What do you guys call it

[1930]

If I am not mistaken when an e-bay seller bids?? on his own stuff just to jack up the price. Explain to me how this works. Is there any way I can find out who the next lower bidder was and what there bid was. I think I may have been ripped off on some books

[OilyRascal]

Normally I can view the item bids (who bid) unless it's a "private" auction - not sure if that's only before it has closed or before & after.

I understand basic concept to rip you off is seller having two IDs:  ID #1 will list the item, and ID #2 will bid on it to raise it.  Both ID's being "owned" by the seller.  The hope is that ID #3 (your ID) will compete with ID #2 and falsely drive price of auction up.

[Papaw]

No one but the seller can see who the bidders are or were.
When a seller bids on his own sale it is against Ebay policy, so some sellers may have another account to "shill" bid with.

[rusty]

Called shilling the auction, same effect as when, in a physical auction, there is a fellow in the crowd who works for the house who sticks his hand up every once in the while acting like a bidder to drive up the prices. Typical sign on ebay are auctions that have 2 bidders, and that get relisted instead of sold, because the seller screwed up and was stuck with his own high bid....

Unfortunatly, when ebay changed the bidders listing to hide the identity of bidders, they aggrivated this problem by hiding the seller as bidder also...

ebay customer service , can, however, see who bids......

[eddie hudson]

Is there any way I can find out who the next lower bidder was and what there bid was.

It won't tell you the name of the lower bidder, but if you just click on the "bids", it will tell you the value of all the bids, both during and after the auction.

[Lewill2]

As Eddie said it will show the bids with phony bidder IDs. You can look at the sellers other completed auctions and see if the same under bidders drove the price up. If so maybe file a claim with ebay??

[1930]

Shill bidding, thats it. Still having a hard time getting it. What happend if I bid one fifty and they bid 151, dosent that mean he has to pay the e-bay fees himself and wouldnt that be kinda counterproductive.

Item in question is.......280835184748.........hard to believe that someone else wanted these as badly as I did. Cant seem to figure out anything from the bidding history becauase I cant seem to figure out what other items this e***g ( which I understand is a fictitious I.D. ) has bid on.

I am wondering if what happened is that the last 10 seconds the seller ( whom I have bought many items from in the past and have never had any problems ) or someone he knows made a really high bid  just to bump up the price, is this shill bidding?

Prob. just being paranoid I guess

[Papaw]

It could be if it was intentional, but counterproductive in the last seconds unless one of the other bidders is using a "snipe" program. Another possibility is that the seller doesn't want the item to sell at a low price, so he or his shill outbids at the last second to finish the auction.

[OilyRascal]

dosent that mean he has to pay the e-bay fees himself and wouldnt that be kinda counterproductive.

It is possible for both the buyer and seller to agree to cancel the transaction after it has closed, resulting in no fees to either.

[scottg]

Shill bidding goes back as far as auctions of any kind. Cavemen were probably shilling over the price of a wooly mammoth in the ice age.

  So you set your price that you are willing to pay, in your mind.
 Never go above that. Or at least not much.
Hardly anything is unique.
Truly unique things usually sell cheap anyway, because nobody knows what to ask/pay for it.
(Lord knows I know this syndrome :(  )   

  Don't let yourself get too zealous about any factory made item.  However scarce.
  Another will come along.
    yours Scott
 
 

[1930]

Shill bidding goes back as far as auctions of any kind. Cavemen were probably shilling over the price of a wooly mammoth in the ice age.

  So you set your price that you are willing to pay, in your mind.
 Never go above that. Or at least not much.
Hardly anything is unique.
Truly unique things usually sell cheap anyway, because nobody knows what to ask/pay for it.
(Lord knows I know this syndrome :(  )   

  Don't let yourself get too zealous about any factory made item.  However scarce.
  Another will come along.
    yours Scott
 
 

I set my price for nearly double that because chances are another will not come along in my lifetime as is the case with much of this material.

Quote..........Truly unique things usually sell cheap anyway, because nobody knows what to ask/pay for it. ............this is eactly why I am questioning why the bidding went as high as it did, I just dont see anyone else paying as much as I did for these books.

Thanks for the info everyone, I would like to see what sort of items this next lower bidder has bid on in the past but I will assume that its not possible to do that

[eddie hudson]

I just looked at the auction. There were only 3 bids. 2 of them were snipers with less tan 10 seconds left. The winner bid with 9 seconds left and the other sniper bid with 6 left. It appears both play by the same rules. The loser bid $135.88 and the winner bid more than $138.38. I don't see any foul play, only 2 snipers shooting each other. It happens all the time when 2 people want something bad.

[1930]

Bang Bang :)

Thanks Eddie