Ebay Norris rant

[Steve Rozmiarek]

I was going to bid on a sweet Norris panel plane with box, which with several days left had hit $2000 ish. Today I checked on the auction, and it had been cancelled!!!!

I'm guessing that, based on the bid history, it was sold outside of the bay. This is the third time this nonsense has happened to me this year! Anyone else run into this? I am wondering how prevelent this actually is?

[Mike Henderson]

Sometimes the seller, or even eBay, detects a fake bidder in the process. And once there's a fake bidder, the bidding process is tainted and all you can do is cancel the auction.

In many cases, the item will be offered again. There's no incentive for the seller to sell it off eBay because the big bids always come in at the last minute. If someone offered to buy something from me off-eBay I'd tell them to go make their bid and see how they do.

The amount saved on the listing couldn't be enough to make up for the risk that you're selling too cheap. When you let the auction go to end, you know you received "market value".

If you know who the seller is, send them a message.

Mike

[I'll add - detection of fake bidders happens all the time. I was watching a set of un-handled Swan chisels a while back. Bidding went to about $1,200 and then the listing was pulled. About a day later, the set was back up for auction and they sold for about $400 (if I remember correctly).]

[Ethan Sincox]

That reminds me...

I need to check on an auction.

Thnx. :D

[Johnny Kleso]

When I was new to eBay I had a local email me as ask to buy a plane out right and came over and wanted to buy everything in my house it seemed..

That was the first and last time I had done these and felt kind of dumb to be talked into this and not let the plane finish out on eBay first..

[Quesne Ouaques]

[I'll add - detection of fake bidders happens all the time. I was watching a set of un-handled Swan chisels a while back. Bidding went to about $1,200 and then the listing was pulled. About a day later, the set was back up for auction and they sold for about $400 (if I remember correctly).]


Mike:

What defines a "fake bidder"? Wouldn't you need to have at least two fake bidders to do that kind of thing? I suppose it could be one person with two accounts "bidding" against him/her self, but that seems way too obvious.

I'm very interested because I'm getting ready to list some very high-end guitars of mine. Please help me understand. Do I need to be on the lookout?

Thanks

[Mike Henderson]

Mike:

What defines a "fake bidder"? Wouldn't you need to have at least two fake bidders to do that kind of thing? I suppose it could be one person with two accounts "bidding" against him/her self, but that seems way too obvious.

I'm very interested because I'm getting ready to list some very high-end guitars of mine. Please help me understand. Do I need to be on the lookout?

Thanks
I haven't had it happen to me so I don't know exactly how to find them, but sometimes a valid account will be highjacked and used for this, and sometimes people open a new account just for these things. Don't ask me why people do this (???). They don't plan on paying for the item and all it does is wreck the auction for the seller. As far as I know, most of them are not shills for the seller trying to get the price bid higher - because if they were, they wouldn't make such outlandish bids.

I think what you should look for is bidding which is too high to be believable. If you see that, contact eBay and ask them to check the account bidding to see if it has been highjacked. I think eBay will work well with you. They don't want that kind of activity on their site - it hurts their business.

Mike

[Steve Rozmiarek]

Mike, a good example of fake bidders would be the kid who got sued by Microsoft, and listed the documents on ebay. Fox news and others picked up the story, and pretty soon his auction was at something like a million. Obviously it was bogus bidding, and they cancelled the auction, and redid it for registered bidders only. To get registered, ebay had a process, and the second auction closed at a much more "realistic" $50,000ish number.

Rush Limbaugh listed a document on the bay several months ago, which brought mega bucks, and they used the registered bidder approach for it. Apparently everyone was happy with the outcome of that auction.

If you have ever been to an estate auction where a "friend of the family" is bidding a lot, you are probably witnessing auction rigging in action I think. It would be easy to do that on ebay as well, but it is also a lot easier to see similar items sell, so the market value more readily available.

My problem with the auction I ranted about, is that the seller didn't give the initial potential buyers the oportunity to set market value for this item. It was cancelled at $2000, and I'm just guessing that it would have brought significantly more if the auction would have finished.

[Quesne Ouaques]

[I'll add - detection of fake bidders happens all the time. I was watching a set of un-handled Swan chisels a while back. Bidding went to about $1,200 and then the listing was pulled. About a day later, the set was back up for auction and they sold for about $400 (if I remember correctly).]


Mike:

What defines a "fake bidder"? Wouldn't you need to have at least two fake bidders to do that kind of thing? I suppose it could be one person with two accounts "bidding" against him/her self, but that seems way too obvious.

I'm very interested because I'm getting ready to list some very high-end guitars of mine. Please help me understand. Do I need to be on the lookout?

Thanks

[Lee Hingle]

Steve,
More than likely the owner cancelled the auction because he felt the plane was not going to fetch as much as he would like. Ebay charges a listing fee based on the starting price of the item. Rather than start the item out at $1500 (for example) or put a reserve price on it (which adds to the cost of the listing and deters some bidders) - sellers will start the auction out at a low opening bid ($.99) and if it does not look like it is going to end in their favor or net what they expected - they will pull the auction the day before it closes (you can cancel an auction up until 24 hours before the closing time). Happens all the time.
Lee

[Mike Henderson]

Steve,
More than likely the owner cancelled the auction because he felt the plane was not going to fetch as much as he would like. Ebay charges a listing fee based on the starting price of the item. Rather than start the item out at $1500 (for example) or put a reserve price on it (which adds to the cost of the listing and deters some bidders) - sellers will start the auction out at a low opening bid ($.99) and if it does not look like it is going to end in their favor or net what they expected - they will pull the auction the day before it closes (you can cancel an auction up until 24 hours before the closing time). Happens all the time.
Lee
Most high value items, like a Norris plane, only receive the major bids in the last 20 seconds or so. No one wants to disclose their bid because it allows other bidders to "test" against that bid to see what your max bid is.

On big items, the first 6+ days are the advertising and inspection time, and the last 20 seconds are the bidding time. Anyone who's an experienced seller knows how the bidding works and would not pull an item early because it hasn't been bid up.

Items bring "market value". There's so many people who are interested in rare tools it's very unlikely a popular item will go for a whole lot less than market value.

Mike

[Lance Norris]

With a name like "Norris" it has to be worth a lot of money :D