Zero Feedback Bidders On E-Bay

[Bruce E. Rathbun]

Maybe it's me.......anytime lately that I have been bidding on ANYTHING from E-Bay there is a zero feeback bidder driving up the price. In the latest instance I am bidding on a dry mounting press. There is a "zero" that has bid 10 times and driven the price up to the point where I will most likely bail out. This bidder may be legitimate yet I see WAY too many instances of this type of bidding. Back in the day E-Bay was a good place to find gear. Sellers and potential buyers hooking up to make a sale. Anymore it seems to be about the bottom line.

-Bruce

[Michael Kadillak]

Patience my friend patience.

After all, these are regular items on this venue.

Rule #1. Establish a price that you know is what you are willing to pay from a reputable seller. Never go above that price.

Rule #2. See Rule #1.

In any auction you must not let your desire to acquire anything override your good sense. Let the other knuckleheads go for it. One less person that you will be competing with down the road.

Good Luck!

[Bruce E. Rathbun]

Michael,
As always you are the voice of reason. I failed to mention that the items that have zero bidders are often high dollar amounts. Most times it looks very suspicious. I know of one auction last year that had a zero bidder that turned out to be bogus. He was rasing the price to help his friend sell the item. That is what I object to. I do not object to prices rising as I do follow the #1 rule that you mentioned...always. I fail to get into a bidding war on an item that can be purchased new elswhere for not much more money. Looks like I will be calling B&H to order a new mount press. Thanks for the advice.

-Bruce

[Nick_3536]

Shill bidding is against the law. Didn't somebody go to jail last year over shilling on Ebay?

[Scott Rosenberg]

i wonder if that's the seller... possibly they created a new id just to bid on their own item.

there got to be a REALLY good reason for me to buy anything off e-bay.

[Michael Kadillak]

I have had nothing but good experiences on E Bay and have acquired many great deals there. Sorry that you are finding the experience less than optimal.

I find that if a seller has numerous positive feedback postings, chances are that they are a straight shooter.

Before I called B&H, I would try some other alternatives as these things are expensive new with a capital E.

I will talk to you off line.

Cheers!

[John Kasaian]

FWIW, a friend who refers to eBay as "Satan's Spawn" and spits on the ground everytime eBay is mentioned (I learned my lesson and now avoid bringing up the subject indoors!) advised me that if I can't get what I want at a steal of a price, not to buy it on eBay. YMMV

[Ole Tjugen]

For peace of mind I bid what I consider would be a decent price to pay, and then avoid looking at the auction until it's over. I'll bid early, too, if I really want it ;)

[Mark Sawyer]

I tend to bid a little lower for ebay items as it's a riskier venue. Even buying from positive-feedback sellers, I've had a few things that fell short of their described condition. But most are very honest. Then again, if it's rare and I really want it, I'll sometimes bid more than it's worth.

What surprises me is people who bid common items way up. There was a used George Tice book a while back that I stopped watching when it went past $35 dollars or so. (Don't know what it finally went for.) I did an ebay search instead and found it new as a "buy it now" for $17. Amazon had them for around $20, I think...

[Dave Moeller]

I've been using BidNip.com lately...I can put in my maximum bid and walk away knowing that my bid will be placed (if the high bid isn't already higher) near the close of the auction. This gives me the peace of mind that comes from not watching the auction as well as knowing there's not someone out there bumping up their bid repeatedly in small increments to see if they can beat my bid. It's worked for me, and I have managed to get some items for significantly less than I thought I would. (I recently picked up a near-mint Crown Graphic for less than they've been going for recently this way, as well as getting a Yashica-D for about half of what I was willing to pay.)

I think the fear of shill bidding is a reasonable one, and BidNip has let me sidestep my worries about it. (The sad fact is that this is the only way I feel I can trust a sale on eBay any more...either this, or sit by and try to snipe at the very end. eBay's changed a lot...)

Luckily for me, no negative experiences yet.

[neil poulsen]

I wonder if it's possible for a seller to eliminate a buyer with zero or negative feedback during the actual auction? I don't recall.

I've purchased many items from EBay and only had one problem. The seller, "maryland ebayer", took off with my money! While not negative, he had limited feedback with only one or two as a seller.

I only purchase from sellers with lots of feedback and minimum negative responses. If a zero feedback bidder bids up an item, one can wait until the item's up for auction again.

[Ole Tjugen]

Some of my finest aquisitions have been from sellers with no or few feedbacks. Sometimes they are just new to selling, and have genuinely great items.

But by all means - stick to buying from high volume sellers! I'll just sit quietly over here and snap up the REAL bargains :)

[Joe Smigiel]

If I see a zero feedback bidder enter the fray on a high ticket item, I stop bidding and alert the seller that I refuse to bid against someone with zero feedback or eBay history on such a high-priced item, particularly if they are from certain countries. I inform the seller that I'm willing to pay a certain amount for the item if something goes wrong with the zero feedback bidder winning the auction. This price is always less than where the bidder has bumped the auction. So far, I haven't received any second chance offers as a result, but I also haven't been burned. The one auction I was really disappointed in having an international zero feedback bidder against me must have been legit since the seller was one of the most reputable photo sellers on eBay. The bidder won the auction for several hundred more than I was willing to bid, and I never heard from the seller or saw the item relisted.

I've also been involved in an auction where shill bidding was going on. The seller had a bidder whose handle was the same as his user name spelled backward upping bids on an item that I and a few other people I always bid against were active on. I alerted eBay and they yanked the guy but after about a year he resurfaced with the same name. Ebay really is set up for sellers and not for buyers.

One thing I do notice is that I'm always bidding against the same people now on items from a select group of sellers. That is the only way I have any confidence in the auction. Otherwise I realize I'm taking a chance and I better be willing to eat the cost if something goes wrong.

[D. Poinsett]

Although it is tempting to be suspicious of shilling, my quess is that you are seeing the actions of an inexperienced bidder. Shill bidding is rather stupid on several levels and a seller with good feedback is unlikely to risk losing their eBay account over it.

The advice of studying the range of prices you expect and using that information to pick a reasonable bid maximum ahead of time has yielded good results for me. Unless the item is something you cannot live without or terribly rare, eventually you'll get one if your bids are in range. Also, if you find yourself in a the often inevitable last-second sniping battle, set a limit on that too.

[Bruce E. Rathbun]

The auction ended and the "zero" backed out. Big surprise. I have been given a second chance offer. As this is a new mounting press from a reputable dealer, I will consider. I am also sending E-Bay an e-mail to verify is this was indeed a case of bogus bidding. I was not looing for a steal yet just a good deal from a legitimate seller.

-Bruce

[Brian Ellis]

Who knows, it could be a fraud or it could just be new people who got caught up in auction fever. I'd suggesst using one of the sniping services. Place your maximum bid at the beginning of the auction with your service, then forget about it. Your bid will be placed about five seconds before the end of the auction. If someone beats your bid so be it, they just paid more than you were willing to pay.

With most auctions the real action doesn't take place until the last minute or so. Paying attention to the bids that go in days and even hours before then is IMHO a waste of time. FWIW I've bought about ten items on e bay and have been very pleased with the things I bought and with the whole process.

[Randy_5067]

eBay being an online "auction" should be a tip-off. Ever go to a livestock auction? You will always have somebody that will pay twice the value, just so they can have the thrill of "I won it!" An acquantice of mine is the owner of one of the larger equipment liquidation auction houses in OK. His analogy is that they get "happy feet" as the price goes higher. He will vouch for the fact that people will pay two - three times the value of an object at an auction, just for the thrill of "winning" something. I am an avid eBay junkie, but I will enter the price I am willing to pay for it, and forget it. If I win, I win. If I lose, I lose, and will bid on the next one. I have never been disappointed that way.

[Greg Tims]

Hey Joe,

You said "...If I see a zero feedback bidder enter the fray on a high ticket item, I stop bidding and alert the seller that I refuse to bid against someone with zero feedback or eBay history ..."

I have never found the need to bid for something on Ebay so my first bid, if or when it comes, will be with no feedback.

My question to you is how much feedback or ebay history did YOU have upon placing your first bid? Weren't YOU a no-feedback bidder then?

Not every no-feedback bidder is a shill!

[Ed Eubanks]

I'm sure I'm not the only one who has done a fair bit of dealing on eBay, but here is my take:

As a bidder, if I get outbid on an item I knew was only worth $x.xx, then it's no skin off my back. I learn what an item is worth, try to find one in good condition, then bid agressively until I've reached one of two points: I've hit my personal spending limit (usually set by how much i've been able to generate in my PayPal account from selling other stuff), or I've hit the cap on what I know to be a fair price. If someone is willing to pay more than what an item is worth, that's their choice, but not me. And, as others have pointed out, how do I know whether someone really is going to pay or not?

As a seller, I have gotten stiffed a few times by folks who simply wouldn't pay. My response is usually several-fold: I report them to eBay as non-paying bidders; I post negative feedback (usually at the very end of the time allowed to do so); and (here is the key for you) I contact the next-highest bidder and ask them if they are still interested. If they are not, then I re-list the item-- eBay will refund you the cost of listing the same item a second time, if it didn't actually sell the first time (for whatever reason).

The bottom line: if you suspect some shill-bidder is just running up the price, contact the seller after the auction and let him know you would be interested if the first sale doesn't work out. I promise you, he'll be glad to know it regardless of what happens, and you might get a real deal.

Also, though, it sounds like you might have been fishing for a steal on a dry-mounting press. If you're looking for a rock-bottom price on eBay for anything, don't get ticked because it moves out of the "steal" category and into the "fair price" category. Dry-mounting presses are very expensive, and they tend to keep their value.

[Dave Moeller]

As an aside on prices: Always spend time searching for the item name/model number rather than surfing to the correct category. Sometimes people list things in strange categories, and deals can sometimes be had for this reason. I got my Seal drymount press for around $100 because it was in some strange category and very few people even looked at the auction.

(As an example that I'm sure most of us who use eBay are aware of: Older wooden cameras are often listed in the "vintage" category rather than the "large format" category.)

[Tim Stahl]

I usually am buying on Ebay. However, recently, I decided to list my Pentax 67 equipment and two peices of Mamiya gear. The guy who purchased the Pentax equipment was a zero feed back person. It was his first Ebay purchase, and I have had better communication from him than I have from Ebay sellers with thousands of positive feedback.

Having said this, I will usually stay away from people who have negative feedback. I'm not talking about the seller who has 500 positive and one negative, but 100 positive, and five negative. There is something going on, and it is best just to stay away. The two times that I have not, are also the two times I have not had a great experience on Ebay.

[Andre Noble]

By the way, what's the time expiration if you need to provide last minute NEGATIVE feedback? Is it like 60 or 90 days from the time of auction close?