Ebay question. . .

[obiwanjacoby]

So I'm bidding on an item.

 

Dude comes in an outbids me.

 

I look to see who the competition is and. . .the bidder's ID is private. #WTF#

 

But mine isn't! It's not a private auction! Furthermore, while the guy I'm bidding against doesn't have a name, his rating is over 1000-5000.

 

So how do I know for sure that the seller isn't shilling? Or that the lister isn't the front for the shill?

 

-PJ

[pesatyel]

http://pages.ebay.com/help/sell/private.html

 

Doesn't make sense to me either and the page is...lacking.

[gscbr]

shill bidders generally are trying to raise your bid, not actually outbid you. you don't make any money if you win your own auction. and if you are just trying to keep from selling your own item, and want to pay the sale price fee to do so, well, more power to you. personally, I would just prefer to cancel the auction myself if I didn't want to sell.

[obiwanjacoby]

Here's a message I got, and I decided to share for everyone else's benefit.

 

bidders in high priced auctions were becoming targets for internet scum from eastern europe, asia, africa and some other places so ebay went to private feedback after the bidding reached 200.00. the down side is it is more difficult for the participants to uncover shilling.

 

See, this whole time I'd been using Buy It Now on Ebay up until recently.

 

Hard to keep track of all these changes when you're not on there all the time. @grumpy@

 

-PJ