Latest eBay seller BS

[William Donzelli]

> Yes.  The difference is that when everyone is in the same room, a
> veteran bidder can spot signs, recognize familiar faces, etc.  This is
> not as easy with a virtual auction.

Another veteran bidder can also bid very discretely - and I am not
talking about the winks and noserubs that work in televisionland.
Still another bidder can get a friend to do the bidding (completely
legal and ethical) using his original paddle. Yet another bidder can
move around the room between bids, and get lost in the crowd.

In a real live auction with serious players, it can be very difficult
to see who you may be up against.

The one thing that I will praise EBay for (and being how much I hate
Ebay, that is saying something) - at least the auctioneer is
impartial. Just a few weeks ago I was at a radio estate auction where
the auctioneer missed a number of my bids, and banged the gavel a bit
too quickly for his buddies benefit.

> When there are 3-4 bidders with 0-1 feedback that jump in and nudge
> the price up in several increments to exhaust the max bid of the
> present winner, that's not the same as someone with dozens of hundreds
> of feedback _on similar items_ coming in with one bid that blows past
> any competition.

Lets be honest - how often does that really happen? We have all seen
it once or twice, or maybe a bunch of times if you live on Ebay, but
what percentage of the auctions are really like that?

This is the "overblown" aspect I mentioned - for every auction you
describe with these potential shills, there are  *thousands* that are
normal.

One more thing - experienced shills do not register a day before their
target auctions, but hang around for weeks before. Inexperienced
shills will register right before an auction - and they are the ones
that get caught.

--
Will