Shill bid or coincidence?

[BobC]

Originally Posted by jingram058

I don't do very much buying on eBay anymore, but when I did there were sniping tools available, and a lot of people used them. I found it infuriating. Not only could these things bid at the last second, but they could also be set up to keep you as the high bidder if that was your desire. Maybe that's what happened?

That makes no sense at all. The main purpose(s) of sniping services was so that first, you didn't have to be available to bid as the auction ended, and second, to wait till the last few seconds of an auction to make your bid so you didn't bid early and allow someone else to run your bid up, and/or outbid you. What you are suggesting runs totally counter to one of the main reasons to ever use a sniping service.

Of the sniping services I've seen in use, I've never seen (or heard) of one that purposely kept running up the bidding long before an auction was ending. I'd love to hear what sniping service(s) you're aware of that just keeps bidding like that. And if there is one or more such services out there doing that, I frankly don't consider that a true sniper service. It is something else entirely, just not sure what.