Strange Auction Activity

Leslie

Leslie

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Leslie
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So yesterday I was watching an auction on the bay for a Nikon D7000. With only an hour and half to go it was sitting at £432 for a 2 month old camera complete with kit lens. I’d pretty much convinced myself that I wasn’t going to bid on it but then something really strange happened. There was a flurry of bidding and it finally closed at a selling price of £3495!!!

Now I had my concerns that there was something dodgy about the deal but this just confirmed it to me. But does anyone know what could be going on here? Fraud of some sort? Money laundering?

I’m really just wondering what could be going on here but I suppose it’s also a good example of ‘caveat emptor’
 
Looks like a perfectly normal auction where there are lots of people watching who do not bid early (which only pushes the price up!).

I only bid in the last 10 seconds of an auction I am interested in.


Heather
 
have a look at the bidding activity thats should give you a idea if lets say the 1st bidder put a £2000 down everytime some bids it will go up but if the 2nd bidder went stright to £2001 then it will only show as one bid may not be doddgy take a look at the bidding history
 
Yes, what Alex said, it may be a case of shill bidding.

Seller bids on his own item for a silly amount using a different account, other people bid so it immediately goes to their maximum bid. Auction ends and he offers the item as a second chance offer to the second highest bidder for their maximum bid.
 
Very typical eBay behaviour. For example, I have an item currently selling with 100 watchers yet has been sat at £30 for 3 days. It should sell for around £300 but I doubt I will see it go up much above £30 until the last hour.

People think they will get it at lower price if bidding at last minute and won't get outbid but only needs two bidders to be thinking that and it then makes no difference.

Can make the seller a bit nervous though!
 
I think the biggest point here, is that the camera, probably worth 500 or so finally sold for 5 times that - 3500, rather than the fact that there was a load of bidding in the final minutes/seconds.:suspect:
 
OutLore said:
I think the biggest point here, is that the camera, probably worth 500 or so finally sold for 5 times that - 3500, rather than the fact that there was a load of bidding in the final minutes/seconds.:suspect:
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Yes this what I thought was strange. Also, the bidding that took it that high was with about an hour and a half still to go.
 
Wow. I have no I idea where I got 5 times 500 from - it's 7 times 500....

There's no embarrassed smiley
 
Leslie said:
Yes this what I thought was strange. Also, the bidding that took it that high was with about an hour and a half still to go.
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That's where the snipers etc come in, although most of them I would think will be configured to snipe in the last few seconds.

It does look very dodgy though... Keep an eye on the seller for feedback from that item. It may be that he decided not to sell it, so bid on it himself or got a buddy to bid so high no one else would bid?

Shill bidding really only works when you're bidding the price within a reasonable level (although with eBay, there doesn't seem to be a reasonable level, lol) so, bidding a 500P camera to 480P or even 520P... 7 times what it's worth isn't going to fly...but there are some idiots out there as highlighted by previous posts!!!
 
oh yes, didn't notice camera model! Maybe a cash buyer was after it so bid a stupid amount with agreement from seller so they could agree to cancel after winning and avoid selling fees. With 12 hours to go the seller doesn't have many options to cancel or change their listing.
 
Simple, some idiot bid £3,395 - I reckon he meant £395 to increase over the £380 bid he made made 10 seconds earlier that was outbid automatically.

Then in the last 5 mins a brand new ebay account bids 11 times in 5 mins to win..... I would put money on it being the first guy on a second account so he could ignore it and get a non paying strike and he'll reject the second offer at £3,395.

Edit: It's been relisted here this afternoon: http://www.digislr.co.uk/2012/nikon...black-16gb-mem-cardkit-w-18-105mm-dx-vr-lens/ with headline "RELISTED DUE TO TIME WASTERS PLEASE ONLY BID IF YOU’RE REALLY GOING TO BUY IT!"
 
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There's no embarrassed smiley[/QUOTE]

lol!! Exit seems a reasonable substitute :exit:
or perhaps bonk: :bonk:
 
simonblue said:
I dout the seller will see the £3,395 :D
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He didn't! He re-listed it yesterday due to timewasters! I watched the re-listed auction and made a cheeky wee bid when it was about £200. I knew i'd be outbid, which I was, but just wanted to see what would happen. Later in the day I get an email from the auction site telling me that the item i had bid on had been removed by them.
 
faddius said:
Yes, what Alex said, it may be a case of shill bidding.

Seller bids on his own item for a silly amount using a different account, other people bid so it immediately goes to their maximum bid. Auction ends and he offers the item as a second chance offer to the second highest bidder for their maximum bid.
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I had someone try this on me once. I had bid up to a price and then got outbid. Seller claimed the person I was bidding against was a time waster and offered me the goods at my highest bid. I just ignored the offer.
 
I would think it's just someone with big fingers and poor keyboard skills that hit more than one button at the same time. I once bid £999 for a dvd without looking at what I'd put, and didn't realise till later my decimal point key wasn't working too well. Needless to say I apologised and had the bid removed asap and then re-bid at £9.99. Had I not noticed and the seller had someone bump the auction price up it could of been a very expensive mistake.
 
modchild said:
I would think it's just someone with big fingers and poor keyboard skills that hit more than one button at the same time. I once bid £999 for a dvd without looking at what I'd put, and didn't realise till later my decimal point key wasn't working too well. Needless to say I apologised and had the bid removed asap and then re-bid at £9.99. Had I not noticed and the seller had someone bump the auction price up it could of been a very expensive mistake.
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But it must have taken 2 people to mistakenly put in the wrong bid to have upped the price that high, does seem very odd to me :thinking:
 
modchild said:
Had I not noticed and the seller had someone bump the auction price up it could of been a very expensive mistake.
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apart from teh fact you just wouldn't pay for it. There is no such thing as negative feedback for a buyer and all you get is a non paying bidder strike which only matters when you have three.

Everyone moans about the sellers on eBay but in my experience (having sold a lot) the buyers can be worse and there isn't much to stop bad buyers.
 
Bad buyers are a pain in the ***, there should be policies in place to stop snipers but thats not going to happen, ebay are happy with their current setup.
A few simple changes would help minimise problems but cant see it happening tbh
 
Maybe he wanted it to sell for more and when he thought it wouldn't had a friend make a stupid bid so they would win then mark it as paid for later on and kept the camera to resell again.
I did that for my sister once, hence the guess.
 
Morinaka said:
....mark it as paid for later on....
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Then ebay fees would still apply, you have to cancel the sale to get ebay fees refunded
 
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