[Amps] eBay

[Gary Smith]

To Will M. and other's on the might fine list:

What you are describing has happened to me on ebay.  You make your bid a few hours or days in advance and nothing happens.  

Then, maybe minutes before the bidding closes there is a huge scurry of bidding activity for the item. Have heard (ubsubsatnsitated) of sellers who have "friends" (who needs friends like these) acting as you suspect, as shills to goose the bid up to where you are paying the price THEY want.

Fer instance: have watched a local online seller who puts items up for bid with a reserve that is quite near his "buy it now" price.

Tracked a couple of his items, seen bids as close as $50.00 or so to a "buy it now price" of $2,000.00 item that did not match or beat the reserve price.

Yeah, there are shills out there. Just got to watch for them and be wary.

 73,
Gary... wa6fgi
  ----- Original Message ----- 
  From: Will Matney 
  To: amps at contesting.com 
  Sent: Wednesday, May 04, 2005 5:03 AM
  Subject: Re: [Amps] eBay


  John,

  What got me was the seller had 1 bid by this bidder when I bid last night. Well, about 10-15 minutes, I believe it was, before the end, he bid and run it up just under my max. bid. So, I went and raised the max. to 18.99. I looked at 1 minute before it's over and he ran it up to 18.00. It was like well, I made a max bid and they knew what it was, so ran it up each time before the end of auction. Thing is, I bought off this guy before with no problems so like you say, maybe coincidence.

  Best,

  Will

  *********** REPLY SEPARATOR  ***********

  On 5/4/05 at 7:54 AM John D'Ausilio wrote:

  >The seller dosn't know the amount of a proxy bid, only the actual
  >current bid. It is a bit weird the way that bidding went, but I think
  >it's coincidence ..
  >
  >de John/W1RT
  >
  >On 5/4/05, Will Matney <craxd1 at ezwv.com> wrote:
  >> This is way off topic but I need a quick answer on something. Does the
  >seller have access to the amount one has bid? Something was fishy on a
  >book I bought like the one who bid against me twice stopped both times
  >right under my maximum bid. He ran the bids up 11 times stopping just
  >under twice. I'm wondering if it was a schill who knew the amount I bid?
  >> 
  >>
  >http://cgi.ebay.com/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?ViewItem&category=378&item=4546163575&rd=1
  >> 
  >> Best,
  >> 
  >> Will
  >> 
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