OT: Ebay Shill Bidding

You can see a list with manual and auto biddings at the end of each auction. 'Culled out' sounds like 'bid to late' to me. So again: where is your proof?

Just take Ebay item 380234235466 for example. You'll see the automatic bids and manual bids have the same timestamp.

Why do they have to get their bid in between your bid and the close of the auction if they've entered a higher maximum bid ealier?

Sylvia.

Not true. You obviously don't understand the psychology of auctions. If you put the *same* bid in a week earlier you'll most often (there is junk where there is only one bidder) lose. People get hung up on buying that pretty and will bid far more than they would pay in a store, particularly at the end of the auction. This is the whole reason FOR auctions. Sniping breaks that impulse because they think they don't see the run-up and at lease one person thinks they've already won.

Bids are ALSO chronologically entered. That is regardless of any auto-bid engine. When the auction closes, any and ALL bidding stops, including any auto-bids that did not make it in by the auction close, and each bid is incremented individually, regardless of when you actually placed the bid. If your (MY) bid goes in at the last second, the computer does not get to make any further entries, including any auro-bids that were set up.

Get a clue.

And this last point is where you are totally wrong, and your whole argument falls apart. If that last sentence were true, I could bid $1000 at the start of the auction. If I were the only bidder, the price would stay at $1, say. Then you come along at the last second and bid $2, and win? You think you have cleverly discovered a secret flaw in the system that nobody else knows?

The optimum strategy for bidding on ebay is very simple and well known:

2) Bid this amount in the last few seconds. Close enought to the auction end so that a human does not have time to react to the bid, and be tempted to drive the price higher.

This is what a large minority of people do, if things did work as you think then there would be many, many cases like my example. It simply does not happen.

You are totally wasting your time with all your multiple "bid windows". You could have just simply put in the highest of your bids at the last second. Or used a program to do this for you.

True for all auctions.

Correct, though don't expect AlwaysWrong to understand. You see, he's

Yep, but do understand who you're talking to; one of Nymbecile's many sock puppets, all wrong, always.

You do not understand. In those last seconds there are MANY bidders, and there are MANY of them that make a single bid and there are many that place an auto bid. The computer begins toggling all those through a chronological seine based on server arrival time and as the close of bidding stops, so too does any processing of any bids currently being processed into the system sitting in the queue.

Last second bidding used to be the only way to get an item at a decent price.

If any two auto-bidders bid early in the game (auction), their bids will auto-increment up to the max that the top bidder of the two has set. That is why you do not see any bids by them early in the game EITHER. That drives up the last seconds bidding was starting price, so nobody enters auto bid figures early in an auction. Even a good auto-bidder will enter his bid in the last seconds.

NOW are you starting to get it?

At this point, I suspect Bart has so much emotionally invested in his view of how Ebay works that it will be completely impossible to convince him that he's wrong.

Sylvia.

You're hypothesising that the system is so overloaded near the end of a single auction that the bids that users think they've submitted before the deadline don't get received in time to count.

But Ebay is handling many auctions. It would be an unusual auction indeed where the last few seconds of a single auction represented a significant load.

But not so close to the end that there's a danger that their bid will be processed after the end due to system load. Nor is it necessary to do so, because it takes time for humans to react, and any computerised response to being overbid is just a pointless replication of Ebay's autobid mechanism, but at the other end of a network link.

Maybe you are, given that your defence of your position is shifting into less and less credible territory.

Sylvia.

He's *always* wrong. That's why everyone calls him AlwaysWrong. Well, except his mother. She calls him to dinner after a full day of playing in her hamper.

Methinks you are arguing a losing battle; the guy is totally clueless.

st

A common trick with deer and Bison is to make hamburger/sausage that is 50% beef to give it some fat.

Wild duck is a bit dry unless roasted along side a corn fed goose and basted with the goose fat.

What if the closing time is reset for 2 minutes more each time there is another higher bid?

In real world auctions, the comparison would be the going once, going twice... new high bid do I have a higher one? going once, going twice...

Sellers would actually benefit if the auction scrap gets extended, right?

That would place snipers and manual bidders on the same footing wouldn't it?

Real world auctions do not end at a fixed time as long as there are new bidders.

Would this fall apart if eBay did it?

They already are. I never cease to be amazed that some people believe otherwise.

I have probably won ~ 100 lots on ebay. The vast majority were by a single late-in-the-piece manually entered bid. (Those that were by use of a "sniping" service were due to my unavailability at auction closing time.) I NEVER place a bid earlier than 5 seconds before closing. Maybe that makes me a human sniper?

Anything a sniping service can do, an individual can do every bit as well.

They won't. They are there to collect fees, and don't give a rats about buyers OR sellers.

That do not change anything. Whether in the last few seconds or not, you seem to believe that manual bids have priority over automatically generated ones, so that later manual bids can still trump a higher previous one.

Even though the "auto" bids are sitting on their servers already, timestamped and waiting, your last-seconds bids take priority. You have absolutely no evidence for this behaviour, which goes against the whole rationale of the bidding process.

Yes, immediately.

If they bid early you see bids by them, up to a bit more than the lower of the two.

This is what I already told you was the optimum strategy, although I am now not quite sure what you think you mean by an "auto-bidder". All bids are "auto-bids", unless you bid exactly the amount shown.

I agree with you but this is besides the point. Don claims you can 'win' an auction on Ebay with a properly timed lower bid to fool the autobidder. That is not true.

I've been outbid for the last six in a row. I only succeeded in winning a defective one, wow the prices are high right now!

GOOD IDEA!

You are a goddamned retard and what amazes me is when you retarded twits think you know how a process works based on your pathetic, bent brained observations.