Nick, I agree with you (slightly). That is why I said that the most I can say about it is that it is unethical. But, you can not honestly tell me that when someone bids from their broadband connection with only seconds remaining in the auction that they are doing so for any other reason but to make sure that no one can outbid them. I mean, come on. (sorry for the run-on sentence!) There is no other plausable reason that someone would bid at the last moment. They didn't just "happen upon" the auction at that very second.

Usuallywhat happens in any auction, online or not, is that you say "okay, I'm willing to pay $20 for that." Then someone bid $21.00. So you say to yourself "well, I knew I said $20 was my maximum bid, but I can't let myself lose this for 1 measly dollar!" So you bid $22. And also, you initial bid may be a bit lower because you are currently involved in several auctions. If you lose a few of the others, then suddenly you can rationalize spending more on the remaining auction.

Everytime I've been out bid like this at the last second, I do say "well, I should have bid more", but the fact remains that the person who did it had every intent to make sure no one else had a chance to outbid him/her.

Bidding at the last minute is called sniping on the ebay bidding message board. Go there and you'll find links to several pages that explain why people bid like that. It's mostly to protect them from people jacking up the price.
If you bid your absolute true maximum for the item and someone beats you out, they wanted it more. When you get beat by a small amount, look and see that it is probably one bid increment more than your bid. that's how ebay is designed to work. I snipe all the time, bidding my true maximum and several times I get the item for much less than my maximum bid. Other times I have beat other snipers because I bid my true maximum. I even lose because people wanted to pay more than I did.
True maximum is the most important term on eBay bidding, remember it and your emotions won't control your bidding, which is what you get into when you look for a bargain by "nibbling" at the high bid. Pretty soon you want it so bad your emotions take over.

If that is you true maximum, then why not bid it at the opening of the auction instead of waiting till the last moment? How would it protect you from anything other than another legitamate bidder getting a chance to big again? I'm confused. Are you saying that sellers jack up their price by trying to guess what the bidders max bid is? Wouldn't they be busy trying to jack up the price for the current high bigger anyway? How much safer are you by bidding at the last second?

I kind of getting what you mean - it is a way of protecting yourself from shady sellers.... but it is the other bidders that get screwed too.... oh well, i don't use eBay much anymore for these exact reasons.

Well there are shady sellers that will get poeple to "shill" for them or do it themselves. That is where they get a different ID and keep outbidding you, then after the auction they'll say the winner backed out, would you like to buy it for your high bid? It's against eBay rules. The high bid may not have been what you would pay if they were not shilling. And there are people that will just drive your bid up for the sake of it. That's legal, but just damned annoying.
Plus bidding late leaves you open to watch for other auctions of the same item and not commit to one item only to be outbid later. or lose the opportunity to get a good Buy It Now price because you have an open bid on auction. All bids are still, valid even if it's no longer high bid, ubtil the auction ends. So you don't want to commit to 2 $500 items when you only itend to buy one.

Dave, thank you. That makes much more sense. I'm sorry if I offended. I think that reason is very valid. I guess my experience with a little community of brewery paraphanalia collectors doesn't represent the eBay experience as a whole.... That"the high bidder backed out" thing is a slick one...

But, you can not honestly tell me that when someone bids from their broadband connection with only seconds remaining in the auction that they are doing so for any other reason but to make sure that no one can outbid them. ... (sorry for the run-on sentence!)

You need to have more confidence, dude! Other than misspelling ``cannot'' and the questionable grammatical structure of starting a sentence with a conjunction, both minor offences, IMHO, your sentence is perfectly grammatical, and not a run-on sentence at all. A run-on sentence is one that basically combines two or more separate sentences without a period, conjunction, or adequate punctuation, which yours is definitely not.

If only people would learn English (I don't have enough experience with bad grammar in other languages to speak authoritatively), they would be able to construct, and read, complex sentences without concern or confusion. Maybe if more schools taught Faulkner, complex sentence structure would be more common. It can be so boring to read the same ``Subject-Verb-Object'' sentences over and over. It's nice to see something else. So don't worry about making complex sentences. Just worry about your grammar.

Thank you, from the bottom of my heart, for your most generous compliment. I can make no promises to study Faulkner, but will studying "Faulk" suffice?

Its not just people with broadband connects. There have been sniper services/apps out there for quite a while that let you pick the maximum price you are willing to pay, and within the last few seconds of the auction, make a bid that is just above the highest. My guess is that Ebay implemented their proxy (or whatever they are calling it) service because of these snipers chewing up bandwidth to keep track of the times/bids - automation can refresh a lot quicker than a person can

No offense, just enlightening you on the reasons why people bid like that. It's actually really humorous on the whole. People get the idea that since they bid on something first, it's their's until someone "steals" it from them in the last minute. Alot of the snipers on the bidding board have come up with the joke that they need to snipe more items to fill the potholes in the driveway. People think many of the snipers don't really want the item they snipe, they just want to make sure no one else gets it.Trust me, I can blow money on lots of other crap instead of keeping items out of the hands of others on eBay. But I have gotten my Simpsons World of Springfield up to date through sniping...

eBay has always been using the proxy bid system. Folks claim it's unfair because it's not run like a live auction (most commonly known form), where you have a chance to keep bidding until all bidders are satisfied.
Sniping is just a bidding method developed uner the proxy bidding system... It's the best way to protect yourself from many things that may occur, like those I listed in a previous post.

OK back to our regularly scheduled thread...

Well, I still think that if it is done as a "bidding" meathod rather than as a means to protect oneself from crooked sellers that it is as bad as sellers jacking up prices. Just my opinion.

Is that a large mouth bass? Hard to tell from the pic.

Yes it's a large mouth, it was probably 10+ pounds at one point in it's life, but when I caught it it was 6 pounds. It's definitely in it's declining stage of it's life. The mouth and head were HUGE! I could almost fit both of my fists in it's mouth. It was my biggest bass of 2001. Looking for a 10+ this year... A few more bass photos are here

Oh and on my way to fishing, I always put the empeg on my "Fishin' Songs" playlist which includes:

Five Pound Bass - Robert Earl Keen
Beadreaux was a Nutcase - Austin Lounge Lizards
Fishin' Hole (Andy Griffith Show Theme) - Andy Griffith

Studying wfaulk? :-D

Calvin

I feel like I'm in the presence of a master e-Bayer. :-D

Calvin

What, no Fishheads by Barnes & Barnes?

Not an "eBay master" but I do well as a time conscious proxy bidder, aka a sniper. My badge of honor...

Aww crap! I knew there was at least one I needed. I'll have to find that one. What I really need to do is output the fishing TV shows audio to the computer then capture it and make mp3s. That way I'll maximize my learning time while on the way to fishing. I'll get to the pro ranks yet! Maybe SonicBlue will sponsor me with an empeg fitted Triton bass boat with a 250HP Mercury outboard...

I wasn't even in the auction, so I didn't get upset over missing a potential buy.

You've missed the point, I'm saying that the person who bid for 25 units was obviously the retailer trying to bulk up the price. It's this which I object to? If the retailer wanted to sell the TV's for minimum price, then they should have set a minimum price, that's their perogative. It's a bit unfair to change the rules mid-flow, and in real life auctions it is illegal for owners to bid against their own lots.

kojak71
"A fool and his money are soon parted"

I'm saying that the person who bid for 25 units was obviously the retailer trying to bulk up the price.

Really? That doesn't make sense. If the retailer did that, then he just bought his own TV sets. What would the point of that be?

tanstaafl.

Well he could then contact some of the bidders and say "the high bidder backed out, do you want it at that price?"

Simple, the retailer wasn't willing to allow the lot to sell at what he thought was too low (highest winning bids were in the £240 range) so he increased the bid to about £480. Some genuine bidders did go over that, and got themselves a very good TV, the others magically reappeared on another dutch auction a week later, and so on and so on, until the retailer has shifted all the units at a price the retailer likes which defeats the purpose of a 'no reserve price' auction.

why would you get one on ebay i just got one fromm sonic blue 30g for 399us

You're right, thrasher -- they're not sold out at all. All this whining and bitching is because we're all stupid... Thats it.

20GB -> brother @ cost
10GB -> friend @ cost
60GB -> self @ cost

I could eBay my current 20GB (Dec10, rebated) but I'm not that hard up to make a little bit of money.

I would bet that if you ordered one today from SonicBlue (30GB for $399) you would receive it within a week.

I ordered mine via the Web on Jan 7 (this past Monday), it got shipped from CA on Wed or Thur and it's sitting in the FedEx place here in VA waiting for me to pick it up tonight.

My buddy just ordered a 20 GB via the web because he can't afford $399 and he might even get that one.

But go ahead and pay $500 for a 10 GB without trying sonicblue first.

JP

That is so illegal.

Calvin

What's illegal? Selling items on Ebay?

Bidding on your own items, implied by the phrase ``he increased the bid to about £480.''