I was interested in some dial calipers that "800 watt" sells on ebay, he
seems to put a couple up for auction every week. When the price on the
one I was bidding on got too high, I dropped out and instead bid on an
identical item that had been listed for several days at $13.99 with ZERO
bidders. With 2 days to go I put in an initial bid at $13.99 with a
maximum bid of $18. In less than 60 seconds after my bid was accepted I
was outbid! And my shill-o-meter started activating.

How could someone outbid me in a minute on an item that had been sitting
for days with no bids and had 2 days to go and there was another
identical item with no bids? Could this be anyone but the seller? If
there had been a starting bid by someone else obviously they would have
gotten an e-mail that i outbid them, but who gets notice that I entered
a starting bid? Can anyone tell me what is going on?

--
Free men own guns, slaves don't
www.geocities.com/CapitolHill/5357/

Now you know why I don't even look at E-Bay, LOL
Bugs

"Bugs" wrote in message
oups.com...
Now you know why I don't even look at E-Bay, LOL
Bugs


Amen. **** ebay.

It has turned us into cannibals. Remember when people used to just *give*
**** away??
Soon, I'm just gonna offer the Wife $25 for sex, and pay her for my meals...
Goodgawd...
Not that she's worth only $25, but ahm hopin for a little break, you know,
for old time's sake'n'****....
----------------------------
Mr. P.V.'d
formerly Droll Troll

"Proctologically Violated©®" wrote in message
...

Amen. **** ebay.

It has turned us into cannibals. Remember when people used to just *give*
**** away??
Soon, I'm just gonna offer the Wife $25 for sex, and pay her for my
meals...
Goodgawd...
Not that she's worth only $25, but ahm hopin for a little break, you know,
for old time's sake'n'****....


Im thinking if I ever get *really* desparate, I might try auctioning off one
of my testicles.

--

SVL

"Nick Hull" wrote in message
...
I was interested in some dial calipers that "800 watt" sells on ebay, he
seems to put a couple up for auction every week. When the price on the
one I was bidding on got too high, I dropped out and instead bid on an
identical item that had been listed for several days at $13.99 with ZERO
bidders. With 2 days to go I put in an initial bid at $13.99 with a
maximum bid of $18. In less than 60 seconds after my bid was accepted I
was outbid! And my shill-o-meter started activating.

How could someone outbid me in a minute on an item that had been sitting
for days with no bids and had 2 days to go and there was another
identical item with no bids? Could this be anyone but the seller? If
there had been a starting bid by someone else obviously they would have
gotten an e-mail that i outbid them, but who gets notice that I entered
a starting bid? Can anyone tell me what is going on?

--
Free men own guns, slaves don't
www.geocities.com/CapitolHill/5357/

Just bid what you're willing to pay and forget it. If "he" loses sales to
himself maybe he'll quit.
Randy

The only way to buy on Ebay is to figure your max bid and snipe the item in
the last 30 seconds. Any other way it seems that you loose.


"Nick Hull" wrote in message
...
I was interested in some dial calipers that "800 watt" sells on ebay, he
seems to put a couple up for auction every week. When the price on the
one I was bidding on got too high, I dropped out and instead bid on an
identical item that had been listed for several days at $13.99 with ZERO
bidders. With 2 days to go I put in an initial bid at $13.99 with a
maximum bid of $18. In less than 60 seconds after my bid was accepted I
was outbid! And my shill-o-meter started activating.

How could someone outbid me in a minute on an item that had been sitting
for days with no bids and had 2 days to go and there was another
identical item with no bids? Could this be anyone but the seller? If
there had been a starting bid by someone else obviously they would have
gotten an e-mail that i outbid them, but who gets notice that I entered
a starting bid? Can anyone tell me what is going on?

--
Free men own guns, slaves don't
www.geocities.com/CapitolHill/5357/

Thats how I bid but I sell many items and see people bid in the first day.
Nick has a valid point in how do they know the minute he bids.
"Tom Gardner" wrote in message
. ..
The only way to buy on Ebay is to figure your max bid and snipe the item
in the last 30 seconds. Any other way it seems that you loose.


"Nick Hull" wrote in message
...
I was interested in some dial calipers that "800 watt" sells on ebay, he
seems to put a couple up for auction every week. When the price on the
one I was bidding on got too high, I dropped out and instead bid on an
identical item that had been listed for several days at $13.99 with ZERO
bidders. With 2 days to go I put in an initial bid at $13.99 with a
maximum bid of $18. In less than 60 seconds after my bid was accepted I
was outbid! And my shill-o-meter started activating.

How could someone outbid me in a minute on an item that had been sitting
for days with no bids and had 2 days to go and there was another
identical item with no bids? Could this be anyone but the seller? If
there had been a starting bid by someone else obviously they would have
gotten an e-mail that i outbid them, but who gets notice that I entered
a starting bid? Can anyone tell me what is going on?

--
Free men own guns, slaves don't
www.geocities.com/CapitolHill/5357/

In article ,
"Waynemak" wrote:

Thats how I bid but I sell many items and see people bid in the first day.
Nick has a valid point in how do they know the minute he bids.

See my other post in this thread for a "full explanation". The short
form: Detecting that an opening bid has been placed on an auction is
kiddie-play.

--
Don Bruder - - New Email policy in effect as of Feb. 21, 2004.
Short form: I'm trashing EVERY E-mail that doesn't contain a password in the
subject unless it comes from a "whitelisted" (pre-approved by me) address.
See http://www.sonic.net/~dakidd/main/contact.html for full details.

"Nick Hull" wrote in message
...


Can anyone tell me what is going on?

Why bid on something with so many days left? It just invites crap like this.
I buy on EBay once in a while, but bid in the last few seconds, or if the
price is right the buy it now option. I waits until the last seconds of the
auction, and bid the max I am willing to pay.
Greg

In article ,
"Greg O" wrote:

"Nick Hull" wrote in message
...


Can anyone tell me what is going on?

Why bid on something with so many days left? It just invites crap like this.
I buy on EBay once in a while, but bid in the last few seconds, or if the
price is right the buy it now option. I waits until the last seconds of the
auction, and bid the max I am willing to pay.
Greg



Sounds like a good idea, but I'm on dialup and have never been able to
even submit a bid in the last 5 minutes.

--
Free men own guns, slaves don't
www.geocities.com/CapitolHill/5357/

Sounds like a good idea, but I'm on dialup and have never been able to
even submit a bid in the last 5 minutes.


www.hammersnipe.com

yourname wrote:

Sounds like a good idea, but I'm on dialup and have never been able to
even submit a bid in the last 5 minutes.


www.hammersnipe.com

I checked this site out for grins and immediately realized you're a
damned fool if you give out your password to ANY SITE, PERSON, SNIPE
OUTFIT, OR OTHERWISE!!!
NO WAY!!

Thx Anyway...

Bill

"Nick Hull" wrote in message
...
I was interested in some dial calipers that "800 watt" sells on ebay, he
seems to put a couple up for auction every week. When the price on the
one I was bidding on got too high, I dropped out and instead bid on an
identical item that had been listed for several days at $13.99 with ZERO
bidders. With 2 days to go I put in an initial bid at $13.99 with a
maximum bid of $18. In less than 60 seconds after my bid was accepted I
was outbid! And my shill-o-meter started activating.

How could someone outbid me in a minute on an item that had been sitting
for days with no bids and had 2 days to go and there was another
identical item with no bids? Could this be anyone but the seller? If
there had been a starting bid by someone else obviously they would have
gotten an e-mail that i outbid them, but who gets notice that I entered
a starting bid? Can anyone tell me what is going on?


Not sure for certain. I would contact ebay about this, and they have the
means to watch this person. Maybe it was just a fluke.

I use bidnapper, a sniping service. It wins me a lot of things. I just
have to put the price I am willing to pay, and lots of times, I get it for
less. Sometimes I don't win.

Bidding before an auction is over is a sure way to drive up the price,
whoever the other bidder is.

Steve

In article ,
Nick Hull wrote:

I was interested in some dial calipers that "800 watt" sells on ebay, he
seems to put a couple up for auction every week. When the price on the
one I was bidding on got too high, I dropped out and instead bid on an
identical item that had been listed for several days at $13.99 with ZERO
bidders. With 2 days to go I put in an initial bid at $13.99 with a
maximum bid of $18. In less than 60 seconds after my bid was accepted I
was outbid! And my shill-o-meter started activating.

How could someone outbid me in a minute on an item that had been sitting
for days with no bids and had 2 days to go and there was another
identical item with no bids? Could this be anyone but the seller? If
there had been a starting bid by someone else obviously they would have
gotten an e-mail that i outbid them, but who gets notice that I entered
a starting bid? Can anyone tell me what is going on?

Now you know why so many people won't even bother to put a bid on
anything that isn't ending within the next minute or less. Why in god's
name are you bidding with two days left?!? It just draws attention to an
otherwise ignored item, triggering a bidding frenzy. (and/or
auto-shills, as you found out)

As far as "what's going on", here's a skeleton outline for a program
that could do it:

LoopTop:
Load page containing auction
Find/extract "current bid" value (thoughtfully provided in a
predictable place/format by eBay)
if ((CurrentBid Price_I_Want) && (CurrentBid TooMuch))
{
PlaceHigherBid(CurrentPrice+BidIncrement);
}
Sleep for X seconds
Goto LoopTop


As can be seen, it's pretty trivial. I imagine I could get this turned
into a full blown "auto-shiller" in about an hour if I had any reason to
do so.

From that point, it's just "bells and whistles" - Something like this
could get EXTREMELY complex and powerful without very much effort at
all.

Gimme enough motivation, and I'd likely be able to turn it into
something fully configurable (How much is "TooMuch", what price am I
trying to get, what bid increments should be used, a whole laundry-list
of auctions to watch/shill in, logging who bids, and so on) that would
stomp most "real" bidders into the dirt.

And the REAL beauty? "Oops, my shill-bot went crazy, bid too high, and
won the item?" No problem. Just reject the high bid for some reason
(Feedback too low as specified in auction description, no response from
high bidder, whatever...), and "second chance" it to the second-highest
bidder for what they bid. Basically, you can't lose.

Watching two of these working against each other on the same auction
might produce some amusing results...

--
Don Bruder - - New Email policy in effect as of Feb. 21, 2004.
Short form: I'm trashing EVERY E-mail that doesn't contain a password in the
subject unless it comes from a "whitelisted" (pre-approved by me) address.
See http://www.sonic.net/~dakidd/main/contact.html for full details.

Nick Hull wrote:
With 2 days to go I put in an initial bid at $13.99 with a
maximum bid of $18. In less than 60 seconds after my bid was
accepted I
was outbid! And my shill-o-meter started activating.

If you were outbid, they're not a very good shiller, are they? The goal
of a shiller is for YOU to win at an inflated price.

Look at the time stamps in the bid history; are you sure that your bid
was made before theirs?

Nick Hull wrote:

(...)
And my shill-o-meter started activating.

(...)
How could someone outbid me in a minute on an item that had been sitting
for days with no bids and had 2 days to go and there was another
identical item with no bids?

(...)

Happened to me, too.

I won the auctions at my price just by doing *nothing*.

In all three cases, the auction had been won by someone else.
I did not increase my bid over my initial amount.

After the close of the auctions, the sellers emailed me with a "second chance"
notification.

In two cases, I purchased at my bid price. In one case, I no longer
wanted the item and did not take advantage of my "second chance".

There must be a lot of folks that back out of a sale within minutes of
winning their auction..... -- (Mildly sarcastic comment, meant humorously.)

--Winston

"Winston" wrote in message
...
Nick Hull wrote:

(...)
And my shill-o-meter started activating.

(...)
How could someone outbid me in a minute on an item that had been sitting
for days with no bids and had 2 days to go and there was another
identical item with no bids?

(...)

Happened to me, too.

I won the auctions at my price just by doing *nothing*.

In all three cases, the auction had been won by someone else.
I did not increase my bid over my initial amount.

After the close of the auctions, the sellers emailed me with a "second
chance"
notification.

In two cases, I purchased at my bid price. In one case, I no longer
wanted the item and did not take advantage of my "second chance".

There must be a lot of folks that back out of a sale within minutes of
winning their auction..... -- (Mildly sarcastic comment, meant
humorously.)

--Winston

sometimes a seller will legitimately have multiple items. that is one of the
few instances where there is any advantage in not sniping the auction.

Winston wrote in
:

Nick Hull wrote:

(...)
And my shill-o-meter started activating.

(...)
How could someone outbid me in a minute on an item that had been
sitting for days with no bids and had 2 days to go and there was
another identical item with no bids?

(...)

Happened to me, too.

I won the auctions at my price just by doing *nothing*.

In all three cases, the auction had been won by someone else.
I did not increase my bid over my initial amount.

After the close of the auctions, the sellers emailed me with a "second
chance" notification.

In two cases, I purchased at my bid price. In one case, I no longer
wanted the item and did not take advantage of my "second chance".

There must be a lot of folks that back out of a sale within minutes of
winning their auction..... -- (Mildly sarcastic comment, meant
humorously.)

I've had this happen several times. I won't buy the item. The seller will
re-list it. If your patient, you can always find another one anyways.

Dan

"Dan Murphy" wrote in message
.. .
Winston wrote in
:

After the close of the auctions, the sellers emailed me with a "second
chance" notification.

In two cases, I purchased at my bid price. In one case, I no longer
wanted the item and did not take advantage of my "second chance".

There must be a lot of folks that back out of a sale within minutes of
winning their auction..... -- (Mildly sarcastic comment, meant
humorously.)

I've had this happen several times. I won't buy the item. The seller will
re-list it. If your patient, you can always find another one anyways.


Ebay emails out the "second chance offer"....the seller just has to activate
it after the item has sold...its the sellers option whether to do this or
not.

Where a seller has quite a few of the same item to sell but doesn't wish to
"flood the market", using this feature often allows him to make one or
several more sales without having to go through the bother of re-listing or
waiting another week for his next auction to close.

--

SVL

Nick Hull wrote in news:nhull-3B5645.09273219022005
@corp.supernews.com:

I was interested in some dial calipers that "800 watt" sells on ebay, he
seems to put a couple up for auction every week. When the price on the
one I was bidding on got too high, I dropped out and instead bid on an
identical item that had been listed for several days at $13.99 with ZERO
bidders. With 2 days to go I put in an initial bid at $13.99 with a
maximum bid of $18. In less than 60 seconds after my bid was accepted I
was outbid! And my shill-o-meter started activating.

How could someone outbid me in a minute on an item that had been sitting
for days with no bids and had 2 days to go and there was another
identical item with no bids? Could this be anyone but the seller? If
there had been a starting bid by someone else obviously they would have
gotten an e-mail that i outbid them, but who gets notice that I entered
a starting bid? Can anyone tell me what is going on?


Screw him. Buy from one of the tool suppliers. It's not like Chinese
calipers are hard to find. Odds are that they are all made in the same
place. Try these:

http://tinyurl.com/3lgut I've bought from them with no problems.

http://tinyurl.com/5dhdj

http://tinyurl.com/6o9o4

Dan

In article ,
Dan Murphy wrote:

Nick Hull wrote in news:nhull-3B5645.09273219022005
@corp.supernews.com:

I was interested in some dial calipers that "800 watt" sells on ebay, he
seems to put a couple up for auction every week. When the price on the
one I was bidding on got too high, I dropped out and instead bid on an
identical item that had been listed for several days at $13.99 with ZERO
bidders. With 2 days to go I put in an initial bid at $13.99 with a
maximum bid of $18. In less than 60 seconds after my bid was accepted I
was outbid! And my shill-o-meter started activating.

How could someone outbid me in a minute on an item that had been sitting
for days with no bids and had 2 days to go and there was another
identical item with no bids? Could this be anyone but the seller? If
there had been a starting bid by someone else obviously they would have
gotten an e-mail that i outbid them, but who gets notice that I entered
a starting bid? Can anyone tell me what is going on?


Screw him. Buy from one of the tool suppliers. It's not like Chinese
calipers are hard to find. Odds are that they are all made in the same
place. Try these:

http://tinyurl.com/3lgut I've bought from them with no problems.

http://tinyurl.com/5dhdj

http://tinyurl.com/6o9o4

Dan


Unfortunately those are all 6" and I'm looking for a 12"

--
Free men own guns, slaves don't
www.geocities.com/CapitolHill/5357/

Nick Hull wrote in
:



Unfortunately those are all 6" and I'm looking for a 12"


There are plenty of those too. The first seller I listed has them up to
40", Digital, dial and vernier.
http://tinyurl.com/5gfeh

Dan

I have read all these posts on this subject and my 2 cents is place the bid
for the value you are willing to pay and walk away. You will win or not.
This takes personal discipline. Amateurs snipe. It makes no difference if
you are the ultimate consumer or a reseller. You must establish its value to
YOU. Bid it and leave. You will never, ever bid too much. You will lose a
lot of them. If you regret an auction loss, then you didn't bid enough in
the first place. If somebody bid more, then it had more value to him than
you, so what. Anything else is entertainment and for that, I have no
comment.
Steve

"Nick Hull" wrote in message
...
I was interested in some dial calipers that "800 watt" sells on ebay, he
seems to put a couple up for auction every week. When the price on the
one I was bidding on got too high, I dropped out and instead bid on an
identical item that had been listed for several days at $13.99 with ZERO
bidders. With 2 days to go I put in an initial bid at $13.99 with a
maximum bid of $18. In less than 60 seconds after my bid was accepted I
was outbid! And my shill-o-meter started activating.

How could someone outbid me in a minute on an item that had been sitting
for days with no bids and had 2 days to go and there was another
identical item with no bids? Could this be anyone but the seller? If
there had been a starting bid by someone else obviously they would have
gotten an e-mail that i outbid them, but who gets notice that I entered
a starting bid? Can anyone tell me what is going on?

--
Free men own guns, slaves don't
www.geocities.com/CapitolHill/5357/

I'll toss in my 2 cents here also

Of course it was a shill, and I'll bet dollars to donuts the guy does it all
the time. I would be quite easy for eBay to spot a regular seller doing this
and trash him, but they don't.. it just raises the price and hence their
profits.

As to the 'auto-snipe' web sites. These would be even eayser for eBay to
spot and stop, but again for the same reason they don't.

If you are going to bid I'm with Steve, pick your price, bid closley to the
end of the auction so you aren't bidding against yourself (several hours
before the end is fine)... and if you get sniped, shrug your shoulders and
move on... FWIW I've had good luck e-mailing people who sell a lot and just
buying outside of eBay.

--.- Dave

On Sun, 20 Feb 2005 18:16:08 GMT, the renowned "Dave August"
wrote:

I'll toss in my 2 cents here also

Of course it was a shill, and I'll bet dollars to donuts the guy does it all
the time. I would be quite easy for eBay to spot a regular seller doing this
and trash him, but they don't.. it just raises the price and hence their
profits.

As to the 'auto-snipe' web sites. These would be even eayser for eBay to
spot and stop, but again for the same reason they don't.

If you are going to bid I'm with Steve, pick your price, bid closley to the
end of the auction so you aren't bidding against yourself (several hours
before the end is fine)... and if you get sniped, shrug your shoulders and
move on... FWIW I've had good luck e-mailing people who sell a lot and just
buying outside of eBay.

--.- Dave

If you're suspicious it's a shill, do a search and see what other
auctions that ID has been bidding on.


Best regards,
Spehro Pefhany
--
"it's the network..." "The Journey is the reward"
Info for manufacturers: http://www.trexon.com
Embedded software/hardware/analog Info for designers: http://www.speff.com