[Amps] RE: Snipers are the scourge of Ebay]

[Tony King]

There is a huge difference between shill bidding and proxy or snipe bidding.

The shill bid, which is strictly against Ebay rules, may be placed by 
someone working in concert with the seller or the seller himself under 
cover.  It's purpose is strictly to run the price up. THOSE are the true 
scourge of Ebay!

Proxy bidding is simply establishing how much you are willing to pay and 
placing that bid which will be run to that maximum by the computer at Ebay 
based on other bids.

Snipe bidding is a very good way to place bids on Ebay. Nothing wrong with 
them either. All it does is reduce the time that other bidders have to 
THINK about raising their bid before the auction ends.  Snipe bids are 
placed in the last seconds of an auction for that purpose only. They aren't 
out there to run your price up or cheat anyone, rather to try and win the 
auction by someone that is willing to pay the price. Snipe bids are always 
proxy bids too but submitted at the very end of the auction.

If you feel you have shill bidders on a particular auction, they should be 
reported to Ebay.  Personal experience is that they take such reports very 
seriously and WILL suspend a seller for participating in a shill. Don't 
hesitate to notice who the bidders are.  Usually the shill bidder will not 
win the auction but bids the price up for the seller.

73, Tony W4ZT

At 07:20 PM 10/20/2004, you wrote:
>On Wed, 20 Oct 2004 23:06:12 +0000, Arthur Moe wrote:
>
> >If I think that there is a shill in the
> >bidders all I have to do is not bid or bid at the last second so the 
> shill can
> >NOT up the bid.
>
>_________________________________________________________
>
>That would be true if the shill is bidding manually, but there is no
>reason for a shill to do so.  Ebay uses proxy bidding which works
>great for shills.  The shill places his high bid early and lets the
>rest of the bidders whale away.  The only way you could beat proxy
>bidding is to time your bid to arrive literally within the last
>fraction of a second, which is impossible to do given the latency of
>the internet.  Even if your bid arrives with a tenth of a second to
>spare, the proxy shill bid is already in ebay's computers.  You lose.
>
>--
>BT