[sdiy] ebay internal shill bidding?

[Bob Weigel]

On 1/5/2011 4:31 AM, David Bulog wrote:
> the best auction system Ive seen is Trade Me (its bigger than Ebay in NZ) ----to avoid bid snipe --the auctions will auto extend for 2 minutes if any bids are placed in the two minute window---its possible for an auction to run 15 minutes over the end if genuine bidders compete against each other
> www.trademe.co.nz
>
>
> On 6/01/2011, at 12:09 AM, Bob Weigel wrote:
>
>    
>> 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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>
>
>    
"Best" has a lot of definitions I guess.  lol.  The reason we've never 
heard of this site, is that many people..including myself..wouldn't go 
there because the policy pretty much deletes the possibility of finding 
a good deal there.    The reason ebay is HUGE is because of the auction 
format largely.

Sellers can hedge their own bet as to how the auction will be by 
choosing whether they want to start at .99 or whether they want to go 
the other way and do a fixed price....or a narrow window with a buy it 
now as I often do on items that I'm not sure how they'll fare.

But anyway the buyer amidst this sea of options can look for items where 
1) they're charging too much to ship and others have lost interest 2) 
they are too dumb to represent the item well... hehe..or 3) they decide 
to start something LOW that has a kind of 'unknown value'.

That's the real great thing about ebay to me.  FOR EXAMPLE back before 
people knew what a Crumar Composer was (absolutely no information on the 
net about them before my page save a photo of it I think on the site 
that showed all the rare crumar products) I saw on in Denver.  Nobody 
was bidding. He started it at 120 something maybe and I sniped it for 
125 or something.  There were others watching.  HAD I been doing this on 
the site above, somebody would have gone 'wow...that guy thinks it's 
worth something..he probably knows something that I don't know..I'm 
going to outbid him to make sure I get it....

and on and on and I wind up paying 293.60 for a broken machine..plus or 
minus 10%. lol. I know how humanity works.  I've just got too much 
experience in this under my belt..watching auctions of various types and 
gathering data.  I'm like a walking encyclopedia of human behavior in 
these kinds of instances now.

So..see given the choice, I'll take ebay's auction rules any day over 
this other site.  Conventional auctions are set up to sell stuff for 
more than it's worth.  Problem is...some things just don't have 
perceived worth in the first place and it's hard to get people bidding 
on something that doesn't have perceived worth.  THE MARVEL OF EBAY...is 
that they attracted a MASS volume of potential bidders...so that even 
obscure items wind up having bids!

And they did this..by not operating like a conventional auction.  If 
ebay was like that other site..I'd have never bothered with it probably 
as a buyer.  If there are no buyers..then there's no reason to sell 
there either unless you have something that the few people there are 
just going to rave over.  Follow?

-- 
Check out sounddoctorin.com for songs, a studio tour, help
repairing old synthesizers and parts or thought provoking
articles that could help make your eternity!