EBay's Unfair Auction Practices

eBay has in place a method whereby a bidder can put in the highest
amount of money he/she wants to bid for an item. eBay's system makes
increment bids as soon as someone else bids against it, up to the
amount the bidder has put in. It has ALWAYS worked that way, and does
so for you, the buyer's benefit.
It works like this. You see a photo. You bid on it. The current bid is
$5. you decide you'll pay up to $25. You put in $25. The bid is held
in the system, but you will win the photo for $5.25 if no one else
bids. That is the beauty of the auction. You can win it cheap - if no
one else bids. IF someone (like you did) bids - then eBay will toss in
your extra money.
Sorry, but you were not scammed, you just don't understand the eBay
auction process. Every eBay auction works precisely like that one.
Which is why bidders needs to try to bid earlier - to see if there is
someone they are bidding against.
Bidding at the end will likely scortch you.
Hope this helps.
You can read their rules - the bidding always works that way,
otherwise, you'd have to sit and bid all day and night for 7days while
an auction is taking place.

LOL I must say I have to agree with postings below in regards to
entering your max. bid and letting the chips fall where they may.
Aution sniping is common practice...even you were trying to snipe an
auction :) Are you aware there is many software tools made
specifically for aution sniping? The software works much more
effectively than a human sitting there in the last seconds.

If you want a fair shake....place your max. bid. If you want to try
to come into auctions to snipe and that is your tactic then purchase
sniper software LOL

Auto-bidding is VERY legal.

Auto-bidding allows you to enter in how much you want to bid now, and
how much you're willing to go up to.

There's NOTHING illegal about that.


The "illegal" stuff you're talking about is when the seller (or a
friend) bids on his/her own stuff to drive the price up.


That has *nothing* to do with auto-bidding.

The auction was fair. You were legally outbid.


Now you're just slandering the seller because you didn't win.


Frankly I do hope you write the BBB about it... because it will create
proof that you're slandering the seller and then he/she can use it
against you. Yeah, slander is illegal too! :D

I think eBay's mechanism is great. It allows each person to decide
the absolute maximum they are willing to pay. And, yet, it allows you
to get an item cheaper. As long as no one else is willing to pay more
than you.

If you put in the maximum you're willing to pay, and you get outbid,
it's because the bid was too high for you.

You should never "bid again" when you get outbid because, frankly,
this means that you're paying more than you wanted to. This is how
people end up spending more than they wanted, in the excitement of an
auction.

The problem is that you didn't understand that when you enter a bid,
it's the maximum you're willing to pay, not an exact bid. You didn't
realize that you could actually end up paying less (if the winner)
than your bid.

This has long been how eBay works. There are many books on this very
subject. In other words: the news media and the BBB will not find
this shocking because, well, it's well known. And eBay doesn't hide
it.

How do you get a fair shake? Simply put in the maximum you're willing
to pay. And then, no matter what happens, don't increase your bid.
Just let the chips fall as they need to.

This is EBay 101 stuff and how max bidding works. The OP should spend
a few minutes learning how ebay works. I aways see that guy on tv
offering free CDs.

Um, maybe someone else was bidding at the same time you were &
actually DID outbid you? Nothing illegal about that.

Like the others have said, the proxy bidding system is a basic of
eBay. This is not shill bidding, which has been explained in earlier
comments. There's a helpful page at
http://pages.ebay.com/help/buy/automatic-bidding.html which explains
the proxy bidding process.

That said, good choice on the SB600, though I'm glad I bought mine
when I did, getting it new for $185.

As many others have already stated, you experienced proxy bidding, not
shill bidding. Nothing wrong with it, it's the way EBay works.

I understand being confused by what's going on when someone's proxy
keeps counter bidding you like that. Happened to me when I first
started on Ebay, and I kept bidding and bidding. I remember being very
angry and thinking that someone else was just sitting there watching
the auction, waiting for me to bid so they could bid against me. I
wish you had not felt the need to slander an Ebay seller by name here
though. Naming and accusing an individual of shill bidding is a pretty
serious accusation.

I bid during the last minute all the time on E-Bay. Sometimes I win,
sometimes I get out bid. I also will place a high max bid on items I
really want but have ending times that are inconvenent for me. There
is nothing "unfair" about this practice.

What you are accusing is called shill bidding, where a seller and/or
sellers friends artificially drive up an auction price. What happened
is indeed proxy bidding which is allowed and legal. Anyone can place
a bid far above the current min bid. Ebay will then auto-bid for them
up to their maximum price which is completely allowed. You were not
wronged, take this information for next time and make sure you put in
the MAX you are willing to pay.

Did it occur to you that someone else was bidding at the last second
to try to get the item? If you're operating that way, so are
countless others.

There is nothing to resolve. You lost out fair and square. Be a
little slower on the trigger finger next time.

I haven't read all the responses, so I might be repeating someone, but
this is what I encounter on eBay, and I've been on both sides of it:

You are able to enter a "maximum bid". This is the absolute most you
are willing to spend on the item. If you aren't at the computer, able
to "snipe" the auction, the system will automaticaly up your bid in
the set incraments until whoever's "maximum bid" is higher.

For example, I want an item and I am willing to spend $10.50 max on
it. "otherguy123" is also bidding, but he has set his max bid to
$15.00. The auction will proceed as follows:
opening bid by finalscore: $5
otherguy123: $5.50
finalscore: $6
otherguy123: $6.50
...
finalscore: $10.50
otherguy123: $11

with my max at $10.50, the computer stops bidding for me, and unless I
am at the computer to up my bid manually, otherguy123 wins with $11.
If I did decide to up my bid, even at $11.50 I would not win. I would
have to keep going until I hit $15.50, and then hope that otherguy123
did not return to up his until the auction was over.

Proxy bidding is probably not the case here, as the seller doesn't
want to outbid you. He doesn't want to win the item, because then it's
not sold.

C. A. B.,

You tried to snipe the auction and you lost. You lost not only
because you waited too long to place a second bid (a BIG risk with
sniping) but also because you thought the highest bid shown on the
auction page was the only amount you neeed to beat. That is NOT
eBay's fault. As others have pointed out here (and as you would have
known had you read eBay's policies) the highest bid often is part of a
proxy that automatically is increaded up to its maximum whenever
another bid is given.

Next time, have a set price in your head that you are willing to pay
for the item, and then bid that price. You will have entered YOUR
proxy bid. You may see your bid start out higher than the amount of
the bid you were trying to beat, but you will know what that bidder's
proxy amount was. If you find out you already are ourbid, then you
will know the other bidder's proxy was higher than yours.

Sometimes I win, sometimes I don't. However, sniping helps buyers in
my opinion because it does not drive up the price as people keep
bidding against each other, especially if you put in a max bid.

So, I often just take my chances and snipe. The price generally is
better. And, if I lose, there's always next time. E-Bay's not that
much fun anyway anymore and it's harder and harder to get deals.

I don't think anything that happened is a problem in your case that
E-Bay needs to worry about. You lost.

"
I believe that a few years ago this practice was brought to light by
the news media, a practice known as "proxy bidding", where the seller
artificially drives the price of the product up in order to gain the
most profit. It appears that eBay is still allowing it's sellers to
pursue this practice."

You're thinking of "shill bidding" there. That isn't what happened.

What happened is the highest bidder placed their bid before you, it
could have been hours or days before your bid, and ebay's bidding
system uses as much of their high bid as necessary, depending on the
other bids received, to keep them in the lead.

There was no foul play. Somebody was willing to pay more for that
camera than you were.

Good luck getting the BBB to do anything for you, since you're not out
anything anyway.

The auction number is 120374153923

If you go back and look at the auction, click on "Bids" and on the
right click "See Automatic Bids".

The winning bid was placed a day before your last minute bid.

Ebay's bidding process is described here:
http://pages.ebay.com/help/buy/automatic-bidding.html

Actually, the process Ebay uses does not artificially drive the price
up. Let's say the current bid is $170, and I bid $225. The bid
increment is $5.

If Ebay used my whole bid, the current bid would become $225. But the
way it works is the bid goes to $175. Now you come along and bid
$180. Your bid goes in, and then they automatically take another $10
from me and the current bid goes to $185.

If Ebay took the whole bid each time, the price could go through the
roof quickly.

So, the way to take advantage of Ebay's bidding system is to bid in
the last 5 (not 50) seconds, and bid the maximum you feel comfortable
paying. Then, only the amount needed to exceed the current bidder's
highest bid is taken from your bid, and you win OR you lose and the
higher (earlier) bidder pays the bid increment over your bid.

If you bid earlier, you risk losing to someone like myself who puts in
a last second bid that exceeds yours.

Considering all the ways one can be legitimately outbid in an auction
as described in other posts (none of which you considered when writing
your letter; and the unethical practice you describe is "shill
bidding", not proxy bidding), perhaps these bidding tutorials would be
useful to you:

http://pages.ebay.com/help/buy/aboutbidding.html

http://www.informit.com/articles/article.aspx?p=415182

Those tutorials would probably yield you a far greater return than a
BBB complaint, since E-Bay will not be eliminating legitimate bidding
methods anytime soon.

I see two likely scenarios: either, as Harley said below, someone had
already bid more than your bid amount - this is a basic ebay
procedure. Or, someone did what you did, waited til the last few
seconds of the auction to submit their bid, and happened to enter a
higher amount. Both happen all the time.

Also, I just want to let you know the BBB can do nothing to force ebay
to do anything.I used to be responsible for responding to them on
behalf of my company. All the BBB can do is forward your letter of
complaint, much like Planet Feedback. If the company responds,
regardless of the outcome, they maintain a positive BBB rating. If
they do not respond at all, it gives them a lesser BBB rating, which
may or may not impact their reputation as a company. The BBB can do
nothing for you if you don't like the response.

Some years back I experimented with ebay and came across the same
thing. I knew what it was -- proxy bids and decided ebay wasn't worth
my time.

I do this all the time. It's not unfair at all. Like others have said,
anyone can do it. There are even websites that will do this for you,
for free! Lotsnipe.com is one of them. I've used them and sometimes my
bid is successful, sometimes not. If someone bids higher than I am
willing to go, I am out of luck. That is the basic fundamental of how
Ebay works!

It's not just the sellers or their friends who can make a proxy bid.
I've done it when I either know I won't be online at the end of an
auction, or to set my max bid and not get caught up in the last minute
bidding and end up paying then I really wanted to.

I agree with the previous poster. Ebay sets your bid as your
"maximum" bid, then moves your actual bid up in increments as other
bidders participate. it may simply be that your bid was still lower
than someones max bid.

If you truly want to "snipe" auctions at the last few seconds the way
you describe, I would advice looking into software that will do this
for you.

What most likely happened is someone had a "maximum bid" that was
higher than your current bid. With E-Bay you can put a maximum amount
in that you're willing to pay, say $10. If someone bids $9.00, the
system automatically raises your bid to something above $9 (I'm not
sure of the increments). This keeps happening until the bidding
reaches $10. At that point you must decide if you want to raise your
maximum bid or stop bidding.

Everyone is allowed to put in a maximum bid so it is fair. It is not
proxy bidding.

I doubt the BBB will be able to do anything since everyone has an
equal chance.