[sdiy] ebay internal shill bidding?

[Bob Weigel]

On 1/5/2011 12:34 AM, Barry Klein wrote:
> Good example!
> Man I feel stupid trying to make sense of it.
> What is happening at the end there where a**y's bid jumps from 416.01 
> to 440
> at the same time interval?
> This is one of ebay's best opportunities for improvement:
> present bid history so it is easier to understand for dummies like me.
>
> Barry
>

Lol. Yeah I think they blanked out the actual names so that they could 
pull this stunt. I had a funny feeling about it when they did it.  I 
hadn't heard of any bad interactions...most of those happen between 
buyers and sellers of course when one doesn't do what they're supposed 
to.   There used to be communication between people in the ebay 
community.  They totally killed that pretty much.

Here's a possible scenario though Barry.  Let's draw it out on a time line

Tuesday let's say... 12:00 pm

John whoever bids 22.00 on an item that was previously at 11.00.
The bidding increment for the auction, let's say, is 1.00 for 
simplicity.  I'm not sure of late how they do that.  It used to be they 
had different increments for different auction values or something.  I 
can't recall.

But anyway so at 12:00 pm therefore the auction now reads 12.00 because 
it has to show at least 1.00 over the previous bid.  And that is what 
John will win it for if nobody else bids.

But Cecil follows at 12:15 and posts a 15.00 bid.
IMMEDIATELY it tells Cecil he has been outbid and he now must enter more 
than 16.00 in order to hope to win this auction since John had 22.00 
waiting to dump on it already in the cue.  And ebay 'proxy bids' for him 
from that point on...until it's over 22.00

Ok the auction is ending at 12:16 let's say.  Cecil scratches his head 
and ...while knowing he can get a similar spatula at spatula city for 
only 12.99... has basic human territorial behavior.  And he decides John 
has no right to this because it's HIS spatula in his way of thinking. 
IT's just a matter of PRINCIPLE now.  There is no money limit.   So 
Cecil manages to slam down another bit at 12:15:49 of 22.00 but...he 
receives a disappointing note that he must enter another bid because 
John's ceiling happened to be 22.00 and since John already had that as 
his bid, Cecil can't win with the same bid since John was first.

While cecil is frantically trying to figure how to up his bid 5 bucks in 
10 seconds... HORATIO who knew the tendencies of humans to have 
territorial behavior had cleverly held his bid to the end.  
Unfortunately he didn't know that he could get this spatula at spatula 
city for much less and he had put 25.50 on cue to be dropped at 8 
seconds before the end of auction.  SAM though also unaware of those 
great deals at spatula city put down 26.00!  Sam's snipe, however, 
didn't land on ebay until 5 seconds before the end.

So because sam wasn't more than 1.00 over (the bidding increment) 
Horatio's previous amount, Horatio wins and Sam is left with a message 
telling him he must up his bid which is impossible of course in a few 
seconds.

-Bob


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