Shill bidders at it again...

Hintza

To give an example there is a certain item on EBay that I can sell for £140 +/-. If I really want it I am willing to pay upto £110. I normally pay either side of £100. If I have a lot of stock I will bid say £101 early and will be out bid. If I am short of stock I will probably snipe at upto £105-8 in the last 30 seconds and with luck get it below £100. The maximum I pay will be dependant on my current stock level.


The part which i imagine annoys some folk on here will be me placing an early bid which I know will be beaten 99 out of 100 times. I do laugh when the nibblers push it up slowly from 99p. All these folk are doing is chancing their arm for a high value item at a low price. All I am doing is ensuring an item reaches the value at which I am quite happy to add it to my stock. If folk want to outbid me all they have to do is look at my bidding history which will give them all the information they need to know in order to ensure they beat me. Needless to say there are others out there who do what I do and I know what I need to bid to beat them. However there is one guy who if he has bid before me I will not usually bid because I know the level of his bids is about 20% higher than mine.

gromituk

Hintza wrote:

At the end of the day I have the right to bid on any item I wish to bid on. Except items that I am selling or if I am bidding in cahoots with a seller.

Neither of those apply. I therfore break no EBay rules!!

Well perhaps you are reading a different set of eBay rules to the ones I am reading, then. I guess you didn't read my quote from eBay's policy on shill bidding, so here it is again: "Shill Bidding is bidding that artificially increases an item's price or apparent desirability..." Can you find anything where eBay says it has to be your own auctions or you have to be in cahoots with the seller? In fact, if you care to read that page, you will see that merely being an employee of the seller, to pick one example, is enough to implicate you in shill bidding. The policy also takes great care to point out that the examples given are not the only situations where shill bidding can occur.

(The rest of your response seems to be mostly clouding the issue again by trying to persuade us that you merely said you put bids in on things where you think you can sell them for a profit. You've already told us you have an ulterior motive, and no amount of smoke will hide that, I'm afraid.)

motorguy

i don't particularly see this as something to be getting hot under the collar about. A LOT worse things happen on ebay....

bribrian

pgilc1 wrote:

i don't particularly see this as something to be getting hot under the collar about. A LOT worse things happen on ebay....

Wait until you're trying to buy something & some shill bidder keeps inflating the price on the product !!!!!
I somehow think you might get p****d off ...............
Yes worse things happen on ebay but in my opinion if you don't play by ebay's rules then a scammer is a scammer is a scammer..........

motorguy

i didn't say i didn't see a problem with shill bidding - of course i do - BUT what hintza is doing is fairly marginal in that he is not doing it to deliberately benefit the seller

bribrian

pgilc1 wrote:

i didn't say i didn't see a problem with shill bidding - of course i do - BUT what hintza is doing is fairly marginal in that he is not doing it to deliberately benefit the seller

Yes, i understand your point that hintza isn't doing it to deliberately benefit the seller...But it is plain that it's to the detriment of the buyer....

motorguy

so does he not buy an item if he wins it? your average shill bidder has goofed up big time whereas if he wins an auction hintza does. Hintza appears to use this as a method of buying up cheap stock.

bribrian

If it was only to get a cheap bargain then hintza would be no different than the rest of us, but please reread hintza's own words in his/her first post....
Price integrity in the market !!! = Artifical high prices !!!

Hintza wrote:

I often bid on competitors items either to sneak a cheap win or ensure price integrity in the market I'm selling in.

motorguy

and i stand by my original post here in that in the great scheme of things hintza bidding and buying items - whatever his reasons - is not particularly something that i will lose much sleep over. Getting scammed out of £££'s - yes, getting NARU'd by ebay unfairly - yes, being screwed over by paypal - yes, but hintza buying the odd item up - no.

Hintza

gromituk wrote:

(The rest of your response seems to be mostly clouding the issue again by trying to persuade us that you merely said you put bids in on things where you think you can sell them for a profit. You've already told us you have an ulterior motive, and no amount of smoke will hide that, I'm afraid.)

Yes I have a motive, I have a motive to make some money on EBay following the rules...which I adhere to. If I help the seller thats that's just a side effect. Please read my example you will see exactly what, how and why I do it. How is it detrimental to the buyer? I am the buyer when I want to be and if I am not then you have paid a fairer price. Other buyers win when they are willing to pay more than me, if they are not willing to pay more then they are the losers.

As I have said I have a market for the item at a higher price than I pay, if you want the item either buy it from a retail outlet or pay more than me. If you see my bid then do your research and either outbid me or push me up, my bids are all there in bidders history for all to see.

I research my markets and I know the true value if items. I work for no one apart from myself. When I can't arbitrage and make a profit then an item will be trading at its true value on ebay. I do not try and enhance the desirability of an item all I do is create a clearer and fairer market.