Someone explain this: eBay weirdo

  • Thread starter Thread starter A1A2
  • Start date Start date
A1A2

A1A2

New member
http://cgi6.ebay.com/aw-cgi/eBayISAPI.dll?ViewBids&item=2568598734

This moron, gaal9708, outbidded herself 5 times in a roll and pushed the auction from $500 to $800 within 15mins, and then she gets outbidded at the end by $10. I say she is either truely retarded or just a spy from the seller to increase the bidding. The latter makes more sense. Do you have any explaination of this??

Al
 
yeap

thats definitely a fluffer the initial $43 jump would be enough but the next few jumps are when the FCC should get involved
 
the biggest tip-off that something aint right is the 0 feedback rating...oh, and the bidding war they were in with themselves.
 
what's FCC??Does eBay actually take action against bs like this?

maskedman72, yeah, the 0 rating is a pretty obvious sign that the seller just went out and opened a new creditcard account or something and registered at eBay to outbid himself....this is pretty low.


Al
 
My guess is that the seller has 2 accounts and drove the price up. I've seen this before and ebay has to much to keep up with to police it all.
 
It just means that she had her max bid set at a high amount, and every time someone bid something, her max bid bumped theirs off.

IE: she has her max bid set at $800, and the auction is at $600. Someone bids $650, it bumps hers up to above $650. It doesn't show the bids in between, because they were never actually registered as bids. The person that bids first will get the bid, even if it's the same amount.

Hope that made sense.

travis
 
A1A2 said:
what's FCC??Does eBay actually take action against bs like this?
Click to expand...

FCC- Federal Communications Commission??? I don't think they'd have anything to do with it, Distorted.

Ebay will, and does regularly look into people who are reported for using shill bidders (which is what it clearly looks like here). They will potentially revoke the account of the seller, but usually only after a warning.

It wouldn't take much effort to report it, and at least the seller might get warned to not pull that bullshit anymore.

With only a feedback of 13 and 11 of those from purchases, I wouldn't trust the seller too much to begin with.
 
ignition said:
It just means that she had her max bid set at a high amount, and every time someone bid something, her max bid bumped theirs off.

IE: she has her max bid set at $800, and the auction is at $600. Someone bids $650, it bumps hers up to above $650. It doesn't show the bids in between, because they were never actually registered as bids. The person that bids first will get the bid, even if it's the same amount.

Hope that made sense.

travis
Click to expand...

i thought about that, too. But the thing is, there was no reserve and no competitor when she bidded.

-Al
 
I don't see anything wrong with this particular auction.

Look at the bid times.
Although the bid price was shown at around $420 Hyokki put his maximum bid of $810 at 16.07. Since previous highest bidder 73o5389 had $500 maximum bid, at this point the system showed something like $510 as the highest bid price, and Hyokki became the highest bidder.
Then Gaal stepped in and within 2 minutes put 6 bids starting from $530, but still failed to outbid Hyokki by only $10.

So, the bottom line is: Hyokki put his winning bid before Gaal.
 
Last edited:
I agree with Webstop. I see this all the time when I view a bids history. The person wasn't outbidding themselves. They were trying to beat the previous persons max bid. Pretty standard. I don't think anything illegal is happening.
 
But then there's the Zero feedback...and the fact that she bid earlier at a bigger increment than most that early in the auction.

Trogdor weighs the evidence...
 
webstop said:
I don't see anything wrong with this particular auction.

Look at the bid times.
Although the bid price was shown at around $420 Hyokki put his maximum bid of $810 at 16.07. Since previous highest bidder 73o5389 had $500 maximum bid, at this point the system showed something like $510 as the highest bid price, and Hyokki became the highest bidder.
Then Gaal stepped in and within 2 minutes put 6 bids starting from $530, but still failed to outbid Hyokki by only $10.

So, the bottom line is: Hyokki put his winning bid before Gaal.
Click to expand...

that makes more sense now. I thought the bidding history was in chronological order, appearantly it's in bidding amount order. Hyokki really could have saved some money if he just bidded at the end, so gaal wouldn't be raising the bidding.

Al
 
that person probably just put in 800 in the first place.

from then on, anytime people bid under her mark (800), ebay automatically puts her bid in the first place.

so:
Starting bid = 599
Eric bids 800
Current bid = 600 (by eric)
Dan bids 650
Current bid = 651 (by eric)
Dan bids 720
Current bid = 721 (by eric)

then lastly
Dan bids 801
Current bid = 801 (by DAN)


get it?
 
I think that does look fishy. If she was auto bidding then it wouldn't keep going in increments and there are no other bids between her prices. The only way it makes sense is if the reserve was higher than her bids and she was trying to get right up to the reserve.

Reserves are lame. They should just start the auction at the minimum price.
 
TexRoadkill said:
I think that does look fishy. If she was auto bidding then it wouldn't keep going in increments and there are no other bids between her prices. The only way it makes sense is if the reserve was higher than her bids and she was trying to get right up to the reserve.
Click to expand...

No, Tex, that is not how it works.
Gaal could have bid one increment at a time or raise the price by any amount at once. To outbid Hyokki Gaal didn't have to place a bid for each increment, he/she could have simply put $820 and be done with it. Ebay system raises a price by one increment only when someone becomes a new highest bidder.
For example, someone sells a pen for $1. Bidding increment is $1.
- You place a first bid at $20 - system shows the price of $1.
- I bid $2, the system tell me "Sorry", and the price is now $3. You are still the highest bidder.
- I bid $4, the system says "Get lost", the price is now $5, you are still the highest bidder.
- I bid $15, still no cigar, price is $16, and you are still the winner.
- Now I get pissed and bid $100. I become the highest bidder, and the price is shown as $21. From then on the system will autobid on my behalf until someone outbids my $100.

Disclaimer: There is no such pen that I would pay a hundred for. :)
 
But who's to say that Gaal wasn't an ally trying to jack this guy to his maximum bid and milk the most money out of the auction?
 
trogdor said:
But who's to say that Gaal wasn't an ally trying to jack this guy to his maximum bid and milk the most money out of the auction?
Click to expand...

well, the seller was trying to sell the exact same item not too long ago, and his starting was set to something like $700 and no one even bidded. So, I really doubt he would send gaal to set her highest bidding to be $800. It's just too risky, I think.

Al
 
webstop said:
No, Tex, that is not how it works.
Gaal could have bid one increment at a time or raise the price by any amount at once. To outbid Hyokki Gaal didn't have to place a bid for each increment, he/she could have simply put $820 and be done with it. Ebay system raises a price by one increment only when someone becomes a new highest bidder.
For example, someone sells a pen for $1. Bidding increment is $1.
- You place a first bid at $20 - system shows the price of $1.
- I bid $2, the system tell me "Sorry", and the price is now $3. You are still the highest bidder.
- I bid $4, the system says "Get lost", the price is now $5, you are still the highest bidder.
- I bid $15, still no cigar, price is $16, and you are still the winner.
- Now I get pissed and bid $100. I become the highest bidder, and the price is shown as $21. From then on the system will autobid on my behalf until someone outbids my $100.

Disclaimer: There is no such pen that I would pay a hundred for. :)
Click to expand...

I know that's how it looks to the user but wouldn't the bid history reflect each of those losing bids that caused the proxy bid to rise?
 
Just look at the bidding history on other items. It really looks legit to me.

The systems IS showing the bids that caused the proxy to rise. That's why the Gaal person kept bidding. Because everytime they placed a bid, the message said they had been outbid. After every bid, I bet the person was like, hmm, do I want to keep going? Yes, I do. Bid again, you've been outbid, damn. Do I want to keep going? etc. etc.

Until that Gaal hit $800 and was like, screw this, I can't afford it. At which point Hyokki won with the next proxy bid. The system just doesn't show the individual proxy bids. Just the actual user entered bids.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top