Is This A Shill?

[Bill Gunshannon]

On 05/02/2018 05:10 AM, Gordon Henderson via cctalk wrote:
> On Tue, 1 May 2018, Hagstrom, Paul via cctalk wrote:
>
>>> On May 1, 2018, at 6:06 PM, Bill Gunshannon via cctalk 
>>> <cctalk at classiccmp.org> wrote:
>>>
>>> Personally, I find all of this hilarious.  ebay has been shady for 
>>> as long
>>>
>>> as I have watched it.  I gave up seriously bidding on "auctions" 
>>> years ago.
>>>
>>> Seems every time I bid and ended out the top bidder it would stay that
>>>
>>> way till the auction ended and then suddenly someone beat me by a
>>>
>>> dollar.
>>
>> That's just the way eBay works.  You'll win anyway if your bid is 
>> higher than the other person's snipe.  eBay auto-bids only whatever 
>> it takes to beat you, so one increment higher.  You'll notice that if 
>> you bid $1000 on something with a $10 opening bid, eBay displays this 
>> as a bid of $10, and the time runs out with no other bids, you pay 
>> $10.  And if someone else bids $20, they lose to your new 
>> automatically placed bid of $21.
>>
>> I don't think there's any advantage to not sniping, since bidding 
>> calls attention to a thing and does encourage people to bid it up 
>> even if your top snipe bid would beat them.  But this is just 
>> basically how the eBay game is played.  I used to snipe by hand, now 
>> I usually let a bot do it. It bids in the last couple of seconds, so 
>> it can look just like what you describe. Sniping wouldn't work if 
>> auctions didn't have a hard end time, but since they do, that's how 
>> it works and they state it all quite clearly.  Maybe sometime 
>> something shady happens though I've yet to see any convincing 
>> evidence of it myself (only people claiming it happens all the time, 
>> all the time), but sniping is not itself shady.
>
> This.
>
> I use a program called esniper - sometimes I win, sometimes I lose, 
> but when I lose thats OK, because the item sold for more than I was 
> willing to pay.
>
> Recently however I was unable to use esniper (ebay changed something 
> that broke it) so put in my max. bid the old fashioned way. I was 
> winning for a day or so.
>
> Then something very odd happened: very close to the end of the auction 
> a brand new bidder came in and bid 100x the going rate - that 
> immediately maxed out my bid - however the seller more or less 
> immediately cancelled their bid. They waited 10 minutes then did it 
> again, and again the seller cancelled their bid. My guess is that they 
> wanted to see if I'd upped my bid. Then a sniper came in and bid more 
> than me at the last minute. I did feel cheated there though and will 
> never bid on items from that seller again because I felt they somehow 
> had a hand in this bidding but I can't prove it, but then again, it's 
> a sellers market and ebay don't care because they get money from the 
> sale anyway.
>
> Due to the speed the bid was cancelled I'm more or less convinced it 
> was the seller doing this and not the winning bidder, however it did 
> let the winner see my max. bid so may have influenced them. Who knows.
>
> So snipe, "by hand" or with a program and if everyone does it, then it 
> becomes the same as blind auction then it becomes fair again.
>
> Until the seller withdraws the auction 5 minutes before the end 
> because "the listing was incorrect", and re-lists it, trying to get more.
>

I don't like real auctions.  I think it is a stupid way to sell things.  
I certainly wouldn't
agree that this further abomination of the concept is of an value 
whatsoever.  If
one has something to sell one should offer it at the price they think it 
is worth.  If
someone agrees you have a deal.  If no one agrees the seller needs to 
decided if
it is worth lowering the price.  That's business.  Can you imagine of 
all business was
done the eBay way?  Your house? Your car?  Your food?  Scary....

bill