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What are your thoughts on this ebay policy?

"As the internet evolves, eBay continues to strike a balance between preserving transparency and protecting our Community of members. eBay has decided to change how bid history information is displayed so bad guys cannot target bidders with fake offers using this information. In certain cases, some bidders will no longer be able to view Bidder User IDs on the Bid History page. Your User ID will be shown only to you and the seller of the item you're bidding on. Other members will see an anonymous name, such as Bidder 1, applied consistently to the Bid History page."


The part that bothers me is that I think this makes it easier for people to shill their bids...maybe it just makes it easier for ebay because now they won't have to follow up on reports of shill bidding??

I also do not like the phrase "some bidders will no longer be able to view Bidder User IDs on the Bid History page". Can some see it and others not?? I guess I don't completely undersatnd this policy. What do you guys know or think about this?

Thanks...Kevin

I DON'T KNOW IF THIS WAS A FLUKE OR IS SOMETHING THAT EBAY IS NOW DOING....

LAST NIGHT I WAS BIDDING ON A CAN THAT WAS AT $10.50 JUST SECONDS BEFORE I ENTERED MY $12.06 BID. THE RESULT WAS A PAGE THAT SAID I HAD TO ENTER A HIGHER BID OF $12.11. OF COURSE I HAD NO TIME TO DO THAT. THE WINNING BIDDER, NOT ME BTW GOT THE CAN @$11.61 - SEEMS THAT MY BID GOT THROWN BECAUSE IT WAS NOT IN AN INCREMENT OF THE $11.61 BID JUST AHEAD OF MINE. PRETTY LAME IF YOU ASK ME...MAYBE IT WAS RANDOM? I'LL HAVE TO SEE IF IT CONTINUES.

~DOC

Kevin:

I noticed that yesterday too. I did some searching on e-bay and the new 'Bidder 1', 'Bidder 2' policy seems (to me anyway) to only apply to the higher priced auctions.

If you look at it that way - e-bay is trying to stop spammers from attempting to sell the back-up bidders nonexistant high-priced items.

Yes, I agree about shilling. And it will make it harder for those of us that use 'bidder history' to tell if an item is legit.

I do that on some items I'm not real familiar with. If the 'heavy hitters' are bidding on something, I can be pretty sure that it's real.

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Doc:

E-bay has always had minimum increases in the bids. And the increments change as the price escalates.

If you want to stop messing around sitting at the computer at the end of the auctions, try these guys: http://www.auctionsniper.com/

Once I find something I want to bid on, I put in a Snipe and forget about it. If the price goes over my maximum, Auctionsniper will contact me to see if I want to increase my bid. Or they will contact me after the auction closes and tell me if I won or lost.

No muss - no fuss, and I don't get into bidding wars with other e-bay members. I either win - or I don't. But I don't spend more than I intended to.

Later . .

Jim

[This message has been edited by T-way (edited 01-12-2007).]

I think this is a very good thing to do. I have personally had my items hi-jacked and scammed and people send money to these jerks. This should not cause any shill bidding due to the fact that the seller and ebay will still be able to see who is bidding. As T-way says auction sniper is the best way to go as I have used it. I think that ebay is trying to police this matter as there are alot of scammers and gullible buyers. Not everyone is careful when they use the internet. I have all my firewalls, phishing filters and anti-virus turned on most secure and sometimes I still do not feel safe. As more scammers work the market and technology keeps getting better with smarter people they need to do something to stop this. I have had it happen 3 times and I use letters, characters, symbols and numerals in all my passwords. I think ebay is just trying to get a handle on this, maybe it will work. JM2C

Phil

I am not sure yet if the seller can see who is bidding...that doesn't matter because it is the seller that will do the shilling anyway. In my opinion ebay has not been very good at policing anything. I just see this as playing into the hands of dishonest sellers. I also like to see who I am bidding against...it is often times helps to authenticate an item too. What is next... completely anonymous sellers?

Kevin...TeeTee...to be known from now on as Collector 265...lol

HATE this new policy...I use to count on this feature to see if the bidder was bidding on a lot of the same kind of items and was not paying, so you can kick them from the auction before it gets destroyed.

It looks like anything over $50.00 and it will not show. (may be wrong)Searched myself and it wasn't showing a $70.00 item I won. The message you get is: To protect bidder privacy, not all items that this member has bid on may be displayed.

Well I don't want to be "protected" we should be able to decide if we want "protection"

Hate it!

This new policy is terriable.

1. It makes it so the seller can have someone shill bid on many auctions to drive the price up, before you could look at feedbacks and see how many times each has bid on each others things, not now.

2. When I used to question that an item is real, you could look to see who was bidding on it, if it was a well known collector or dealer, chances are it is real. Not now.

3. If I saw that a local collector was on something, I would call him to see if he was serious or just bidding. I really dont care to bid against friends, and dont want them bidding against me if it is something I absolutly have to have. Not now.

I have noticed on even some of the entry level globes under 200 dollars that you cant see the bidders either, my guess is that it wont be long and nearly everything will have this new format on it.

Ryan

I was wondering if this is done buy ebay or the seller? I was watching an item that was at 600 and it showed the bidders now at 800 it does not show so did ebay put that on when it got to a certin dollar or did the seller do it? Regardless I dont like it and think that it has to hurt interst in an item. JM2C
Brandon

We listed a NOS spotlight on ebay motors recently and there was no option of making the history so it's "bidder 1, bidder 2" so it must be ebay and not the seller unless I missed something listing the spotlight. Just checked the history(as the seller) and I can see all the correct ebay names for the bidders. Checked the history of it not signed in as our username which its up to $148 and i could still see all the usernames. Kind of weird how only some are protected.
Robert

Doc's comment: "LAST NIGHT I WAS BIDDING ON A CAN THAT WAS AT $10.50 JUST SECONDS BEFORE I ENTERED MY $12.06 BID. THE RESULT WAS A PAGE THAT SAID I HAD TO ENTER A HIGHER BID OF $12.11. OF COURSE I HAD NO TIME TO DO THAT. THE WINNING BIDDER, NOT ME BTW GOT THE CAN @$11.61 - SEEMS THAT MY BID GOT THROWN BECAUSE IT WAS NOT IN AN INCREMENT OF THE $11.61 BID JUST AHEAD OF MINE. PRETTY LAME IF YOU ASK ME...MAYBE IT WAS RANDOM? I'LL HAVE TO SEE IF IT CONTINUES.

Doc,
There was no problem with the eBay bidding increments. If you will simply check the bidding history, you will find that another bidder placed a bid just before your bid. Therefore, your bid was no longer high enough to outbid the current bidder. This happened quite often at the end of auctions when several bidders are "slamming" the item.

First, you must understand how eBay bidding works. The key is the sequence of the bidding. Had your bid been in the system first, you have won the item. I've literally won items by one cent several times by having an earlier higher bid. But if the bid had been entered after the others, the minimum increment would apply. That's because their bids have already been established, regardless of the time left in the auction.

Make sense?

Paul

The new Ebay "feature" is supposed to kick in at $200....here is the Ebay answers to your questions. http://pages.ebay.com/help/announcement/24.html
Jim

Taking about Shill bidding and e-Bay's LACK of effort......

About a year or year and a half ago I was watching an auction for a 64 Bel Air station wagon. The car was only about 60 miles from my home an easy look at, bid, pay and pick up deal....right?????? Ummmmmmmmmmmmmmm not quite....

I began to get suspicious when there was this one bidder, that had over one hundred or two hundred feedback, always out bidding other bidders. I checked this users feedback.........This where it got VERY interesting..... This user and the seller must have had 30 to 40 feedbacks between each other. If the seller wasn't selling something to this "bidder"....the the "bidder" was selling something to the seller......The items ranged from sugar bowls, tools, nick nacks, to just about any piece of junk.

You tell me.........how often does one seller happen to have "just" what you were looking for NO MATTER WHAT THE CATAGORY TIME AFTER TIME......ALSO WHAT IS THE POSSIBILITY OF SOME BUYER ALWAYS FINDING YOU HAVE EVERYTHING THEY NEED IN THEIR LIFE.....

BULLFARTS.....THESE TWO WERE SHILL BIDDING FOR EACH OTHER!!!!!! ANYONE WITH HALF A BRAIN CELL COULD SEE THE PATTERN!!!!!

So, I jumped into the bidding. I would outbid the other "bidder" like magic, I would be out bid quickly. So I quickly out bid the other "bidder"....again BANG out bid!!!! I stopped and let some other poor soul that "thought" they had a chance at winning the auction for a realistic amount of money jump in..... and sure enough others got zapped too.....the "bidder" did win the NO RESERVE AUCTION.........

I reported my hunch to e-Bay.....they didn't do SQUAT!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

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Jim

Jim, I understand. I have seen that happen on an auction too. The last auction I had scammed from ebay, I had a lady 60 minutes from my house with a bogus offer. She offered to help, buy or what ever I needed to help nab this jerk but ebay did not want to hear that. They told me to turn it over to my local law enforcement. Well, you know how that went. You can still see who is bidding if you are the seller of the item, I do not know about that if you are bidding. They need to do something to help police these scam jerks. What ideas can we come up with to help them out? I wish I knew the answer.

Thanks, Phil

WE won't be able to email bidders about REPO/FAKE ITEMS either !

Not being able to alert a bidder that the item they are bidding is a repro or fake goes hand in hand with blocking the scammer from offering the same or similar item to the lower bidders. E-Bay's hidden id also puts a real bite in the fraudulant second chance offer.

E-Bay tries to solve its problems with a broad brush. This may help with scams, but defeats other legitimate aspects of buying and selling.

I began using e-Bay in January of 2000. I can say without a doubt that it is much less friendly to buy and to sell. As it grew and huge amounts of money and goods being exchanged grew, so did the scam attemps. The bogus buy-it-nows, second chance offers, and phising attempts are getting a little old.

One thing e-Bay could do is hire people that are knowledgable about a catagory. Like hire a car person to review car listings. A model railroader to review model train auction, a petroliana person to review oil items. The way e-Bay reviews listings now, leads me to believe that they have Barbie experts reviewing e-Bay motors auctions and vice versa!

E-Bay continues to rake in the profits and the site never seems to slow its growth. Continued growth and financial boom will only lead to more scams and more broad brush security measures by e-Bay.

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Jim