re shilling, I suspect that it does occur (and not just with TRs). But for
anybody who seriously wants to sell their car, it probably backfires.
First, if a high "shill" bid wins the auction, the seller hasn't sold the
car, but still owes the listing fee to E-Bay.
second, experienced bidders (me, for example) won't bid against newbies
and/or shills because of the risk that they're inflating the price with no
intention of buying (whether through complicity or ignorance)
I agree that there's a lot of auto bidding on E-Bay by newbies, I suspect
it's because the auto auction section attracts people (especially younger
bidders) who don't have much interest in the rest of E-Bay.
The way to "beat" shilling is to simply have a good idea of what you want to
bid for the car ... and don't go any higher.
I've bought four cars on E-Bay. But I don't get into a bidding war with
newbies (hey, I'd bid $1 million for a car to win an auction ... if I had no
intention of paying it!).
With two of the cars, I either didn't bid or wasn't the high bidder. I sent
a follow-up e-mail to the seller expressing my interest if the deal didn't
fell through (and in two cases it did). I bought a TR6 in Indiana that way
(less than 4k) and a Mazda Protege in the D.C. area (bid on behalf of my
16-year-old niece; it's her first car.)
that said, some auctions where I've followed up where the bidder was a
newbie, the deal did indeed go through.
But I agree that it's easy for the unwary to get suckered in by a lot of
bidding on E-bay and think "oh, this car is hot," when it's not -- or when
the bidding is by people doing it for entertainment. That's a big problem
for the E-Bay system and I don't know how they can fix it.
--Graham
-----Original Message-----
From: corey.sherman@rcn.com [mailto:corey.sherman@rcn.com]
Sent: Monday, June 03, 2002 10:47 AM
To: triumphs@autox.team.net; 6Pack@autox.team.net
Subject: shilling of eBay TR cars?
I may be really naive, but what is up with eBay Motors and the auctions
regarding Triumph cars...
I see many wonderful, as well as those seriously questionable vehicles,
offered for sale and purchased by "individuals" with (0) or (1) eBay
history. The winners always appear to out bid the rest of the "seasoned"
bidders (those with greater history). I have even emailed some of the
winners out of curiosity and often receive email delivery failures -
undeliverable message.
Where I come from, this is "shill bidding".
Please enlighten me.
Am I missing something here?
________________________
Corey Sherman
corey.sherman@rcn.com
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