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e-bay is suspect


jeff f

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has any one else ever noticed when you are bidding on something from an e-bay store and you are winning that item with a very low bid that you almost allways seem to get outbid within the last hour by bidder 1 or bidder 2 up to bidder 6?

it all seems a bit sus to me, there is no way that these bidders 1 to 6 could possibly buy all of this stuff

i'm starting to think it's a scam by the e-bay store sellers to make sure they get what they want for the stuff.

i've been playing around on e-bay most of the afternoon hunting down things that have had bugger all bids on them, putting a bid on them and watching them,all of the items have been things that should have sold for a hell of a lot more than my winning bid i've been outbid on 8 items by bidder 1 and bidder 2 with exactly 1 hour to go.so i went for a search through a heap of the more expensive item of fishing gear and found that a huge percentage of them all had only one bid on them and it was...you guessed it

bidder 1 and bidder 2

very suspect

or am i getting paranoid

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Mate, for a lot of auctions they dont display the names anymore, just list them as "bidder1" "bidder2" etc until the auction is finished, then replace them with the actual bidders name. Used to be an item had to get over $250 for that to kick in, now it kicks in straight away.

What I find sus is the number bids that happen within 10 minutes that are 50c over your highest bid, when an item has been listed for days without interest. (if you bid again your straight back in the lead) Try and tell me the sellers are not "shill bidding".

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I'm known to be a sly bidder.

I watch items that i want till the last minute.

I repeatedly refresh my screen and time the turnover.

Add a few seconds for a bid confirmation and away you go.

I've scored stuff right at the last second.

I just bid the highest $ i'd pay for the item and usually get it for just over the highest bidder.

The best items are the ones that go unnoticed (usually because they have been posted in the wrong section).

Once, i almost scored a $0.99 Humminbird but i couldn't bid because i had too many bids on other items.

It went through untouched and resurfaced straight after.

Bids went over $600

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If an item I am interested in has a buy it now price I will put in a low initial bid to stop someone else buying it outright.

Otherwise I will only bid in the last minute and only of I think that the price is fair.Only problem is that you have to stay up some nights.

If someone had some programming expertise I dont think that it should be too hard to write a macro or something similar to put in a last minute bid.

I have been tempted to use auctionsnyper but I am too mean to pay for it.

A lot of people start bidding early and bid against each other and drive the price up and quite often the item goes for above new price.

Cheers

Ray

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i think you may be right there feral, of the auctions i lost every one of them had not had anymore than one bid or no bids at all in a week then i lost everyone of them by 50c with 1 hour to go

what struck me as really strange and got me thinking was it was 1 hour to go on all 8 of them and if i was the first bidder how come i was beaten by bidder 1

i think what you said about them not displaying the names anymore on auctions under 250 may just be to cover up them now using this scam on the cheaper stuff and they have allways done it on more expensive items.not too many of these e-bay tackle stores sell anything over 250, most of it is under 100

just had 2 items end they went 50c over my top bid with exactly 1 hour to go then not another bid on them in that final hour

both items from the same seller i was the first persom to bid on them yet i was beaten by bidder 1

that makes 10 for the day

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I'm sure someone has said this but i havent read all the responses

But yeh in an effort to produce anonymity with bidding, once you've placed a bid you get assigned an alias like "Bidder 1". It's not like someone has a username "Bidder 1" and is buying millions of things!

Joel ;)

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personally i don't really like the fact that our usernames are hidden, i think it makes it easier for people to bid on their own stuff and pushing up the price, don't know if I'm just paranoid but I just have a sneaky feeling some people are using it to their advantage.

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Ebay has an automatic bidding system. The bid that you enter is you're maximum bid. So that you get it for the cheapest price possible Ebay will only bid just over the previous bidders maximum bid.

So... If you put in a maximum bid of $10 and somebody puts in a $50 bid after you it wont go straight up to $50... It will go to $10.50 and stay there unless you put in a higher bid.

I also only ever bid at the last second, my advice is if you decide you want to pay up to $50 (for example) on something, put in a max bid of $51 just so you are a step above anybody else that bids 50. There are plenty of tricks and the best way is to keep bidding on cheap auctions, you will pick up some tricks.

Hope that makes sense. Good luck!

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adri4n wrote:

personally i don't really like the fact that our usernames are hidden, i think it makes it easier for people to bid on their own stuff and pushing up the price, don't know if I'm just paranoid but I just have a sneaky feeling some people are using it to their advantage.

The only problem adri4n is that for the seller to make an another accounts is easy as and there is no suspision.

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