What would you do? Opinions wanted

[markf31]

Originally Posted by Bliggity

He can do this by bidding in the minimum possible increments and seeing where the next auto-bid from the high bidder comes in. If the current bid is $500, the shiller bids $505, and the auto-bid moves to $510, then the shiller knows he can take it another step. But, if the current bid is $500, the shiller bids $505, and the auto-bid moves to $507, the shiller will know he has almost reached the winner's top bid, and will not bump the bid again.

It seems obvious what is going on here. I would out the seller here so that we can all avoid him. And just another example of why I only snipe-bid on eBay.

Not even one win though in 195 items that were bid on, makes this even more strange and odd to me. I understand the scenario you laid out but on 195 items bid on, the odds of never once winning by accident seems incredibly small.

Take your example of a auction currently at $500. Ebay bidding increments state (I think) that the next bid has to be at least $10 over, so if they try to shill bid at $510, it is entirely possible the previous high bid was only $505 and now the shill becomes the high bidder. But that never once happened on 195 items and 833 bids.

I do believe something is up here, but I dont think its as straight forward as blind shill bidding.