Gateleg Table

[Dean Perdue]

http://pages.ebay.com/help/sell/end_early.html
If there are 12 hours or more, he can cancel the bids. If there are less than 12 hours, he must sell it to the highest bidder.

This or if he decides to see the bidding through and is still not happy with the auction results he can simply claim it's been lost or stolen.Just another good ol loophole that benefits the wrong doers and snakes in the money hungry US of A.
I would love to see a rule that benefits decency and honesty for a change but am not counting on it, not in this world at least.

[ironlord1963]

     Being a Hobby seller on E-bay, I would have to agree with the group here.  I have a couple of times wanted, but feel if it is posted then you are committed to follow through.   I had one recently, I messed up on the shipping cost, and lost money, someone caught it and bidded, I just sold it anyway and lost a couple of bucks.  As for the Lost or Broken thing, I can see if you did mess up you should be able to pull your bid, maybe Ebay needs a counter letting the buyer know how many times they have pulled a bid early.  Also the same can be said the other way, I just had a buyer pull their bid yesterday.  An little dishearting, cause as soon as it sells I pack it,  now I have a item that is packed and no sell.   I can understand the need sometimes to pull your bid also, but once you hit that buy button, the buyer should be just as committed.  No reason was left, and really not that big of a deal as I make it sound.  I guess it is a needed rule, that can create a loop hole for less then perfect sellers and buyer,  at least these thing are exceptions, and just make a bit of a nuience.

[hosman321]

Looks like he let it stay on, it only has a few hours left. The bids have jumped quite a bit to the $400's, I wonder what he'll do if it ends at like...$490. I think sellers should be fined a certain amount of money if they remove an item after it already has bids. They won't do it again. I understand that sometimes things get broken or lost. But whose fault is it if they break or lose an item? I don't sit and bid on ebay just for the fun of it. I'm there to make purchases. And I may pass up a good deal on another item to bid on another person's. If that item gets pulled, I'll be pissed. I don't know, just frustrating dealing with online purchases of any kind!

[waywardangler]

Nice eBay link hosman.  I do not like it but there it is.  I can see ending an auction if the glass vase that was listed got knocked off the shelf by your dog's tail and is not a vase anymore but just because the bids are not there is no reason.  It is after all, an auction.

I have listed items and then had buyers (?) contact me to end it early but that never happened with me.  If I list it, it is going to ride to the end.  If someone wants it, they can bid as easy as anyone else.

[ironlord1963]

Yea but did you noticed that the bidder that jumped the price up was one person, new with 0 feedbacks, and kept pushing the price up until it got to 400.00.   Mmmmmm Suspicious of a seller bid up it looks like to me.

[hosman321]

It's pretty obvious he jumped the bid himself ironlord, good catch. Glad I quit my bidding, wouldn't want to deal with him anyways.

[KC]

Now, did I sleep for years or is it a rule you can't pop the bids up like that?

What happened?

[hosman321]

Seems to me like he could get in big trouble for making a fake account just to prevent the item from getting low bids. Hmmm
I guess there's a TINY chance that somebody saw the table on ebay and wanted it, so they created a new account. But I doubt it.

[Omega Entity]

It is indeed against policy to bump bids. This is called padding the auction or shill bidding. Here is the page regarding it, straight from eBay.

http://pages.ebay.com/help/policies/seller-shill-bidding.html

According to that, if you suspect a seller to be padding the auction, they recommend reporting them.

[ironlord1963]

     Ya, a couple of years back I was busted for doing just that.  A friend of mine contacted me through E-bay email and ask me to bid up a camera he was selling.  Duh, wonder how ebay figured that one out      We both was kicked off Ebay for 3 months.  Since then he has shared with me a few other ways he cheats the system.  I have not ever done that as a seller and never will.  But having a friend without a ebay account start one is a good way.  as long as the address and money is linked to another person, it will easily go by without notice, and very hard to prove.

[waywardangler]

I am thinking the current high bidder is the owner.  Check that bidder's history.  He has bid 9 times in the last 30 days and 77% (or were with this seller.  The newbie with 0 feedback bid 17 times on this table.  I do not think he is bidding the high bidder up because he could have done it with one bid and not 17.  I could be totally wrong but the high bidders history is more suspicious than the newbie's.

[talesofthesevenseas]

Ebay should be able to check if the IP address is the same as the seller's IP address. Definitely looks suspicious to me.

[waywardangler]

The high bidder was consume_mass_quanti ties.  This buyer has "bought" 15 times from francisc3634 going back to 2009. 

[floydianoise]

I'm interested in how this one turns out.    I'm not exactly sure what's going on but it does seem quite odd.  For what reason(s) might the same person bid multiple times in a row when no one else is competing with them?  The only real reasons I can think of are:

• to meet a reserve.
• for fear that the last maximum bid I put in wasn't high enough to hold out and win.
• to "pad the auction."

Can anybody else think of any other reasons?  Was there even a reserve on this table to begin with?  Would one bidder fear um-teen times that the bid wasn't high enough?  Seems like option #3 is probably the case.  Maybe I'm missing something.  I've spent a lot of time on eBay and hadn't ever even thought about people doing the latter.  Crazy world we live in and it's going down the tube.

[waywardangler]

A 4th reason: an idiot is bidding and only bids the next increment repeatedly until it gets past his limit and he drops out.  There was no reserve on this auction.  Letting a "$4000-$5000" table go for $430 makes one wonder what is really going on.