BBQ gear from E-Bay merchant

Has anyone here had any experience ordering their gear on E-bay?

I just had an unusual experience. I wanted an original Veg-a Matic for chopping. My Mom had one when I was growing up, and the thing chopped stuff up wonderfully, especially potatoes for french fries,

So, I Googled it, and found one on E-Bay. This woman had it up for auction for .99 cents. It had been up for quite a while, and was a day or so from the auction on it expiring. No one was interested: no bids.

So, I bid $10.00. After doing so, I get this message from E-Bay that made me add another $10 to my bid: so now, it's at $20.00.

All of the sudden, there becomes a bidding war. These "phantom" bids got the item up into the mid $30 range. Me? I didn't bite. I never added more to my bid. The thing wasn't worth the $40 + shipping it would take to buy it.

So, E-Bay messages me and tells me I wasn't successful on my bid, but in the body of the e-mail, gives me a link to another merchant who has the same item, and guess what... I can buy it right now for $20.00.

So, I did. It should be here in a week or so.

But I'm suspicious. This seems all to convienient to me. There was only 1 available, I don't match the bids, then suddenly one becomes available for exactly what I was willing to pay.

Hmmmmmmmm.

Sunra said:

I just did a search on e-Bay for Veg O Matic and quite a few showed up
http://desc.shop.ebay.com/i.html?_n...=0&_trksid=p3286.c0.m270.l1313&LH_TitleDesc=1

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Yep, did that myself, and got the very same results. All the more strange. First there are none, now there are a page full. Fishy, for sure.

Lake Dogs said:

Being of programmer scum myself, it isn't too hard to write a screen scrape
program to automatically do that very thing. Then, set up a few user accounts,
and *voila* you have this. They then go back, look for your highest bid, and
then decide to sell it for that. *BAM*

They dont pay ebay commission either.

Be careful. Some of these are out to steal your money rather than sell you
the item(s).

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I'm a programmer too. I agree, the merchant could have a conditional statement (probably a SELECT CASE that loads the correct Select * query from the merchant database)... but this would have to be server-side. And if you're correct, that means E-Bay is in on it. Makes sense, the more it sells for, the higher the commision, I assume.

Sounds like a crime.

SuperQue said:

I once lost out on an item only to have the seller come back and say that the winning bidder backed out and that I can have the item at my last bid. I saw right through this since I noticed that the winning bidder was also bidding on other similar items. It pays to notice who's bidding.

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Yeah... I think you're right... and I'm sorry I got involved. Hope I get the Veg-A-Matic, as I did pay the $20 for it.

Big Mike's BBQ said:

I would report your suspisions to E-Bay. I ahad a friend do that one time and he got money back from the seller because E-Bay found that the seller was scamming people. They made them pay so they would not lose the right to sell their stuff.

Big Mike

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I will. Thanx Mike!

The BBQ QB said:

btcg,

Of all the things you wrote, this is the most concerning. What made you add another $10.00?

There is only one person able to do that and it is you. Did you recieve a "You've been outbid" email in your "My EBAY" inbox? If so, it was legit. And nothing would have "made you" add another $10, other than your desire for the product.

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Mike,

I still have the e-mails from E-bay. Here's why I increased my bid... and I copied this directly from their e-mail:


"So far, so good! Your bid has been confirmed, and you are the high bidder. It's almost yours, but you could still be outbid. You can improve your chances of winning by increasing your bid."


I'll admit, I have no experience on E-Bay... but this seems to be a standard message, and I'd wager it's auto-generated. Not having the experience I now have, I went ahead and upped my bid to $20.00.
I would agree... no one made me do it, but without the prompt from E-Bay, I can tell you, I would have NEVER raised the bid without any competition.

As a matter of fact, that seller has a perfect 100% rating with over 1125 sales. In todays EBAY that is remarkable. I took a look at the bidding history and it looks fine.

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You may be 100% correct. The person may be completely legit. Or... he/she hasn't been caught yet, or, has been caught... and established a new business and/or has a 2nd business in addition.

The bidder who won, bid 3 days early with enough maximimum in his original bid to win the auction. This is not the traditional tactic with shill bidders, they will usually nibble away at your maximum until they beat it then retract the last bid.

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I do have quite a bit of experience in the e-commerce field: I write e-commerce shopping carts and custom e-commerce suites for a living.

It seems to me that if the merchant himself/herself was responsible for "phantom" bids, their goal was to put a carrot over my nose, and lead me to "up" my bid. If I were to have fallen for this, the method used seems to be one that would work quite well.
Also, it seems likely that E-Bay would have figured out the "nibble" method you cite, hence creating a need for other "methods".

The after auction email you recieved is a standard EBAY sales tool. Again, if it arrived in your "My EBAY" inbox as well as your re-direct email acct then it was also legit. This tool will use "Like" logic, not the the spelling you use for the search.

As for your search criteria explanation. There is no such a thing as a Veg-A-Matic, However, there are 47 current listings for Veg-O-Matic and 69 completed sales for the same going back to January 25th.

I see no fraud from the original auction at all.

Mike D

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I'm sure the "You didn't win" e-mail was from E-Bay.

But that, as the lawyers say, is a distinction without a difference(my wife is a lawyer, so I know this statement well ).

E-Bay has provided a tool that would seem to make fraud easy... and, as someone who write queries that are in use on major sites currently, I can tell you, if I made the mistake of using an "A" instead of an "O"... it wouldn't matter, and E-Bay's final e-mail proves it.

Modern SQL queries use pattern search commands within their SELECT statements. An "A" or "O" doesn't matter, and E-Bay's final e-mail to me proves this: E-Bay managed to find other Veg-A-Matic's when they couldn't sell me one- nearly a page full of them... and despite my boolean abilities at search, neither I, no Google, could find but "1" when this all began..

AND...what a coincidence... the one Veg-a-matic out of a whole page that I could "BUY NOW" was listed at the very same price as my final bid.

Doesn't add up, Mike. I may have been born yesterday, but I wasn't born today.

Just sayin.

Bartstop said:

I always wait until the last minute or two of an auction to place my bid. That way the seller (or his buddy) doesn't have a chance to come in and bid the price up. I know sellers that do that stuff. It's not cool.

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I have spoken with others who have a lot of experience on E-Bay, and they say the same thing.

In my case, I decided that $20 was all the thing was worth to me, so I didn't bite when I got e-mails telling me I was outbid. In the end, I get offered a page full of em, and the one that says "BUY NOW" is listed for exactly what I bid. What luck! :wink:

Grillman said:

That's normal...I always get that message whenever I bid on anything on
E-Bay.
Each auction will tell you what the bidding increments are...so if you really
want that "Chopper" and the bid is at 10 Dollars and the increments are
50 cents per bid....and you bid 50 Dollars because you really want it.

When the auction is over and the next highest bid is $10.50....and you
bid $50 you only will have to pay $11.00. Because the number two
bid was $10.50. Or if somebody else bids $50.50; you will lose to them.

When I bid on anything on E-Bay; I predetermine how much I am willing
to bid for an item....For example...I may bid up to $25 for something.
( I'd rather get it for only $5 ...but; will go up to $25) If I don't win
that auction, I'll just go to another one...otherwise you can end up
paying far more for an item than it is worth.

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That's good to know, thank you.

I prefer to think E-Bay as a company is legit... unfortuneatly all merchants are not. I hope I get the product. I did pay with Pay Pal, although credit card companies will also take your side and reverse the charge if you don't get the item.