Another eBay scam

I'll tell you what; you carry on bidding in that way and I will continue getting some great bargains by using sniping software.

Clearly lacking in your case.

That's completely wrong.

Sellers can no longer leave neutral or negative feedback. It is positive feedback or none at all.

So there is no reason for buyers to avoid giving negatives.

"Fredxx" wrote

What do they 'claim' it is then?

Yes, and I know one retailer in my area of operation that appears to have a small clique of people who repeatedly bid on this retailers items and yet rarely win anything.

John.

OK I am a buyer.

so why don;t the shysters stand out a mile then?

Its somewhat more complicated than that in reality...

In some categories (especially collectables), where a particular dealer is known for expertise in the area, they will use last minute bidding to avoid "showing their hand" and drawing unwanted competition into an auction that might otherwise not receive much attention. So an early bid from them is likely to force up the final price.

Same goes for when bidding on something that has been poorly categorised or with a badly misspelt description etc.

No. If no other bids were made then you would still get the lowest price.

That's how proxy bidding works.

You only pay your maximum offer, or lose the item, if someone is bidding against you and matches your highest bid.

MBQ

I think there is probably a smaller proportion of shysters than before. eBay has changed from being almost entirely auctions to being a mix of Buy It Now, Classified Adverts and auctions, with the latter being a much smaller proportion than before.

The rise of the eBay Shop also moved transactions away from auctions and into fixed price deals.

well indeed almost most of the recent sh1te I have had to contend with originates from "power user" buy-it-now "deals"....Ebay for a living come Derek and Rodney.

You don't know very much about auctions and bidding, do you?

I have been an eBay member for 12 years. I joined eBay.com in February 1998, long before there was such a thing as eBay UK.

Since then I have bought and sold goods to the value of over £150,000.

I probably still have a lot to learn, but not from an ignorant prat like you.

Ctrl-K

More like they've realised it's not in their interests to restrict shill bidding - the higher the item sells for the more money they make.

Mathew

Only by beating all the "fire and forget" one off bids. It might be a great bargain to you, but that is *very* subjective.

MBQ

Which only goes to make your attitude even more puzzling.

MBQ

The message from martin contains these words:

I don't understand what Martin is arguing.

Burco on ebay with a starting price of (say) 99p. Minimum increasing in steps of (say) 50p I put on a snipe bid of £30 set for 10 seconds before end of bidding At 11 seconds before end of bidding, other bidders have put the bidding up to £9.50 My bid is put in 10 seconds before the end of bidding time I get the goods for highest other bid + minimum increase, providing that does not amount to more than £30 So I get the item for £10

Bought plenty on ebay, almost all of it by sniping.

Dunno about rise of ebay shop, lot of traders have gone to Amazon.

Private sellers now being specifically deterred from ebay by the paypal escrow thing.

Amazon overtook Ebay for hits mid October last year, as a seller find ebay dead now, as a buyer last few items needed found way cheaper from online vendors via google than ebay.

Slow demise of ebay is leaving a gap for second hand goods , ebid anyone ;-)

Cheers Adam

That's pretty much what I do, plus I place my bid about 2 seconds before the auction finishes.

Some people understand how sniping gets you bargains, and some people do not.

That's fine by me because, if everyone used sniping software, there wouldn't be any point in using it. For sniping to work at its best there is a need for most (preferably all) other bidders not to understand how it works, or refuse to believe that it does.

That's true, but if the greater income is more than compensated by people ceasing to use eBay because they aren't getting bargains any more, eBay won't be happy at all.

And the evidence is that over the last two years, eBay's growth has halted and even been reversed.

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.