ebay observations

lovinituk

makeyourdaddyproud wrote: »

You cannot be serious, surely?

Of course he is. Overpay and it's not good value or profitable.

You've got more chance of overpaying if you're in competition with other bidders.

alykatz

You know what unlike a lot on here i`m not a business i buy for me and my family,but i cannot for the life of me work out how paying more for an item by competing with other buyers is more profitable.
Maybe im missing something here.

soolin

makeyourdaddyproud wrote: »

There could be another reason why shill bidding is used; The Advanced Search form includes an option to only show auctions for which there is at least 1 bidder. I use this feature all the time.

There is nothing more unattractive than an item languishing with zero bids; and as a consequence, I look for items where someone else places value in the item. Especially useful for DVDs which you intend to watch and then resell.

That is not a search option I have ever used. I know what I want, I know how to look for a bargain by using various searches not only automatically starting with lowest price first .

I know it has been said, but it sounds like the sort of thing someone new to eBay would do having less confidence in their ability to spot a good seller.

In fact, seeing an item with an early bid in might make me walk away from it, after all if someone wants something desperately enough to go in with an early bid they probably have a higher proxy bid in, so I don't waste my time. I've used that myself as a bidder, I buy a lot and often trawl new listings to see if anyone has a low start auction with a high BIN. I won one only a few days ago, £3.99 start £12 BIN, I knocked the BIN out put in a single bid for an odd amount around £5 and actually won it for £3.99. it was an impulse buy but something that I can use to add value to a different widget and make a fair bit of money on.