Fed up of shill bidders!

biblejohn

skim wrote:

As I said earlier - to ensure I got the item - I was going away for a few days & wasn't around to bid at the end of the auction.

The fact is that shill bidding is against the rules - are you therefore saying that the seller is in the right breaking the rules - when anyone signs up to ebay they agree to abide ny the rules.

Let me know your ebay name & I'll make sure I don't buy anything off you for sure.

I see your point, but the fact you were willing to pay £15 for the item doesnt change. I guess in future, you just need to use an online sniping website - where you can put your max amount in and it will bid at the last second without you risking any shill bidding happening.

I agree that it is against the rules, and i certainly dont need to shill bid. The odd things i sell on ebay fetch the market price which is the same price as everyone else gets for the same item on there. So, personally i just dont see the point in shill bidding or people worrying about it - as the only time shill bidders win or people loose out is when they put a much higher bid in than they are actually willing to pay for the item.

mdb99jh

Ooooooh eeerrrr! Some very heated debate here! :eek:

Now I think all of you should go to your rooms and calm down, then try to be nice to each other or I'll have to put you on the naughty step.

By the way, for my two cents I can see that in theory while shill bidding doesn't force buyers to pay more than they are happy to anyway, it is against the spirit of a free and fair auction. Basically, it just makes everything a BIN item - not good for bargain hunters but not a problem for regular buyers. Simple! :j

skim

maybe I am not as wise as you & I don't know the market price on everything I bid on???

bidding on your own items is immoral to say the least if not illegal - I fail to see the reason why you think it is above board.

Sometimes you'll pay that bit more to ensure you get an item - this should not meanthat you must pay that amount surely?

Tojo_Ralph

biblejohn wrote:

If they were *willing* to pay the £100,000 for a ticket they could buy for £200 then they are very very stupid! Noone in their right mind would bid £100k for a £200 ticket unless they pressed the 0 key too many times by accident!

Perhaps you missed the point, or perhaps you don't have family, however.... A proxy details that which one is willing to pay.

There was only the one ticket, there were no other genuine buyers, however, armed with the knowledge that the person was willing to pay £100,000 (as is the case with proxy bidding) the seller then inflated the ticket price to £99,999..... a mere £99,799 above that which they needed to pay.

And by your rather unique logic, they got a "bargin". :rolleyes:

biblejohn

skim wrote:

maybe I am not as wise as you & I don't know the market price on everything I bid on???

bidding on your own items is immoral to say the least if not illegal - I fail to see the reason why you think it is above board.

Sometimes you'll pay that bit more to ensure you get an item - this should not meanthat you must pay that amount surely?

It only takes 1 click on the ebay website to see "completed listings" when you are searching for your items. This will show you exactly what prices similar items to which you are looking at have gone for in the past. It only takes a quick glance to see what the market price is before you decide what you are prepared to pay for your item.

Tojo_Ralph wrote:

Perhaps you missed the point, or perhaps you don't have family, however.... A proxy details that which one is willing to pay.

There was only the one ticket, there were no other genuine buyers, however, armed with the knowledge that the person was willing to pay £100,000 (as is the case with proxy bidding) the seller then inflated the ticket price to £99,999..... a mere £99,799 above that which they needed to pay.

And by your rather unique logic, they got a "bargin". :rolleyes:

Again, the buyer should have quickly checked the market rate then bid accordingly, rather than bid far more than they needed to.

No, they didnt get a bargin compared to the actual market price, but compared to what they were prepared to pay they did get a bargin.

Take for example, i want to buy a new car and I have £15000. If i see a car for sale on the side of the road with £15000 in the window, have a look at it, like it and buy it for £15000 then im happy. If i then check on ebay and find out that the same car is only really worth £5000 (as thats the market value) then whose fault is that?

mdb99jh

Right! That's it!! Off to your rooms, both of you!

skim

biblejohn wrote:

It only takes 1 click on the ebay website to see "completed listings" when you are searching for your items. This will show you exactly what prices similar items to which you are looking at have gone for in the past. It only takes a quick glance to see what the market price is before you decide what you are prepared to pay for your item.



Again, the buyer should have quickly checked the market rate then bid accordingly, rather than bid far more than they needed to.

No, they didnt get a bargin compared to the actual market price, but compared to what they were prepared to pay they did get a bargin.

Take for example, i want to buy a new car and I have £15000. If i see a car for sale on the side of the road with £15000 in the window, have a look at it, like it and buy it for £15000 then im happy. If i then check on ebay and find out that the same car is only really worth £5000 (as thats the market value) then whose fault is that?

Not sure you grasp what an auction is about.

Quite a bit of the stuff I buy is 40 years old & therefore varies in condition & appears irregularly so checking the market value is not always viable.

The whole idea of an auction is to bid against others that also want the item.
Therefore if no-one else bids then you should get the item for the lowest price you bid surely? Not if the seller starts to think well I don't want to sell it for that price I'll bid on it myself???

If you buy older stuff on ebay it is difficult to judge the market value as sometime you may get 10 people bid on the item & others none.

For instance I saw a magazine with a cover price of £2 sell for nearly £40.
I had the same mag & mine sold for £30
2 weeks later another person listed the same mag & it sold for £3.50

What price would you bid?

biblejohn

skim wrote:

Not sure you grasp what an auction is about.

Quite a bit of the stuff I buy is 40 years old & therefore varies in condition & appears irregularly so checking the market value is not always viable.

The whole idea of an auction is to bid against others that also want the item.
Therefore if no-one else bids then you should get the item for the lowest price you bid surely? Not if the seller starts to think well I don't want to sell it for that price I'll bid on it myself???

If you buy older stuff on ebay it is difficult to judge the market value as sometime you may get 10 people bid on the item & others none.

For instance I saw a magazine with a cover price of £2 sell for nearly £40.
I had the same mag & mine sold for £30
2 weeks later another person listed the same mag & it sold for £3.50

What price would you bid?

Fair point on the condition of items not being the same, but i was talking about a quick check you can do to gauge the prices. Of course, you can click on each item and investigate a bit further to check the condition if you wanted to make sure you didnt pay over the odds for an item on ebay - that is certainly what i do when purchasing. I also check the postage costs involved to see what the total price is likely to be on my potential purchase.

With regards to the price... well, using tojo`s ticket example, id bid £80,000 for the magazing! lol. - but realistically id check the mags previous sold, including their conditions and bid accordingly.

skim

To be honest I don't think whatever we say will convince you of the wrongs of shill bidding.

biblejohn

skim wrote:

To be honest I don't think whatever we say will convince you of the wrongs of shill bidding.

I dont need conviencing of the wrongs of shill bidding, but people seem to fail to understand that if you only bid what you are prepared to pay then there isnt any problem.

It only is a problem when people bid loads more than they are prepared to pay, then are unhappy when they end up paying that amount.