Ebay late comers ruining auctions... my pet peeve

[techweenie]

Originally Posted by SilberUrS6

Sarcasm noted, but I think that the line should read like this:

If you 'pay too much' for any car, you have no one to blame but yourself.

Because it's about as true as anything you'll ever read on the internet. Or anywhere else.

Ha.

The notion that some third party 'makes you pay too much' just makes my head explode. This society is so full of "victims."

[zakthor]

Originally Posted by pmax

A shill bid is entered after seeing the buyer's hand.

Wanna play cards sometime ?

That's not really the same - I'm not losing if I'm outbid. You lose at an auction by paying more than your comfortable price.

In this case I've laid down the price I'm comfortable with (hopefully at the last minute.) If he overbids then he loses the sale and if he underbids he is just enforcing his reserve.

I guess the problem with a shill comes if one were to approach ebay as a game, put a low bid in early and try to respond to your opponents in real time. Maybe similar to playing some deep stone/paper/scissors tactics against team random.

Please can you help me understand: from a buyer's perspective what the difference is between a shill bid and a hidden reserve?

[mattC2993]

I wouldn't bid against a telephone bidder in a live auction either.....just like getting into a bidding war with a shill bidder. Without shill bidders we would see what the real action was. It might actually bring prices down in the long run.

[pmax]

Originally Posted by SilberUrS6

No, a shill bid is not like seeing the buyer's hand. I don't go all-in when I get my first cards, ever. I wait and see what the rest of the table is doing along with judging the strength of my hand. I'll throw down a low raise to build the pot, maybe more than one. It's part of the strategy.

Originally Posted by zakthor

Please can you help me understand: from a buyer's perspective what the difference is between a shill bid and a hidden reserve?

You read more into what I said than intended

Leaving the fact that shill bidding is illegal aside, I was just making the point that a hidden reserve is entered prior to the auction starting whereas a shill bid is entered after seeing the buyer's offers which is where I attempted to use my card analogy.

The only side which benefits from shill bidding is the seller. It protects the seller from misjudging demand and setting a reserve too low.

Originally Posted by techweenie

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.

Noted.

[The Donster]

Whether or not eBay makes it easy to detect shill bids is irrelevant. I suspect some are harder to detect than others. Your confidence in your own abilities regarding this is noted. I too would like to play cards with you sometime.
Shill bidding is different than a hidden reserve for some obvious reasons, and there are good reasons why one constitutes fraud and the other doesn't.

Originally Posted by The Donster

Shill bidding cheats buyers by pushing them toward the higher end of what they are willing to pay. Let's say there's a car for sale and I'm willing to pay a max of $30K. The reserve price is $27K. The market value of the car is therefore $27-30K. There are two other bidders, a legit bidder and a shill. The other legit bidder is willing to pay a max. of $28K, so I should get the car for anything over $28K. However the shill comes in and bids $29K, forcing me to pay another $1000 for the car, without exceeding my max bid. I have just been cheated out of $1000.

I think I've already illustrated pretty clearly a scenario where a bidder is cheated out of $1000 without paying more than he's willing to. The point his he has paid more than he would have in a fair auction. If you can't understand that, you probably shouldn't be selling things on eBay.

[mattC2993]

The idea of buying a car at auction is to get it at less than full market value. That concept is totally lost these days. You're taking a risk. You can't get an inspection done, put it on a hoist or drive it. Why would anybody pay a full or inflated price?

[K9Torro]

Just sold a race car on EBay, car sold four times in four weeks, first three guys had the following reasons in the following order, did not have enough money, wife said no, did not have enough money. Both bidder guy number one and three offered me less for the car because that was all they had, on the forth week listing on eBay the buyer paid the deposit within minutes an the balance in a few days, just waiting on the car to be picked up now.

Good news is it brought more the last time it sold by 2k.

Todd

[speeder]

Originally Posted by mattC2993

The idea of buying a car at auction is to get it at less than full market value. That concept is totally lost these days. You're taking a risk. You can't get an inspection done, put it on a hoist or drive it. Why would anybody pay a full or inflated price?

Then don't bid more than what you consider a good deal or "less than full market value". That way you cannot lose or pay more than you want.

WTF is wrong with you people that you don't understand the simplest tenets of free market capitalism?

[speeder]

Originally Posted by The Donster

You guys seem to have strange ideas regarding what "market price" is.
Market price is not a single fixed number. It's a range within which both buyer and seller can agree on a price. On ebay, prices are either agreed on by direct negotiation or by auction. An auction by definition does not have a fixed price.
Shill bidding cheats buyers by pushing them toward the higher end of what they are willing to pay. Let's say there's a car for sale and I'm willing to pay a max of $30K. The reserve price is $27K. The market value of the car is therefore $27-30K. There are two other bidders, a legit bidder and a shill. The other legit bidder is willing to pay a max. of $28K, so I should get the car for anything over $28K. However the shill comes in and bids $29K, forcing me to pay another $1000 for the car, without exceeding my max bid. I have just been cheated out of $1000, and don't even realize it.
This is how shill bidding works, and this is why it's illegal. It's also why shill bidding is rampant on ebay- it's extremely easy to have one of your friends place shill bids or else place them yourself using a different account and IP address. It's almost impossible to detect.

Originally Posted by The Donster

Whether or not eBay makes it easy to detect shill bids is irrelevant. I suspect some are harder to detect than others. Your confidence in your own abilities regarding this is noted. I too would like to play cards with you sometime.
Shill bidding is different than a hidden reserve for some obvious reasons, and there are good reasons why one constitutes fraud and the other doesn't.



I think I've already illustrated pretty clearly a scenario where a bidder is cheated out of $1000 without paying more than he's willing to. The point his he has paid more than he would have in a fair auction. If you can't understand that, you probably shouldn't be selling things on eBay.

You can say these things as many times as you want but you stay just as wrong. The guy decided that he didn't want to sell his car for less than $28k. He took a risk with his $28k shill bid in that possibly no one else thought it was more than that and it remains unsold this go-round. But lo and behold, there is a guy named Donster who thinks it's worth $30k! Of course Mr. Donster would like to get it for less, (who the fk wouldn't), but the guy doesn't want to sell it for less.

No one is holding a gun to your head forcing you to buy his car for $30k. You have the freedom to buy it for that, not buy it for that, buy someone else's car, etc...

And since you also do not understand free markets, the value of your hypothetical car is not "between $27 and $30k", you silly putz. The seller can ask anything he wants for it, say $50k. You can only be willing to pay $20k because you hate the color. Neither figure has jack schit to do with the value of the car. Do you understand this or do I need to go on?

Jesus...

[The Donster]

Thanks speeder. A sure sign of a lost argument is the introduction of an ad hominem attack.

I'm not wrong. Your name calling or simple claim that I'm wrong doesn't make it so.

I have hundreds of years of established legal precedent to back me up. You have only your own uninformed opinion and an apparent lack of personal ethics. The illegality of shill bidding dates back to at least Roman times. Shill bidding remains illegal in most US and all Canadian and British jurisdictions. As I stated earlier, people can and have gone to jail for shill bidding on eBay.

The key to understanding the nature of the fraud that takes place is the misrepresentation perpetrated by entering phony bids in order to obtain a higher price. I really find it hard to believe you don't understand that it's both ethically and legally wrong to pretend to be someone else and/or give false information in order to gain money from another person.

[speeder]

Don, I apologies for calling you a silly putz. I got carried away there making my point.

As for my personal ethics, I don't shill bid my own ebay auctions. Even on a recent occasion when I'm sure that it could have netted me thousands more for a car I sold with only one bidder. But I'm also not bothered one iota by other people using shills or having ridiculous reserves for that matter. I bid what I'm willing to pay for something and if I get it for that price, fine. If I get it for less, (usual scenario), all the better. But I would have paid my max bid amount and been perfectly happy.

The only regrets I ever have on ebay is when I lose an auction and then decide after the fact that I should have bid higher. Or when I forget to bid at all, (frequently), and some nice item goes for peanuts. That happens a lot.

I like eBay for the most part.

[The Donster]

Apology accepted.

I still don't get your point. It's wrong (and illegal) to lie to people for monetary gain. And entering phony bids under assumed identities is lying.

Simple, really.

[pmax]

Originally Posted by The Donster

Apology accepted.

I still don't get your point. It's wrong (and illegal) to lie to people for monetary gain. And entering phony bids under assumed identities is lying.

Simple, really.

Let me try clarify their point for you .... no babies were harmed by shill bidding, so it's ok.

It is fraud, misrepresentation , what's supposed to be a no reserve auction turns out to be somethng else.

[SilberUrS6]

Originally Posted by The Donster

Apology accepted.

I still don't get your point. It's wrong (and illegal) to lie to people for monetary gain. And entering phony bids under assumed identities is lying.

Simple, really.

Your point is valid, but irrelevant.

You cannot control what others do. You can only control your own actions. Which is why you pay only as much as you're willing to pay, REGARDLESS of what somebody might decide to do. Absolutely nobody is arguing that shill bidding is not illegal or unethical - any suggestion of that type would be a strawman argument. What folks are saying is that buyers have full control over what they pay.

And here is how you can completely avoid shill bidding on eBay:

Don't use eBay. Fully within your control, and nobody is tempted to break that particular law. Sounds pretty darn simple to me.

[SilberUrS6]

Originally Posted by pmax

Let me try clarify their point for you .... no babies were harmed by shill bidding, so it's ok.

^^^Here is the strawman that I was talking about.

[pmax]

Originally Posted by SilberUrS6

And here is how you can completely avoid shill bidding on eBay:

Don't use eBay. Fully within your control, and nobody is tempted to break that particular law. Sounds pretty darn simple to me.

That's just besides the point.

We are discussing buying and selling on ebay. That is the whole premise of this thread !

[mattC2993]

Originally Posted by speeder

Then don't bid more than what you consider a good deal or "less than full market value". That way you cannot lose or pay more than you want.

WTF is wrong with you people that you don't understand the simplest tenets of free market capitalism?

You are confused. You think there is something wrong with people who have a different opinion than you and then make assumptions about what they know and don't know.

ps I would never buy a car in an auction format for all of the reasons I have stated. Lots of people will be underwater for doing so.

[techweenie]

Originally Posted by The Donster

Thanks speeder. A sure sign of a lost argument is the introduction of an ad hominem attack.

ROFL. This from the guy who called me 'dense' twice.

That's rich.

Sorry, anyone who bids 'more than he wants to pay' is his own worst enemy.

[techweenie]

Here's an auction I was playing in that closed Tuesday.



I believed the seller wanted to nudge me toward a threshold price acceptable to him. So for two days I got the 'outbid' banner on my watch list and of course the eBay notification. But I looked at the history of the higher bidder and 50% of his bidding had been with this particular seller. So my thought is that it was a shill bid. And a shill bid is not a real bid. So I didn't change my bid. I had been informed by the seller that this car (with a $30K Buy-it-now) had a reserve of $24K. At the last minute, a new bidder shows up and throws $24K (or more) at it and poof - it's sold.

Or, is it? Per the scenarios outlined in several posts above, the winning bidder has a long list of "outs," and may or may not follow through. So the seller may operate through eBay and send a second chance offer - but I don't know if you can do that with the second under-bidder. The first under-bidder, I believe, is a shill. So will this come back to me? (I talked with the seller, met with him and inspected the car). I bid what I would pay. If he comes back to me and says I can have it for $24K, that's no different than the deal I had 3 days before auction close. And I won't do it.

I have lost ZERO sleep over not winning this auction. I know what the car needs and what it costs to register it, etc. The story may be over, or not.

The key here is not to get emotionally involved in a.) the car or b.) the auction process. There's a reason they serve free booze to well heeled bidders at live auctions. Stay sober my friends.

[The Donster]

Originally Posted by techweenie

Sorry, anyone who bids 'more than he wants to pay' is his own worst enemy.

Once again you completely miss the point. It's not that you pay more than you are willing to, it's that because of fraud/misrepresentation you pay more than you ought to.

So, next time you go to the grocery store and buy a loaf of bread that costs $4.00, are you going to pay the cashier $5.00 because that's what you're willing to pay? I don't think so.