ebay annoyance

[Jim K]

do you buy on ebay Denise?

Jim K

[Andrew Gabriel]

Didn't you look at their ratings before you used them? That's only there because people did rate them.

I bought a genuine Nokia earpice and mic via Amazon. It arrived and was a fake product which didn't work, but cost so little I couldn't be bothered to return it.

However, the request to rate the seller was duely taken up, and may have stopped someone else wasting their time.

[Jim K]

indeed.

also small increment bids in quick succession by the same bidder are the "alarm bell" for shill bidding, where sellers will bid on their own stuff with the objective of pushing another bidder's bid to it's maximum (without them actually becoming the high bidder - this can be done fairly easily).

so the canny bidder snipes at the last minute to avoid all that s*1t ;>))

Jim K

[Nick Odell]

I treat Amazon and Ebay as two different animals. In my opinion, Ebay is an auction club and sale room and rating sellers and being rated is part of the club responsibility. I do it all the time.

On the other hand, Amazon is a commercial entity who are selling things directly to me. I don't write reviews or rate high street shops or mark them out of ten and I don't see why I should treat Amazon any differently.

Nick

[Jim K]

even though a vast %age of ebay is commercial sellers?

Jim K

[michael adams]

There are numerous amateur booksellers selling through Amazon Marketplace. While I've been lucky with eBay and never had to leave negative feedback I've had to mark down Amazon marketplace sellers on a number of occasions. Faulty descriptions, inadequate packing etc. Not bad enough to merit a refund but too amateurish to let pass without comment. One advantage of Amazon is you're less restricted in the number of words you can use so you can be very specific. A lot of electronics\optical\camera accs suppliers on Amazon Marketplace, all of whom I've found satisfactory, are relatively small, and indistinguishable from eBay sellers. In fact they're often the same people. But good service merits good feedback on either site IMO where there's often lots of competition.

michael adams

...

[dennis]

indeed.

Or another way to look at it is..

a bidder has set a maximum bid.. along comes a sniper who starts bidding late and the bid goes up by the minimum increment until the original bidder or the sniper wins.

[Jim K]

er... you appear to have completely missed the "bent seller" angle?

Jim K

[michael adams]

Dennis.

Sniping is placing 1 bid, 5 seconds or so (or as late as you dare ) before the auction ends.

In the days of dial-up it was more like 20 seconds, as you couldn't be sure of your bid getting through, if you left it any later.

So bidders who bid early miss out on all that extra excitement too.

michael adams

...

>

[Dave Liquorice]

But at least with eBay you know you are dealing with a seller of some description and not Ebay. Also you can find real world information about eBay sellers.

On Amazon you have to look fairly closely to see if you a dealing with Amazon alone, a seller but "full filled by Amazon" or a seller "directly". Also on Amazon it's very difficult, if not impossible, to find any real world information about a seller.

[dennis]

You appear to have missed the fact the seller doesn't know what your maximum bid is so there is a good chance he will win it himself. He could even use a sniper program to bid it up if he wanted to.

[dennis]

I know what sniping is.. its a bit of software that lets you bid for something you don't really want (or you would be monitoring the auction anyway) in the hope of winning it so you can put it back on ebay immediately with the hope of making a profit.

If you actually want it you put in a bid with a max on it and hope your max is higher than the shil has put. You can choose to use sniping software to put in your bid if you want but it makes no difference if there are shils or other serious buyers bidding.

[Jim K]

oh dear - revise Densie revise it's already there you just need to understand

Jim K

[Jim K]

do you buy on eay Denise?

Jim K

[Andy Champ]

I find myself agreeing with Dennis.

Suppose there's a round tuit on Ebay, and I decide I'd quite like it, but I don't want to spend more than £12.50. So I put that in.

Someone else comes along and snipes for it. They snipe £12.40, and don't get it. Snipe again at £12.60, they get it, I'm slightly annoyed because they only paid a little more than I though it was worth, but hey, I didn't want to pay that much I'm not too cross.

Another regular bidder against me in a different auction bids £25. They end up paying £13 (or something) a slightly higher price than the sniper. All that work saves the sniper 40p. Wow.

Another tuit comes up, again I bid £12.50. Shill bidder comes along and snipes, decides I'm willing to pay 15 and goes over my limit... whereupon he has to pay fees to ebay and stick the thing back up.

The only time the shill thing will work is if they can accurately gauge my limit.

Now what I really want as an auction type is "Every time the price goes up extend the auction 2 days". I'm usually selling something that has been sitting in a cupboard for years and is too good to throw away.

Andy

[Jim K]

oh shit let me help ;>)

stop there .snipe is within 5 or 8 seconds of item ending so you don't get another chance to snipe......

how do you know this?

? the sniper loses but the sniper saves 40p ?? er.... eh?

No - cos shill biders don't snipe. Shill bidders need time to increment the bids from earlier bidders in an attempt to maximise the sale price.....

so he's not a very good shill bidder - odd cos its not hard to do....

for which they need time to do (from early bidders) and lots of small increment bids (watching the next ebay computed bid increment)- last minute sniping stops that opportunity - think about it.....

I think there was/is a site that did that - are they still going?

Jim K

[Dave Liquorice]

The auction conference on cix. cix is still going:

[Dave Liquorice]

In any single case yes but overall they know roughly what people are prepared to pay for their widget and bid incrementally to just under that. OK they might get stung a few times and have to pay fees but if they are inflating the price that others pay the chances are the quid or so in lost fees is covered.

Also bear in mind that if the widget isn't being sold by many other sellers the shill bids will tend to increase the amount that other bidders think they have to pay to get the widget.

[Frank Erskine]

You can get treatment for it, you know.

The yellow capsules, probably, may suffice...

[michael adams]

No you don't.

However as it's not in my interest to give free lessons on eBay bidding to possible rivals, I'm not particularly bothered whether you believe me or not.

These are the kind of arguments I'm more than happyy to lose.

In the main the only people who worry about shil bidding are habitual underbidders who can't understand why they keep losing out.

After all it can't possibly be simply because they simply didn't set a high enough maximum in the first place.

Again another argument I'm more than happy to lose.

michael adams

...