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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

Jim,
Your observations are right on. I've been on eBay since December 1997. The solutions that eBay has implemented to stop the scams are also motivated by self interest. eBay also intends to prevent member communication and the direct offer transactions to preserve lost revenues.

eBay is never going to hire a lot of people to monitor the auctions. Keep one thing in mind...eBay's philosophy is simply to bring buyer and seller together and let the members self police through the feedback system. I'm certain that eBay will only do the very minimum to keep the site functioning smoothly, in their view.

Case in point. Last month when Butch Greer's photos and someone's account were hijacked, Butch himself notified eBay. Others on this site notified eBay. With over a day left in the auction, I wrote to eBay recapping and detailing the entire sequence of events. eBay never bothered to respond and the auction ended with no eBay intervention. How much evidence do they need to show fraud? That's negligence in my mind. I just hope the high bidder didn't get taken on that one. But try as we may, we can't protect everybody, especially the clueless and naive bidders.

Paul

Paul,

You know the frustrations of seeing, knowing and TRYING to alert e-Bay that an auction is a FRAUD and NOTHING is done. I can say that I too have been in the same boat.

When comes to petroliana, I am as green as the Dino. I am however a seasoned veteran when it comes to model trains and 60's Chevys. You see the listing for a $100,000+ Corvette with the "BUY IT NOW 9800 US" in super big print across the front of the listing photograph. The listing is filled with stuff like "Do not contact me through the e-Bay system my mailbox is full and I can not receive your message." Then there is a hyper link to either a Hotmail, Yahoo or Gmail account.

ANYONE WITH HALF A BRAIN CELL WOULD KNOW THAT WITH THE "BUY-IT-NOW" BULL PLASTERED ON THE PHOTO AND THE TEXT ABOUT THE E-MAIL THAT IT IS A SCAM.....RIGHT????Not if you are e-Bay!!!!! These scammers are running these auction on a one day basis (24 hours) because they know they may be able to reel in a sucker, before e-Bay gets around to canning the listing.

When I started using e-Bay in January of 2000, it was like a giant swap meet, only you didn't pay admission and didn't have to drive. Now, it feels like you are swimming in fish tank with a dozen great white sharks. You look at the seller with a jaded eye and the seller looks back at you with the same distrust.

E-Bay has gotten TOO BIG to for the members to "police the transactions through the feedback system." The feedback system has become, "The Ransom System" or "The Hostage System", for many buyers and sellers don't freely and TRUTHFULLY exhange feedback anymore. The seller doesn't post feedback for the buyer, so that if the buyer dings them with a negative, they smack the buyer with a negative. Feedback has turned into a battle zone.....not one of "self policing".....BULL FARTS on the members "policing" the site. The site is too BIG and TOO MUCH MONEY is flowing for the head of the monster, NOT to take control.

E-Bay better be careful, for without some strong intervention, to keep the site as safe as possible, people will find other ways to buy and sell.

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Jim

[This message has been edited by Jim_Becker68 (edited 01-15-2007).]

Jim,
I agree with all your observations...but you're preaching to the choir. eBay will quickly suspend a user for attempting to make an off-eBay offer for an item but can't stop a fraud situation clearly identified by several sources?? It certainly demonstrates their true priorities...to make money!!

In order to survive long term, eBay will have to find a way to prevent the scams. Some they won't be able to stop. However, it seems like a couple of the problems could be solved.

First of all, eBay should increase the staff (recall I said they wouldn't to keep costs down) and educate the staff on how to identify fraud and act promptly to stop it.

Secondly, they need to find software solutions to prevent the scam "second chance offers" and phishing attempts. After all, in order to hijack dormant accounts the scammers must use phishing to get the passwords. Apparently, the number coding for messages hasn't stopped the scammers at all.

My 2 cents.

Paul

Man they have really messed up their systems!

I just tried to contact a member that had a pump for sale that did not sell - and when I hit the "contact" button they let me type the email - and then had to put in the dumb numbers for ID and then they say I can not email this member because I am not "doing business" with them!!!!! This is a BIG OLD BUNCH of you know what!!!!!!!

The JERKS - take off the contact buttons if we can not email the sellers........

Leave it to the world - every time they get something that works some GEEK has to mess it all up..........

Travis E. Towle
Topeka, Kansas

785-357-1004

That is a brand new wrinkle Travis. That must have been ushered in with the new Bidder 1, 2, policy.

This means you TRULY can't contact another person that you are not involved in a transaction with at the present. This is DEFINATELY a cloked attempt by e-Bay to end the "off e-Bay" sales.

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Jim

Jim, not sure if this is new I recall running into this issue several months ago on an item that did not sell.

Travis, I did check to see if the seller had any other items up for auction and contacted them using that item. Didn't make a deal with the seller but I was able to contact them.

Yea, it just tweeks me... I missed this gas pump and it did not sell. I wanted to know if they still had it and were going to re-list it and what the min was.

No way to contact the seller at all - and they only sell something about once a year so they will just miss my sale...

Great,,


Travis E. Towle
Topeka, Kansas

785-357-1004

I'm not sure why you guys are having a problem contacting sellers. I haven't run into that problem yet. Matter of fact, just yesterday I contacted a seller directly through an auction that ended in November and the item sold for $1,200!

Paul

Ok Paul

Contact this seller for me, see if they still have the pump and what the min they need for it is...

EBAY WILL NOT LET ME!


http://cgi.ebay.com/gilbert-barker-visib...1QQcmdZViewItem

Travis E. Towle
Topeka, Kansas

785-357-1004

Travis go to there feadback page and on the rite side it says contact seller I clicked on it and it went to the page to post youre question.
Brandon

That is what I did last time, "3" times and it would not let me. This time it let me. THEN poped a network password entry for there ebay pic server on the screen.

At least my question went through. "this time"


Travis E. Towle
Topeka, Kansas


785-357-1004

Travis,
Glad to hear you finally got through to the seller with your questions.

Note that on this particular auction, now there is no "Ask Seller a Question" link. The auction states "The seller ended this listing early because the item is no longer available for sale." Possibly eBay eliminates that contact seller function once an item has been deleted? Who knows?

Paul

I can see e-Bay did some big re-tooling when you click on a members name. The "contact member" link is not as pronounced and easily seen as before. Another attempt by e-Bay to slow some of the ways for members to contact each other when an auction is not involved.

I would guess they are not done for security purposes with the contacting another member feature.

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Jim

"Note that on this particular auction, now there is no "Ask Seller a Question" link. The auction states "The seller ended this listing early because the item is no longer available for sale." Possibly eBay eliminates that contact seller function once an item has been deleted? Who knows?"

that is normally the code for the seller got a buy it now offer that sounded good to them and they ended the sale early ... and avoided ebay selling fees ...