| Author | Message | ||
     Firebolt020283 |
why is it tht every time i find some thing that is sitting at a decent price some random person has to go and drive the price up to were the particular part or item is not even worth buying? It seems to happen to me alot. I will have something i need or want that i am bidding on and i will put my bid in on it for a resonable price for the item and some duche always has to rase the price almost to the point of it being more expensive than if you bought it new. | ||
| Rah7777777 |
That would be b/c too many people are too lazy to look around. They find it on eBay and think "thats it!" and they will bid there little hearts out to make sure its theirs!!! | ||
| Ferris_von_bueller |
There is a lot of shill bidding on eBay and they do nothing about it. | ||
| Firebolt020283 |
what is shill bidding? | ||
| Ferris_von_bueller |
From Wikipedia... Shills, or "potted plants", are sometimes employed in auctions. Driving prices up with phony bids, they seek to provoke a bidding war among other participants. Often they are told by the seller precisely how high to bid, as the seller actually pays the price (to himself, of course) if the item does not sell, losing only the auction fees. Shilling has a substantially higher rate of occurrence in online auctions, where any user with multiple accounts (and IP addresses) can shill without aid of participants. Many online auction sites employ sophisticated (and usually secret) methods to detect collusion, and a number of people have been sent to jail for online auction fraud in the past decade Shill bidding may be a common practice on eBay. In his book FAKE: Forgery, Lies, & eBay, Kenneth Walton describes how he and his cohorts placed shill bids on hundreds of eBay auctions over the course of a year. While many sellers consider shill bidding a harmless act, some believe that it may violate federal or state laws. Walton and his associates were charged and convicted of fraud by the United States Attorney for their eBay shill bidding. Some eBay sellers frown on the practice and a few spend considerable time trying to "out" those among them that use shill bidders as well as working to increase public knowledge of how to protect themselves from said shilling. Their tactics can easily turn up many "false positives" - for instance, they believe that auctions having many bidders with very low (less than 20 or so) and/or no feedback could be suspect. | ||
| Firebolt020283 |
well that sucks | ||
| Tom_b |
I have bought a lot of stuff from ebay. when you have no local dealer to deal with and no other parts source, what are you gonna do? When i want something, i bid high at the last minute and sometimes i win, some i don't. It is just what are you willing to pay. That it is why it is an auction. I have paid new prices for hard to find parts. Not just buell parts. when i need i need am am willing to pay as are a lot of other people. what is "reasonable" to you may not be for others. Try finding a nice seat for a 74 gt 750 suzuki, or a set of mufflers for an fj 1200 yamaha, or a set of carbs for a gt 500 suzuki in good shape. any part for an RE5 rotary suzuki. then you will be willing to pay whatever when they come up for sale. By the way I have looked around these aren't easy bikes to find parts for | ||
| Seanp |
Speaking of ebay, what's up with calling it "winning"? You didn't win crap, except the right to pay the most money for an item. I don't "win" when I go to Walmart, or Best Buy, or Borders. Gee, look at the milk I won at Publix! Maybe I should go to the dealer and then tell my wife I won a new 1125R... | ||
| Grancuda |
Why is it that so many people whine about loosing on ebay. All I hear is people complaining about shilll bidding, get over it, if the person is having someone else bid it up then that is thier reserve and they just want you to think that someone else is bidding when it is really just thier way of having a reserve. Here is how I do it, I search the most recent items put on ebay then if there is something I need I just watch it and decide what it is worth to me then I will wait till the last 20 seconds and put in the maximum I want to pay for it and hopefully I am the high bidder. If not, oh well. Normally I don't pay more than 1/2 the original price for aftermarket bits and 1/4 for original Buell parts. You know why you are not getting a "deal" on Buell parts, because they are scarse. | ||
| Court |
I put in my bid. If I get it great, if I don't it almost seems there is another one. Never look back. | ||
| Andrejs2112 |
Someone outbidding another on ebay? That's the craziest thing I've ever heard. I would report that to ebay. | ||
| Firebolt32 |
Some people do it just to screw with people. I use ebay all the time. I'm not going to  , but Tom_b  (Message edited by Firebolt32 on April 23, 2008) | ||
| Ferris_von_bueller |
Shill bidding wastes my time which is why I dont like it. I have better things to do with my time then bid against the seller. Why play games? It's basically a way to deceive the uninformed, which is why it's important to do your homework on a product before bidding because, yes, I, too, have seen things sell for more than I could buy them outright somewhere else. | ||
| Xl1200r |
I pretty much never bid on anything on ebay until the last 15 seconds or so. Bidding any earlier is just asking for trouble. Put the item on your watch list and just wait it out. | ||
| Buellinachinashop |
I'm pretty good about knowing the price of parts/accessories before I bid. I laugh when people post the full retail price of stuff on Ebay plus shipping. I can get 10% off that retail at my local dealer. There's a flood of neck gaiters on EBAY now I see. I bid 10.00 but lost to a guy who paid 25.00! | ||
| Firebolt020283 |
well I think i was just mad that it has happened to me twice in the past few days but oh well they are the the dump people who over paid for stuff on a positive note i did get a fairly good deal on my frame I bought this past week. I usually just look for buy it now stuff that way i dont have to fight any one for it and get my hopes up at the last minute. | ||
| Reepicheep |
I have about 7 "winning" bids outstanding now, just put them in this morning. I put in as much as I am willing to pay. I'll find out if I won them when the email shows up stating that the auction is over. Unless the seller (5 of the 7 are the same guy) is willing to combine shipping... I have an email out to him. If so, I'll go bump up my bids a bit to reflect my lower costs. I expect to actually "win" maybe 2 of the 7, and maybe not even those. | ||
| Limitedx1 |
Im with reepicheep. put the amount that the part is worth to you and watch the item until the end. if somebody outbids you then you know they paid too much for it. you can tell the shill bid items because they get posted again the day after they end, lol. im one of the few people who think ebay is great. lots of hard to find buell stuff on there, but lots of buell fans willing to pay more than me thats all. im still waiting for a works or penske to come on there again! plus any of my parts that dont sell on badweb sure do sell on ebay | ||
| Not_purple_s2 |
I've been looking for a good used Select seat but I have yet to find a good deal on Ebay. The last one I saw was used, decent condition, and sold for $140 or so with $50 s&h. You can buy a brand new for $200 at the dealer! | ||
| Just_ziptab |
I bid early ........ a buck at a time(or what ever min bid is)till I am high bidder. This has been as many as 12 bids. Then I put in one more bid for double the minimum...and let it ride. Anybody watching thinks I'm a cheap scape and won't go any more or any higher than necessary. They put a minimum bid in at the last minute and..... I win a lot of times and still for cheap. Doesn't always work....but it's fun. If I lose, there will be more later on. Patience is the key and to know what the item is worth else were or online someplace. | ||
| Loki |
First rule of thumb for ebay, Bid only as much as an item is worth to you. Also do your homework. Read the sellers feedback, look at the bidding pattern. KNOW that you might be bidding against a sniping program. Or someone with a lot of extra time on their hands to do the sniping in person. | ||
| Strato9r |
I usually set a max price, stick to it, and if I get it, I get it. If not, oh well, it was more than I wanted to spend, period. I just wait for the next time, try again, and most times I get what I want for what I'm willing to pay, eventually. It IS kind of funny when a bunch of bidders go nuts on some part and end up paying more than retail, but it sure as hell is annoying when you know damn well that someone is tossing out some ludicrous bid, and if it's the winning one, the part mysteriously ends up being re-listed a short time later........ | ||
| Jayvee |
I check out what's on sale on ebay A LOT. What I hate is when something shows up for the first time in a a couple years, I bid more than it might have cost new, because it's now rare. Then, IF I get it, at a high price, other sellers decide to cash in and a flock of the same darn thing shows up over the next month, until the winning bids are back to half retail. It's happened to me more than once. | ||
| Buellgirlie |
shill bidding is illegal, actively hunted and shut down. there are many layers of algorithms that are checking you, your addresses, your banks, your IP, any circular relationships, etc. in order to stop shill bidding. ebay does not tolerate shill bidding and it should be reported. having someone ELSE (not the seller or someone on behalf of the seller) bid against you is just free markets at work. D | ||
| Buellgirlie |
bid whats its worth to you and walk away. if you win for less or at that, great! if you lose, you didnt actually value it to be that much. see, it all works out. D | ||
| Xcephasx |
maybe e-bay would be better if you only got one bid, and they didnt show the results until the auction was over. whoever was willing to pay the most for the item would get it. that would eliminate shilling & sniping. | ||
| Kyrocket |
I have to agree with Court and Buellgirlie and all those that have said bid once and walk away. Isn't that what the proxy bidding is for anyway? I figure what I'd pay for it including shipping, bid accordingly and pretty much forget about it until I get the e-mail confirming a win or loss. There have been times that I absolutely want something and will go back after I get the "you've been outbid" notice but that's the exception to the rule. | ||
| Kyrocket |
Just got outbid by a quarter in the last five minutes. You're right...a pain. Win some...Lose some. | ||
| Slaughter |
Yeah - if you want whatever it is - put in the amount and let it be proxy bid up to your limit. Sure, there is a psychological factor in not bidding til later in order to (hopefully) prevent others from believing there is interest - I have at times sat and watched and sniped. Won a few, lost a few. When I was a kid, I'd go to State Fair in Wisconsin with my Grandpa and family. I sat in a livestock auction with him and he started bidding on a cow. Asked him why he was doing it - since he was selling down his herd a bit before his son bought him out. He told me that it was a friend's cow and he was trying to help him get more money for it. Worked. He knew what he was doing. I learned a little. | ||
| Jackbequick |
Bidding once and walking away to let the proxy system manage the rest of it is an OK way to do it. But it does leave a "target" there for others to ping on. Some people just can't stand the fact that there is a proxy of unknown value there and they start chipping away at it and continue as long as it is in their frame of "reasonable" or "I'm willing to pay that". So what you get is steady price escalation no matter how you look at it. I'm of the school where I never bid on anything (except Buy It Nows) until the closing seconds. And then, I decide how much I am willing to spend and bid that amount, letting a robot submit it 3 seconds before closing. If I don't get the item it is because it was worth more to someone else and that is fair enough. What I really like about the unattended last second bidding is that I don't have to remember to be there for it, don't have to worry about typing errors, and I get email notification if the item exceeds my intended bid before my bid submission time. I can re-visit and revise my intended bid if I want. I bought some of the things I used for the over the winter upgrades on my motorcycle on eBay. I save one third to one half over the retail prices I would have paid for good stuff, brand name or OEM parts. My V-Twin Mfg. CV-40 rebuild kit turned out to be *absolute junk* though. Wrong parts for the stated model and inferior quality gaskets and O-rings too. Never again on V-Twin's stuff! Jack |
