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FYI for you fellow Ebay shoppers out there


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Ebay has made it easier to for the bad seller to shill bid. After an auction reaches 200.00, all bidder ID's are changed to "Bidder 1, Bidder 2, Bidder 3" This enables the seller to shill bid by making it much more difficult to spot.

Sniping is a good way to avoid this situation, if it is something you have to have. Buy from sellers you know and trust.

some required reading

http://www.lorien1973.com/ebay-and-shill-bidding/

http://www.ebaymotorssucks.com/index1.htm

http://www.auctionbytes.com/cab/abn/y06/m05/i31/s01

http://www.ukauctionhelp.co.uk/shill.php

http://www.theregister.co.uk/2005/02/24/ebay_shill_lawsuit/

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Protecting themselves you mean? I watched an item I owned MISB get bid up through the roof. I contacted the person who lost and sold them the item for far more than it typically went for in a transaction entirely outside of eBay. eBay got no revenue from that sell at all and it was only because of eBay that I was able to do it. This new system would have made it impossible for me to arrange that sale and thus I would have had to put the item up for auction and eBay would have made the fees.

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I don't understand why they even block the names. If you are not currently involved in a transaction with someone, they won't let you send a message to that person anymore. I'm looking at some green lasers to stick on a rifle and I wanted to ask a buyer exactly what he thought, but ebay refuses to let me message the guy.

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I used to get lots of stuff by asking the winner of an auction if he wanted the "robot plane" that came with his gi-joe lot he won :rolleyes: . That or the misc "armor" bits in a wheeled warriors auction, or the little planes in a battletech mini auction, etc. Now I can't do this? :( . I'm not gonna spend 100+ on a lot of transformer debris I don't need but I will happily offer the winner $5 for the sdf-1 arm mixed in with the parts he won. He saves money on his winning bid by selling stuff he doesn't want and I get stuff without having to buy a ton of crap I don't need.

I am surprised ebay doesn't have a simplified private auction feature that lets people do transactions via ebay without having to make an auction, etc. That way I could buy something from a newbie mw member using paypal, pay ebay .50 for the transaction, and receive ebay feedback for me and the seller plus paypal protection. Wait... then people could sell drugs via paypal and drugs are bad... m'kay. :lol:

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