Victim Of Shrill Bidding

zenomorp

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Yup. They got me. I was bidding on a dedicated Mortal Kombat 4 on Ebay. The price was $500. I bid $500. I was the only bidder for about 3 days and then upped my bid to $1000 because I wanted to make sure I won it. When the auction was over, there was only ONE more bid for a total of 3....right at my high bid of $1000.

Seems to me that if someone was trying to figure out my high bid, there would have been more bids than just one, which just happened to be the exact amount of my high bid. Looks like this might be one of those sellers who has a separate account and bids on his own stuff to get more money. I got screwed out of $500. This is the first time this has happened to me. I could do nothing about it and just went ahead and paid, but I'm not happy.

Thoughts?
 
There would be no way to know exactly what your highest bid was. But unfortunetely you put a grand as your high bid.

You can refuse to pay and get 1 non-paying bidder strike. 1 strike does not prevent you from bidding on other auctions (2 does) but I would only do that if you were 100% sure the seller screwed you.
 
There would be no way to know exactly what your highest bid was. But unfortunetely you put a grand as your high bid.

You can refuse to pay and get 1 non-paying bidder strike. 1 strike does not prevent you from bidding on other auctions (2 does) but I would only do that if you were 100% sure the seller screwed you.

No, it's not worth the hassle. I have the money, but it's the principle. I know my high bid was a grand, but how would someone hit it on the nose with only 1 bid? Seems a bit unlikely to me. Seems more like they knew what my high bid was an bid it from a separate account. That's just my opinion.
 
No, it's not worth the hassle. I have the money, but it's the principle. I know my high bid was a grand, but how would someone hit it on the nose with only 1 bid? Seems a bit unlikely to me. Seems more like they knew what my high bid was an bid it from a separate account. That's just my opinion.

There is no way someone could know your high bid... even the seller. If you said your high bid was $977.45 and someone bid e$977.45, i'd be on page with you... but a grand is a pretty "common" number overall... the odds of someone hitting that number aren't all that astronomical.
 
There is no way someone could know your high bid... even the seller. If you said your high bid was $977.45 and someone bid e$977.45, i'd be on page with you... but a grand is a pretty "common" number overall... the odds of someone hitting that number aren't all that astronomical.

Agreed, I just thought it pretty remarkable and I became suspicious. These are all good points. It's just that I have done this many times before and it's the first time someone has "Hit the nail on the head" with one bid. I guess it's possible someone could have bid $1000 thinking that they would definitely get it with a bid that high, assuming that I wouldn't have bid that high myself.
 
Did the last bid happen as a snipe bid in the last seconds of the auction?

Or did it happen prior to auction ending by minutes/hours etc?

If the latter how come you didnt watch the auction if you knew it was ending soon?
 
There's your problem.
If you didn't want to pay up to and including $1000, you should not have bid that much.
Exactly. Even the seller doesn't know what your high bid is so someone was trying to snype the auction and bid just under yours since there were your two bids and one other.
 
It would be suspect if the bid wasn't at the last minute. The other bidder would have seen that his bid matched your max bid and he would have only had to up his bid by the minimum increment ($25) to win. I guess that could have been too much though.
 
I guess it's possible someone could have bid $1000 thinking that they would definitely get it with a bid that high, assuming that I wouldn't have bid that high myself.

Someone bid $999 28 minutes before the auction ended. Maybe they were thinking the same thing as you, that nobody would bid anywhere near that high and they were sure to win. It doesn't look like shill bidding, as that would be shown in small increments up to your maximum. The other bidder only bid once.

The lesson here is to only bid what you are willing to pay for the item, no more.

The plus side is that it looks really nice and clean, a great addition to a home arcade!
 
I found the shrill bidder:

invasion-of-the-body-snatchers-78.jpg
 
Did the last bid happen as a snipe bid in the last seconds of the auction?

Or did it happen prior to auction ending by minutes/hours etc?

If the latter how come you didnt watch the auction if you knew it was ending soon?

It was ending while I was at work. I couldn't monitor the auction, hence the $1000 bid.
 
Someone bid $999 28 minutes before the auction ended. Maybe they were thinking the same thing as you, that nobody would bid anywhere near that high and they were sure to win. It doesn't look like shill bidding, as that would be shown in small increments up to your maximum. The other bidder only bid once.

This is what I think happened. Doesn't look like shill bidding to me.
 
If it will make you feel any better, look at it in a different light:

You bid on and were willing to pay $1000.00 for the game.
You won the auction.
If you had bid anything less, someone else would own that game right now.

Enjoy your win!!
 
I snipe so there is no chance of shill bidding, but I agree with the group that this doesn't sound like a shill. I would also guess that the bid increment was fairly large at that price range - maybe $25. If it was a shill that went almost $500, I would expect many bids, and probably a retraction at the end.
 
just use sniping software. enter you high bid, they will bid it for you in the last 6 seconds. No stress and no need to worry. There are free sniping services out there. Probably better if you pay for them. If you waited to the last second to bid, maybe you would have got it for $500...

I agree, nice round numbers are really easy for people to use.. If you suspected someone was shilling it up, I would be more interested in retracted bids. You could bid $1100, see your max, retract it and then push the bid back up to your max..
 
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