automatic ebay shill?

Now you know why I don't even look at E-Bay, LOL Bugs

Just bid what you're willing to pay and forget it. If "he" loses sales to himself maybe he'll quit. Randy

The only way to buy on Ebay is to figure your max bid and snipe the item in the last 30 seconds. Any other way it seems that you loose.

Why bid on something with so many days left? It just invites crap like this. I buy on EBay once in a while, but bid in the last few seconds, or if the price is right the buy it now option. I waits until the last seconds of the auction, and bid the max I am willing to pay. Greg

Was there a "Reserve Price" on the item. I don't recall for sure, but if you make an initial bid that is less than the reserve, it might well get automatically jumped up to the reserve (or your maximum).

Not sure for certain. I would contact ebay about this, and they have the means to watch this person. Maybe it was just a fluke.

I use bidnapper, a sniping service. It wins me a lot of things. I just have to put the price I am willing to pay, and lots of times, I get it for less. Sometimes I don't win.

Bidding before an auction is over is a sure way to drive up the price, whoever the other bidder is.

Steve

Now you know why so many people won't even bother to put a bid on anything that isn't ending within the next minute or less. Why in god's name are you bidding with two days left?!? It just draws attention to an otherwise ignored item, triggering a bidding frenzy. (and/or auto-shills, as you found out)

As far as "what's going on", here's a skeleton outline for a program that could do it:

LoopTop: Load page containing auction Find/extract "current bid" value (thoughtfully provided in a predictable place/format by eBay) if ((CurrentBid < Price_I_Want) && (CurrentBid < TooMuch)) { PlaceHigherBid(CurrentPrice+BidIncrement); } Sleep for X seconds Goto LoopTop

As can be seen, it's pretty trivial. I imagine I could get this turned into a full blown "auto-shiller" in about an hour if I had any reason to do so.

From that point, it's just "bells and whistles" - Something like this could get EXTREMELY complex and powerful without very much effort at all.

Gimme enough motivation, and I'd likely be able to turn it into something fully configurable (How much is "TooMuch", what price am I trying to get, what bid increments should be used, a whole laundry-list of auctions to watch/shill in, logging who bids, and so on) that would stomp most "real" bidders into the dirt.

And the REAL beauty? "Oops, my shill-bot went crazy, bid too high, and won the item?" No problem. Just reject the high bid for some reason (Feedback too low as specified in auction description, no response from high bidder, whatever...), and "second chance" it to the second-highest bidder for what they bid. Basically, you can't lose.

Watching two of these working against each other on the same auction might produce some amusing results...

See my other post in this thread for a "full explanation". The short form: Detecting that an opening bid has been placed on an auction is kiddie-play.

Nick Hull wrote: With 2 days to go I put in an initial bid at $13.99 with a

accepted I

If you were outbid, they're not a very good shiller, are they? The goal of a shiller is for YOU to win at an inflated price.

Look at the time stamps in the bid history; are you sure that your bid was made before theirs?

Sounds like a good idea, but I'm on dialup and have never been able to even submit a bid in the last 5 minutes.

Amen. F*ck ebay.

It has turned us into cannibals. Remember when people used to just *give* s*it away?? Soon, I'm just gonna offer the Wife $25 for sex, and pay her for my meals... Goodgawd... Not that she's worth only $25, but ahm hopin for a little break, you know, for old time's sake'n's*it....

---------------------------- Mr. P.V.'d formerly Droll Troll

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Happened to me, too.

I won the auctions at my price just by doing *nothing*.

In all three cases, the auction had been won by someone else. I did not increase my bid over my initial amount.

After the close of the auctions, the sellers emailed me with a "second chance" notification.

In two cases, I purchased at my bid price. In one case, I no longer wanted the item and did not take advantage of my "second chance".

There must be a lot of folks that back out of a sale within minutes of winning their auction.....

sometimes a seller will legitimately have multiple items. that is one of the few instances where there is any advantage in not sniping the auction.

Winston wrote in news: snipped-for-privacy@speakeasy.net:

I've had this happen several times. I won't buy the item. The seller will re-list it. If your patient, you can always find another one anyways.

Dan

Nick Hull wrote in news:nhull-3B5645.09273219022005 @corp.supernews.com:

Screw him. Buy from one of the tool suppliers. It's not like Chinese calipers are hard to find. Odds are that they are all made in the same place. Try these:

Im thinking if I ever get *really* desparate, I might try auctioning off one of my testicles.

Ebay emails out the "second chance offer"....the seller just has to activate it after the item has sold...its the sellers option whether to do this or not.

Where a seller has quite a few of the same item to sell but doesn't wish to "flood the market", using this feature often allows him to make one or several more sales without having to go through the bother of re-listing or waiting another week for his next auction to close.