Auction Shill Bidding Bots

[Chewy]

So far as E Bay is concerned, I never bid on their site directly, I Use E Snipe, on their site, I bid the maximum that I am willing to pay, nobody sees the bid made by me, and it is not submitted to e bay until 5 seconds before the auction ends, E Snipe charges a very small amount for their service. I miss very few items due to low bids.

That may explain why I have seen several auctions go crazy in the last 2-3 seconds. Won about half and lost the other half. My Wife used to use E Snipe. Just haven't bothered. Your bid still has to be higher then mine. Bottom line is there are a lot people who pay way more then something is worth. Must be rich. I'm not.

 

[benmychree]

That may explain why I have seen several auctions go crazy in the last 2-3 seconds. Won about half and lost the other half. My Wife used to use E Snipe. Just haven't bothered. Your bid still has to be higher then mine. Bottom line is there are a lot people who pay way more then something is worth. Must be rich. I'm not.

I am not rich, I know the value of what I bid on, which is not much lately.

 

[Mini Cooper S]

When I was looking to buy my MG TC, I followed several on line auctions. One in particular seemed to have shills bidding. First I noticed the stupid high bids at the beginning of the auction. For example, car worth about $30,000 is on the block. First bid is $5000, okay reasonable opening bid. 2nd. day of the 7 day auction and the next bid is for $20,000! Why would you bid that high at the beginning of an auction? I checked the bidders profile and found that they bid on a lot of auctions. All on totally unrelated types of cars, everything from trucks to Ferraris, and have never won an auction! This type of bibbing sure seems like a shill to me.

I also know of people that got stuck buying their own stuff because they had friends bid up their auctions!

Richard

 

[C-Bag]

The local auctions have a “soft close” which means there is 10 minutes from the last bid which supposedly stopped sniping. All it did was prolong the stupid high bids. After the first auction and seeing ending prices I unsubscribed and never looked back. on ebay I never even look at auction items.

 

[C-Bag]

I also know of people that got stuck buying their own stuff because they had friends bid up their auctions!

A friend got banned from eBay because somebody had hacked her account( she didn’t know it until this notice)and was bidding on an auction her husband had going. It’s rough out there in cyberspace.

 

[benmychree]

When I was looking to buy my MG TC, I followed several on line auctions. One in particular seemed to have shills bidding. First I noticed the stupid high bids at the beginning of the auction. For example, car worth about $30,000 is on the block. First bid is $5000, okay reasonable opening bid. 2nd. day of the 7 day auction and the next bid is for $20,000! Why would you bid that high at the beginning of an auction? I checked the bidders profile and found that they bid on a lot of auctions. All on totally unrelated types of cars, everything from trucks to Ferraris, and have never won an auction! This type of bibbing sure seems like a shill to me.

I also know of people that got stuck buying their own stuff because they had friends bid up their auctions!

Richard

To think that I bought a MG TD back in the 60s for $225, this when they were worth about $750, not long after there was a TC for $1200, did not buy it.

 

[Winegrower]

The thing about auctions that bothers me is that if I win, that means I'm the only guy in the world that thinks it's worth that much.

 

[benmychree]

The thing about auctions that bothers me is that if I win, that means I'm the only guy in the world that thinks it's worth that much

Or the other bidders are cheap bas - ards and have no appreciation of real value,

 

[Karl_T]

I think its safe to safe every online auction is full of shills. that said, i think Fahey runs one of the better more honest outfits. Been to there auction at least 100 times over the last 40 years. They are local to me.

Now Fram fram (used to be Hoff hilk) runs a crooked auction. There warehouse is packed with stuff that's been on different auctions several times. lots of terrible stuff where they took great care with the photos to not show the problems. I would NOT have anyone buy from them.

The days of getting lots of great deals at auction are over IMHO. Online bidding has just driven prices too high. I still watch them but seldom bring something home. My farm equipment and machine shop was purchased almost entirely at auction over the years. Almost all of it before the online fad.

 

[C-Bag]

I’m sure things are different in different areas. I don’t see Mr.Pete slowing down at all. He seems to be in a zone there where his auctions are still good. Don’t remember if there is any simultaneous online bidding or not.