paypal payment for 21 days to ensure the buyer is satisfied.

Completely killing off casual sellers.

Not even that with Ebay nowadays, its the odds and sods, sort of thing that is easier and cheaper to get from like of technobots and dealxtreme ,rather than what Ebay used to be good for, now those categories are stuffed full of clueless Chinese with 1p listings and

14.95 postage.

With ebays broken search engine its just not worth ploughing through anymore.

As Don Lancaster would say the savings in time and packing materials are considerable.

Dodo quite a lot better known than ebid :-(

Cheers Adam

[Fredxx]

I've had a couple of experiences where I've put in a high initial bid. Shill bidder increases their bid in increments, and then when they've won, the seller then says that they have another item exactly the same which I can have at my maximum bid. I suspect that the anonymous shill bidder and the seller agree a no-sale, which also is good in that eBay is put out of pocket. In these instances, out of principle, I say I'll only buy at the bid before the shill bidder entered the arena, which they then also decline to accept.

Of course, not surprisingly, eBay takes no action!

[Bruce]

And there seem to be quite a few of those people posting here. ;-)

[Appin]

The message from [e-mail] (Alan Braggins) contains these words:

Agreed -- t hat's one of the risks I take. But then, it's an auction, anyway.

True. Where bids are placed by systems such as esnipe there's also the question of just how many seconds before the closing time one gets them to put it in -- a problem with the connection for a moment can be enough to lose you the auction.

[Bruce]

Thanks, I didn't realise that. I suppose the intent is to drive up standards but the result will be to drive people away, as you say.

I've noticed that several of my more complex searches, put together with a lot of care, just don't work anymore. :-(

Thanks Adam, useful stuff.

[the_constructor]

Can`t find the refernce easily but Epays new policy on new sellers is that they won`t release the Paypal payment for 21 days to ensure the buyer is satisfied.

Completely killing off casual sellers.

Not even that with Ebay nowadays, its the odds and sods, sort of thing that is easier and cheaper to get from like of technobots and dealxtreme ,rather than what Ebay used to be good for, now those categories are stuffed full of clueless Chinese with 1p listings and

14.95 postage.

With ebays broken search engine its just not worth ploughing through anymore.

As Don Lancaster would say the savings in time and packing materials are considerable.

Dodo quite a lot better known than ebid :-(

Cheers Adam

I've started selling on

there user base has gone up considerably over the last 12 months

[Bruce]

Any improvement on near-zero seems "considerable", but the user base is still very tiny indeed. Having had a good look at ebid last night and today, I think it is a very poor imitation of eBay.

[Adam Aglionby]

Think that could be the problem,ebay whether they like it or not has a serious reputation problem, they benefited from all the free advertsing with kid buys picasso on ebay etc. now all the news stories are I got ripped off on ebay.

Something that looks like an ebay knockoff isn`t going to help pull disenfranchised buyers and sellers.

Personally hate Amazons layout its not pulling the punters on ease of use, but hear very few stories about I got ripped off on Amazon.

Gumtree now belongs to ebay and the refuge for those larger items that were too big too post, cracks are beginning to show, bump my ad for =A31.50, Craigs List must be looking for extra server space.

ebid is growing but not fast, ebay.com is shrinking

suggested search on Alexa for `ebay ` brings up as one suggestion `ebay alternatives`

Cheers Adam

[Steve Firth]

I once discovered a massive fraud in operation on eBay involving fake ads for non-existent digital cameras. I contacted eBay and they took no action over it. Then the fraud was repeated so I contact plod. They were also uninterested they wanted a crime to happen then the person defrauded to complain. The concept of gathering evidence didn't seem to interest them. Then it happened again and I warned some of the bidders. eBay then threatened to close my account.

[Bruce]

When it comes to scams, the olive oil scam takes some beating.

When inexpensive extra virgin olive oils from Aldi and Lidl come out top in independent Which? taste tests (when compared with "premium brand" olive oils), how can sellers possibly justify charging such inflated prices for what is clearly an inferior product?

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