Is This A Shill?

[dwight]

I never take second chance bids, even on items I really want. In most cases, the seller put the item up again. I do not bid on that item again.

I bid once at the beginning to show interest but with a minimal bid. I bid as late as I feel practical with my real bid.

Also, be careful, second chance bids have to go through ebay, not directly to the seller.

I've had shill bids on a $9 item. The reason I know is because the bid went to $6 over my bid and then a third bid I didn't get to see ( it seems ebay removes withdrawn bids ).

Two weeks later the seller put the same item up for sale.

Early in my ebay days, I bid higher on an item than I expected anyone to bid. The item was then bid up by another bidder. I was informed by the seller that I could buy the item at my high bid as a second chance. I came back with a compromise amount. They told me that I was required to pay my high bid. So, I decided to look at other auctions by this seller ( this was went you could still do some research into things). I found that there were two different ( in name only ) bidders that bid on almost every item that seller had. This seller sold everything except kitchen sinks. I turned them into ebay but ebay told me that my method of detecting shill bidders was not as good as their computer monitoring method. Ha! Then why was this going on for such a long time? One can not do that level of checking anymore.

Dwight



________________________________
From: cctalk <cctalk-bounces at classiccmp.org> on behalf of Noel Chiappa via cctalk <cctalk at classiccmp.org>
Sent: Tuesday, May 1, 2018 10:28:48 AM
To: cctalk at classiccmp.org
Cc: jnc at mercury.lcs.mit.edu
Subject: Re: Is This A Shill?

    > From: Ali

    > the real winning price. Basically on second chance he is offering you
    > your highest bid price (the one that lost out to the original bad
    > bidder). What it should really be is if that guy didn't exist what
    > would have been the winning bid?

Good point. That _is_ a bad sign. The seller might not have thought it
through (they do after all only have a feedback of 50, so they don't have
that much experience), and maybe they just made a mistake. But it might be a
scammer/shill who used a high shill bid to find out your top.

(And maybe the 'only use eBait comms' thing was just a double bank shot to
take in people like me...'he says that so he must be honest').

        Noel