Quote:
Originally Posted by pmax
A shill bid is entered after seeing the buyer's hand.
Wanna play cards sometime ?
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If you can't detect a shill bid, you shouldn't be playing in the auction market - eBay or anywhere else. Ebay makes it easy to detect shill bids.
And people who take other bids on cars seriously are completely out of their depth on eBay.
I will repeat for the slow learners: eBay bids on cars are not binding. "Winning" bidders are less than 50% likely to follow through. Shill bidders, by definition, do not follow through.
If your bid is 3rd highest behind a non-performing winner and a shill, guess what? You're likely to be contacted by the seller(!)
Worst case scenario: you find the auction after random bidders have taken the price higher than the car's value to you. So you cannot bid. You send a message to the seller that 'in case the winning bidder(s) don't follow through, you stand ready to buy the car at $XXX.' Simple. And it works.
A really hard-headed seller will relist, but it then becomes increasingly easy to spot any shills.
Lather, rinse repeat.
If you 'pay too much' for any car, you have no one to blame but yourself.