Slashdot Mirror
eBay Accused of Price Gouging Scheme
Symbiot writes "eBay is being sued in a Calilfornia court for a practice that the plaintiff, Glenn Block of Pennsylvania, claims artificially raises the amount of a bid. The practice combines the warning emails that eBay sends out when you are the highest bidder and your bid is at your maximum, with the bid increment mechanism. It seems that if your original maximum bid settnig prevents your current bid from falling on an increment then your current bid will be raised to the next increment as soon as you raise your maximum. If the plaintiff wins this class action suit could cost eBay tens or hundreds of millions of dollars."
Bullshit. This happened to me once.
I had a max of say 100.01 and another bidder had bid 100.00 while the current high was substantially lower, so it showed 'You have been outbid the current high bid is 100.01' Now, they could bid at least 102.51 and take the lead or had figured that was just too much, either way, I see that they have homed in and I raise my cap to 125.00, suddenly my high bid is 102.50 rather than 100.01.
To shed a different light on this, there was another time a similar thing happened, but when I reloaded the page later it would revert back to my prior high bid, which can be handy for disguising what your actual new cap is. I'm sure they know all about it and had fiddled with the way it works.
It happened once to my knowledge, so I'm probably only entitled to a couple bucks, but it will be interesting to see how this plays out.
If the plaintiff wins this class action suit could cost eBay tens or hundreds of millions of dollars."
I think that's a gross exaggeration of the problem, however it could cost eBay a lot in man-hours auditting the results of every auction since the beginning to determine who is entitled to a refund.
A feeling of having made the same mistake before: Deja Foobar
The seller has to pay a fee to get an item listed, the seller has to pay another fee when money is sent via PayPal. That is the real price gouging.
[o]_O
From the article: "EBay automatically increases bids only when the maximum has been hit and when the prior top bid was between bidding increments. For example, bidding increments on items priced between $100 and $249.99 is $2.50. Block, however, raised his bid increment by $1.50." therefore his bid increment would not be enough to secure the item.
I've actually managed to outbid myself several times. It's very annoying.
...with a little more substance than the Reuters.com blurb can be found here.
"Give me taste, give me funk, give me fury, gimme some more."
Good job editors!
Whoopty fucking doo.
We're talking about maybe a dollar more here?
And that amount is still below what you set you were willing to pay.
This seems more like a bug then some sort of evil scam.
Technology, the cause of and solution to all of life's problems.
if its true, ebay should have to pay 10s or 100s of millions of dollars.
thats how penalties work, isn't it?
.cig
It seems that if your original maximum bid settnig[SIC] prevents your current bid from falling on an increment then your current bid will be raised to the next increment as soon as you raise your maximum.
Well, yes. That's how it's expected to work. If your maximum bid is below the increment threshhold then it won't increment your bid. As soon as you raise your maximum bid, if you're already the winner, your bid increases. That's common sense. If eBay is going to lose this lawsuit, there must be more to it than that.
LK
"Hi. This is my friend, Jack Shit, and you don't know him." - Lord Kano
... that makes me wonder if Dubya's plan to take class-action suits out of the state courts is actually a good one.
Anything that makes the legal system look less like a lottery is sounding pretty good right now.
Dahlmann tightly grips the knife, which he may have no idea how to use, and steps out into the plain.
rather than a feature...
In the first place, no one held a gun to his head to make him increase his maximum. In the second place, if he originally thought the item was worth x$, why increase it?
Learn to snipe, cherry boy.
whats a settnig? is it a type of fig or nut?
cha-ching. money baby... money
Just read the article, the last line of it summarises the entire lawsuit:
EBay had net revenue of $3.27 billion in 2004.
going down hill for a while now. Between the fee gouging, the nightmare that has ensued since they "absorbed" PayPal and the T.V. commercials that attract every redneck asshole on the planet I barely use it any longer. eBay used to be my first stop for buying and selling, now I dread even going there.
http://www.kolumbus.fi/jon.haglund/wav/ap_1million .wav
-ubuntu others as you would have others ubuntu you.
When I first read the title I thought the article was going to be about the newly introduced fees. I'm no longer a seller but I would be pissed off if I were.
Ahh it is whoopty fucking doo though.
And a dollar is actually a lot for such schemes. For example it is illegal for a boss to shave a minute off of your clock time even though it may only be worth a few cents extra. Doing that could save a large company hundreds if not thousands of dollars per pay period. The people recieving the checks probably wouldnt notice either, but it is still cheating people of money and illegal.
The same reason the "money shaving" scheme in office space was wrong comes to mind.
WoW: Scheod 70 orc warlock on Shadowmoon
In the bad form of replying to my own post I found the help section on eBay that explains this policy. To quote:
I want peace on earth and goodwill toward man.
We are the United States Government! We don't do that sort of thing.
So, eBay is price gouging an -auction- whose parameters [set increments] are defined well before the customer participates?
Perhaps I'm missing some nuance of law, but this seems like something that eBay's lawyers [and the judge] will toss into the street with a nice lengthy brief which summarizes to "RTFM!".
Actually once you get above $1k, the bid increments are much higher, so it could be $25-$50 difference. Multiply that enough times, and it is a big number. But ebay is not the beneficiary, the seller is, so...
The suit accuses eBay (Quote, Chart) of "shilling," the practice of bidding on an item with no intention of buying it, merely to raise the price. It hinges on eBay's practice of encouraging high bidders to raise their maximum bids.
"[Lead plaintiff Glenn] Block came to us," said Reed Kathrein, a partner in Lerach Coughlin Stoia Geller Rudman & Robbins, the law firm that filed the suit. "He had gone through this practice with eBay a couple of times, talked to them and tried to get it rectified. They told him, basically, 'Tough luck.'" Kathrein said his law firm did an investigation, finding hundreds of examples, and decided that the suit had merit.
Something bothers me about the nature of civil suits and monetary awards in this country.
Why is it that we make it a habit of running off with as much money as we possibly can from a lawsuit?
The purpose of suing for this sort of stuff should be twofold: 1) to regulate company action by means of threat and penalty AND 2) reparations. Nowhere in those two clauses do I find any justification for "screwing the other guy over because he did it to me first."
It seems to me that few suits are about that anymore. While its true that you are entitled to sue if a company takes advantage of you, often times the rabidity with which "wronged" plaintiffs style their demands leads me to wonder if they are simply taking advantage of the momentary shift in power.
In that scenario, it's no longer about punishing the one who took advantage of you because he could. It's about turning around and taking full advantage of him, because now you can.
I liken this to a physical auction where the auctioneer is saying, "I have $100, do I hear $150, $150?" He's looking for $150, not for some dimwit to yell $110. If he gets no bites at $100, he may sell at $100 or ask for $125. What he doesn't do is throw it open for said dimewit to say, "I'll give you $100.01."
"I'd rather be a lightning rod than a seismometer." -Ken Kesey
http://newmail.monsterserve.com/movies.htm
-ubuntu others as you would have others ubuntu you.
Is it just me, or do others here feel that Ebay is a better place to sell than to buy? We have sold plenty on Ebay and always feel like we are getting top dollar. But when it comes to buying, most items look to be top price and it is very hard to find a bargin.
Obviously, some of this is simple supply and demand, but would this incremental inflation, especially in the controlled, percentage-of-the-price method Ebay uses, be making this difference?
Then does Ebay change their ways, make apology, and end up making their site better? (Being coersed into it by a lawsuite.)
There is no need to use a SlashDot sig for SEO...
that they allowed you to lower the MAXIMUM bid you put on an item, so long as you kept the maximum bid amount above your current bid. I dont really see what effect this would have on the auction.
Nobody seems to understand the problem here. It isn't about winning auctions. It's about eBay automatically increasing your bid for no real reason.
Here's the scenario:
You bid on an item for, say, $80.
Somebody comes along, bids $75.
Your bid is auto-incremented to $76 to beat out this other bidder.
You, getting nervous that somebody might usurp your spot with a max bid of $80, increase your maximum.
When you increase your maximum bid, eBay automatically increments the CURRENT bid value by the increment amount, EVEN THOUGH YOU WERE THE CURRENT HIGH BIDDER TO BEGIN WITH.
This is where the price gouging comes in. You are already the high bidder, you're just increasing your maximum bid. It shouldn't increase the current bid when the current high bidder increases his maximum, though. That is totally nonintuitive. The system interprets your maximum bid increase as a "competing bid" however and checks its max value against the current max bid value, and if greater, it "bids" on the item with the new max value, increasing the cost by the minimum increment, just as if ANOTHER bidder had come along and bid on the item at a higher value.
It's like you're bidding against yourself whenever you increase your maximum bid, and THIS is the price gouge that is to be disliked.
Reinvent the wheel only at either a lower cost, greater effectiveness, or your own personal enrichment and satisfaction.
Yeah I've noticed that. Another thing I have noticed when "shopping" around there. There will be an item with say a 7 day auction and it's on day 4 and there were 6 bidders. I see a number of instances where some are all of them bidders have been signed up as a buyer for 2+ years and bought nothing in all that time. But all of a sudden they decide they want the item I want. Hmmmmm.
My karma is not a Chameleon.
im tired of ebays price gouging schemes.
they raised the ebay store fees from 9.95 / month to 15.95 / month among other things.
They also own paypal and charge a fee for the transaction.
so you get charged about a dollar for the insertion fee, a percentage of the sale if the item sells, and then they take a little money for the paypal transaction.
i say BOYCOTT!!!
F------ terrible seller, scammer, price gouger!!
Ah bah, i should have added marktplaats.nl got bought by eBay .
WE DON'T NEED NO BLOG CONTROL.
One thing I can say is good, though, is that eBay doesn't nail bidders for a fee as well. I've had to shell some $$ in the past on other auctions and thought that was pretty scurvy, but it actually is practice at many large auction houses. Sothebys and the like didn't become famous for their charity to buyers and sellers.
Yeah, but acccording to themselves (IIRC) EBay are not auctioneers:-
From Ebay.com and also at Ebay.co.uk, they say that:-
3. eBay is Only a Venue.
3.1 eBay is not an auctioneer. Although we are commonly referred to as an online auction web site it is important to realise that we are not a traditional auctioneer. Instead, the Site acts as a venue which allows registered users to offer, sell, and buy just about anything which is legal, at any time, from anywhere, in a variety of price formats. We do not review listings provided by users, we never possess the items offered through the Site and we are not involved in transactions between buyers and sellers.
In short, they do a lot less than Sothebys and friends, so I don't consider this largesse in any way.
"Slashdot - News and Chat Sites Deviant". (Click "homepage" link above for details).
"therefore his bid increment would not be enough to secure the item"
That is not correct if I understand you right, so your comment should not be moderated Insightful.
The proxy bidding system is what eBay is using to manipulate some buyers, and thus milk higher FVFees from eBay sellers.
A person CAN win an auction if their high bid is not a full official increment above the lower bidder. This happens in the following situation:
I bid $5.02 on an auction first. Then you bid $5 in the final seconds, in an attempt to snipe my bid which is showing as the starting price of $0.99. I win the auction with a winning bid of $5.02, even though the next increment should be $5.25.
My appology if you meant this and I wasn't understanding what you were saying in your post.
Why slashdot? Why not?
As someone put it well in another post, you should be bidding on the increments. Be thankful that eBay lets you occasionally get away with underbidding the next increment, rather than complaining when you do what you are supposed to.
I dunno, this sounds much ado about nothing to me. I havent bought anything of ebay in a while, but my rule of thumb was to make one bid; whatever the maximum I was willing to spend and *leave it the hell alone* until the auction was over. If you always bid your max and let ebay's proxy system work the way it's supposed to then you 1) never pay any more that what it takes to outbid the second highest bidder and 2) never get caught up in ridiculous bidding wars.
Another option is to use a sniping site (I used to use esnipe, which worked great. Havent tried it in a while). It would automatically place your bid for you a few seconds before the end of the auction, so you have no chance to re-raise your bid should it fall short. It encourages you to determine how much that item is worth to you first and bid your max.
Automatically increasing the leading bid to the next increment does sound shady, but by allowing himself to be influenced by ebay's "OMFG YOU MIGHT BE OUTBID!!!11" email, he's falling right in thier trap. Ebay takes a percentage of the final sale value, so anything they do to increase the sale price just puts more money in thier pocket.
So if you're winning by 5 bucks, but wanna boost your max, which for simplicity we'll say is only another 5 bucks from current bid, it'll increase that limit but also increase your current bid by the auctions increment pricing. if we use the "a dollar more here" example, now you're winning by 6 dollars. if the other guy decided it was too high at the current bid and quit, you end up bidding against yourself and eBay gets more $ and you end up w/ less than you really needed to.
This guy thinks its price gouging. Maybe it is, the courts shall decide now it seems. I don't know if eBay explains this in their TOS, I don't use them anymore after being burned more than once and really having no worthwhile measures to combat it.
No sig for you!!
I've been with Paypal since near its beginning and I've always been surprised that its made it since its margins are actually very low. So yeah, Paypal isn't doing that much gouging, at least on this issue... (it has other problems...)
Self-restraint isn't called for, its supposed to be up to the judge/jury to determine the upper limits. This is sort of like saying "why do people in a capitalist society try to make so much money?" Wouldn't it be better instead if peeple volunteered more? Yeah, it'd be nice, but nobody expects it to happen that way.
The seller has to pay a fee to get an item listed, the seller has to pay another fee when money is sent via PayPal. That is the real price gouging.
They are two seperate services. This isn't price gouging any more than a service station charging you seperately for a filling up your gas tank, and then getting oil change.
Price gouging would be if they charged you for posting your auction on their servers, and then again for displaying the data to people surfing ebay.
HA! I just wasted some of your bandwidth with a frivolous sig!
Say, your bid is the max of your maximum bid and the other highest bid plus the bid increment. If it only remembers the maximum bids and calculates actual bids dynamically from these, I think it'd act like this.
Tim
The surprise would be if they didn't gouge you.
Ever read PayPal's terms? Anyone who uses PayPal is short a few billion brain cells or more. Guess who owns PayPal?
The best use of EBay is finding a items being sold at a decent price. Contact 'em offline and buy at the price they're going for on EBay. It's not like EBay gives buyers any protection whatsoever.
.... if the one doing the gouging is making no extra money from it? That aside from the fact that: 1) (and most importantly) You agree to bid up to and including your maximum bid. Legally. As long as eBay doesn't put you up for more than that bid, STFU and go home. 2) The amount in question is generally about 2-3% of the sale price. Whoop-de-fucking doo. 3) It's probably a bug anyway.
I meant does EBay charge any more money to close an auction that ends at $102.50 than it does to close an auction at $100.01 ?
If not - then the practice is not really benefitting EBay as an organization and you really can't charge them with "price gouging."
I liken this to a physical auction where the auctioneer is saying, "I have $100, do I hear $150, $150?" He's looking for $150, not for some dimwit to yell $110. If he gets no bites at $100, he may sell at $100 or ask for $125. What he doesn't do is throw it open for said dimewit to say, "I'll give you $100.01."
Two things (actually three):-
Firstly, the analogy breaks down because the nature of EBay auctions is clearly different to that of a traditional auction. People will not sit in front of their computer for several days until the auction ends, constantly refreshing a single auction. People need a way to bid in their own absence, hence the maximum bid. Which brings me to the next point:-
Raising your maximum bid is not the same as making an actual bid. The confusion arises because EBay fills two roles, the auctioneer *and* your proxy (automatic) bidder. You are essentially informing your proxy bidder that you would like them to bid higher if someone else does. You are *not* saying this to the auctioneer.
When EBay says "someone has outbid you with a bid of $100, do I hear $105?", your automatic bidder won't bid $101; so your analogy is flawed.
My proper second point is this; It doesn't matter. Your analogy doesn't matter. What I said above doesn't really matter, except for the difference between EBay and traditional auctions. The only thing that matters is the agreement you have with EBay, and if they haven't mentioned something like this in the agreement, then they can't do it.
We can argue stuff from our ivory towers all we like, but it's what happens in court (or what *would* happen in court) that matters.
An "EBay is an auction house and people should know how it works" legal argument would probably fail because EBay is clearly different from a traditional auction, and because they fill additional roles other than that of the auctioneer.
And because EBay themselves state that they are not an auctioneer , as I mention elsewhere.
"Slashdot - News and Chat Sites Deviant". (Click "homepage" link above for details).
Auctioning was highly favored during the .com boom era when something can be somehow purchased for 1/10th the price after a company goes out of business.
I am convinced there is little bargain left on Ebay. I can find cheaper non-auctioning prices of just about everything off walmart and pricewatch. I'd give ebay credit as a good specialty shop to buy rare items, but not as an auction.
If you enter a proxy bid of $125, then you are entering into a contract with eBay and the seller to pay up to $125 if yours is the winning bid. If you end up winning at $102.50, then you should be happy for getting the item for $22.50 cheaper than you were willing to spend. It doesn't matter if you were initially willing to spend $100.01 before, your new bid of $125 supercedes this, and by your own free will. If you weren't willing to pay $102.50, then why did you place a bid of $125?
You see? You see? Your stupid minds! Stupid! Stupid!
here is something that might stop the last minute frenzy bidding ...
Each time a new bid is entered the auction will last at least another 5 minutes. That in my opinion will be more auction like, more sport like and also fair.
It seems to me that all of us already have all of the power we need to deal with this business practice if we do not like it. If you don't like it then don't use EBay. This will be a more effective cause of change at EBay than using the coercive force of governmental authority.
OK, everyone is complaining that this system doesn't make sense but lets break down what is going on.
Say I am bidding on an item and my maximum bid is £101.
The auction is currently at $90.
The auction has increments of £5.
Someone makes a bid of £100, my maximum bid is greater, but less than the increment so it is used.
The auction now stands at £101.
I'm getting worried that I might loose the auction as its right on the max, so I increase my bid to £120.
Ebay then increases the current bidding to £105.
This seems to be what the lawsuit is about, ebay raising the current bidding, when you increase your maximum bid just because your original maximum bid fell between increment levels. In this case it fell between £100 and £105.
If I originally had bid £120, instead of £101 then when the other bidder placed a bid of £100, my bid would not have incremented to £101, but instead to £105 as that is the next incremental level.
If ebay is found to be at fault then they may have to set it so that you can only bid on the increment levels.
If ebay just change the system so that the current bidding price increases when you increase your bid then bots will probably be written to take advantage. They will just place a bid 1p above the next incremental level, if it fails then 1p above the next level. Keep going until you reach your maximum bid. In the case of the example auction that I highlited above the bid could save £4.99, so it would seem like a way of saving money.
At the risk of repeating stuff I posted elsewhere in more depth, it's probably worth pointing out one thing:-
Conflict of interest.
EBay are acting both as an auctioneer and as a proxy bidder on your behalf. The line between the two roles gets blurred in practice by the EBay system, but their purpose is clearly different; one is working for you, one is out to get your money.
Increasing your maximum bid should be akin to phoning up the proxy (automatic) bidder during the auction and informing him that *if* you are outbid, he should counter up to your new maximum bid.
"Slashdot - News and Chat Sites Deviant". (Click "homepage" link above for details).
It seems that if your original maximum bid settnig prevents your current bid from falling on an increment then your current bid will be raised to the next increment as soon as you raise your maximum.
1. Doesn't the bid have to raise by certain increments. So if the bidding is alreay at a certain level, it says you have to bid at least (current bid + increment).
2. If you didn't want to bid any higher. Why did you raise your maximum bid?
I'm sure this issue, which is the number one black mark wrt ebay in my book, is also what irks a majority of ebay buyers: the common tactic of charging outrageous "shipping/handling" fees prevalent among many sellers.
You've all seen it, from the sometimes hidden, and going from minor to major irritation of charging shipping/handling FAR, FAR beyond the true shipping costs (e.g. $25 to ship an 8oz disk drive), to the totally blatant: Item costs 1 cent, but shipping is $5.95 or $9.95, etc.
I am just totally surprised that ebay continues to let this happen, because not only is it a big, big turnoff for its buyers, plus a huge fraud loophole (oh, I sent you the WRONG thing, ok, here's a refund BUT NO REFUND OF THE "SHIPPING"), but it is a huge loophole in ebay's revenue stream, since ebay doesn't "tax" shipping costs, only item costs (and listing fees), hence the most of the transaction margin in these deals, hidden in the "shipping" costs, goes untaxed.
What is wrong with ebay that it doesn't stop this nonsense ? Enforce REAL shipping costs!
>> I've always been surprised that its made it since its margins are actually very low.
While I haven't looked into their financials, I suspect that they actually -weren't- making it, at least not the way they would want.
That's why they sold out to eBay. Paypal alone might not make much money, but Paypal is -vital- to eBay's success. The money order process sucks, and I hated taking personal checks. Without some way to easily draw money from my standard accounts, eBay wouldn't get any of my business.
It doesn't hurt to be nice.
When EBay says "someone has outbid you with a bid of $100, do I hear $105?", your automatic bidder won't bid $101; so your analogy is flawed.
If I read the article correctly, your statement is exactly what the lawsuit is about. The guy was expecting to win with a bid of $101.50 (or somesuch) and ended up paying 102.50 because the system increnments in $2.50 amounts in this dollar range. So, eBay is in effect saying "do I hear $102.50?" It looks at the proxy bid and sees that someone is willing to bid that much, and places the bid on behalf of the bidder, who now complains because he could have won for $101.50, even though eBay (using its well-documented rules) "said", "Do I hear $102.50?"
There's a big difference between saying eBay is an auctioneer (which I did not do) and likening (which means 'comparing' in my dictionary) them to an auctioneer.
"I'd rather be a lightning rod than a seismometer." -Ken Kesey
When PayPal first started they claimed to make their profit from the interest while your money sits in their accounts. When you send someone money, they take it right away. When you want to cash out, they write a check and it takes a few days or a week. Better yet for them, you maintain a positive balance. All the while they are earning interest on that money. It may not seem like much, but when you have millions and millions of users, many with hundreds of dollars on their balance.
Somehow PayPal manageges not to be classified as a bank either, which has been a hot topic in the past. They get to skirt much of the federal regulations.
I don't know if this is still their business model, but if so, i think it's great. Customers get a cool service and they make money as a byproduct of the service. It's a win-win situation when it works.
TODO: come up with a clever sig
Ebay's pricing policy: http://pages.ebay.com/help/sell/fees.html
their final fee is a percentage of the selling price.
What right do they have to that? Ebay doesn't risk any capital in the sales, they never take posession of the items or add value (by say.. inspecting items) so what claim do they have on the selling price. Now a price per bid, i could see maybe if they wanted to nickle and dime it like that. They sure do make a lot of money for a company that doesn't sell ANYTHING.
Can you be Even More Awesome?!
>> When EBay says "someone has outbid you with a bid of $100, do I hear $105?", your
>> automatic bidder won't bid $101; so your analogy is flawed.
> If I read the article correctly, your statement is exactly what the lawsuit is about.
> The guy was expecting to win with a bid of $101.50 (or somesuch) and ended up paying 102.50
> because the system increnments in $2.50 amounts in this dollar range. So, eBay is in effect
> saying "do I hear $102.50?"
If I've understood what you're saying correctly, then no.
The previous (lower) bid had been *accepted* (e.g. $101.50) and was the current highest bid. EBay sent a warning to the person that they *could* be outbid. But that had not happened yet.
No-one had outbid the person who just increased their maximum bid; so why would they increase their own bid?
I'm sure we could contrive a situation where that might be beneficial in a traditional auction (1), where the same person could "occupy" the next increment and scare off timid (or less serious) bidders (e.g. Alice bids $100; Bob is considering bidding up to his maximum of $105. Alice also has a maximum of $105. If Alice bids $105, Bob has to bid $110 to get it, which he won't do). But it's not what would happen in real life AFAIK.
Plus, it's here that EBay *isn't* like a traditional auction, and that the blurring of the auctioneer/proxy-bidder roles confuses things.
The "maximum bid" is *not* a proxy bid. It's not a bid at all; it's an instruction to the proxy bidder that "this is the most I want you to automatically bid."
This should have nothing to do with the auctioneer until an actual bid is made. And if the automatic bidder is filling the role of your (trusted) proxy (which it should), why would it increase its own bid if it is currently winning- unless you count (1) above as a valid tactic, which strikes me as fairly unusual.
But ultimately (and I accept that you likened EBay to an auctioneer rather than saying they were one), it starts to get counter-productive to compare eBay to traditional auctioneers (and it's rather academic anyway). The important question is whether eBay were clear about the behaviour of their automatic bidder. Since it isn't really behaviour that most people would expect, eBay should have made this clear (regardless of whether there is any justification for the behaviour).
If they didn't, then what they did was probably illegal.
I also think this illustrates a conflict of interest, as "your" automatic proxy bidder is being used to make eBay profit.
"Slashdot - News and Chat Sites Deviant". (Click "homepage" link above for details).
The shill bidding is bad enough on Ebay as it is without Ebay doing it on their own.
"It's NOT true"
I'm afraid it is Mariah. Its true.
"you're just a dumbass that doesn't know how proxy bidding actually works"
I think its pretty clear how it works. I'm sorry that you value ebay so highly that you don't think constructive criticism is a good thing.
"Why don't you try reading the information listed on the eBay website?"
That's generally good advice, Mariah, and I think most of us have done that. I know I have, and the behavior is inexplicable (that's fancy talk for unexplainable).
"Or, better yet, get the fuck off eBay so people like myself that actually know what the hell they're doing don't have to listen to whiny dumbasses bitch because they don't understand something as simple as a proxy bid."
That's a colorful way of putting it Mariah, and while we appreciate your input, its hard to take a 13 year old boy using a girl's name very seriously. As for your poor grasp of the english language. I suggest you finish school instead of dropping out. Someday if you work hard, you can get that Honda Civic, put that big pipe on the end, put a giant spoiler on, put a silly spoiler on, listen to that "rap" music, and pretend like Allen Iverson is your hero.
That would be special Mariah.
--
Suppose hypothetically you always bid your true maximum and win every auction. Since your true maximum is by definition the exact amount that the item is worth to you, that means you make zero profit from each auction. Unfortunately, it is rarely the case that one enters an economic transaction with the goal of gaining zero profit. In fact, quite the opposite is true. Usually the reason for entering a transaction is to gain more value in the trade than you give away. Economists even have a name for this type of profit: it's called consumer surplus, and you as a rational buyer are always trying to maximize the amount of consumer surplus in any economic transaction.
Now, back to eBay. In eBay, the buyers each place a semi-secret bid and and the highest bidder pays the amount of the second highest bid. It doesn't take much effort to prove that, assuming all players are rational, bidding your true maximum is always the optimal strategy. However, just because you bid that amount doesn't necessarily mean your goal is to pay that amount. Since not every bidder has the same true maximum, the winner is effectively "gambling" on what the difference between his true maximum and the second highest true maximum will be. I find that this perspective provides a much clearer framework for rigorous discussion of profit and loss in eBay auctions. In particular, it should now be obvious that any raising of the selling price does eat into the expected profits of a rational buyer, and directly affects that buyer's consumer surplus even if the higher price is still less than his true maximum.
I have completely ignored finer subtleties such as the non-rationality of other eBay bidders and the effects of imperfect information or collusion among buyers, which in practice mean that optimal bids (even for rational buyers) turn out to be lower than the true maximum.
That postitive value is called the "float". Lots of businesses earn a little extra on somebody else's float, especially big businesses. A good accounts payable department helps with this--make sure you don't pay your bills until the last possible moment, so the amount of interest you can earn between recieving a service and paying for it is maximized. Better yet, if you can get away with paying late, do so. Lots of larger businesses are like this. Oddly enough, anecdotally Walmart is one of the few large large businesses that always pays on time. Never early, but always on time.
If eBay's source code were open, we'd be able to check this ourselves, before trusting their software with our transactions. Of course, we can't require every application to release its source code. But at a certain scale of monopoly, the mechanics that execute their market rules become essential to whether they're abusing a monopoly.
--
make install -not war
Once the average joe comes along things like this are bound to happen.
Ignorance to how a simple bidding system works is not a good reason to bring about a class action lawsuit.
Each auction has a minimum bid increment. If you bid between increments, your bid will be accepted but will be overidden by a bid that cooperates with the minimum increment.
If you are the highest bidder already, tied for maximum bid, and proceed to bid again to raise your maximum bid then YOU ARE BIDDING AGAIN. The user is intentionally and knowingly bidding again even though they're already the highest bidder. Once another bid is placed you no longer have the first-bidder priviledge. Thus to maintain your status as highest bidder, the bid increases to the next increment to secure the lead. It's pretty simple.
It all boils down to: If you aren't willing to let your bid increase, don't increase your maximum bid. Ebay isn't twisting anyone's arm.
People think that they are "sticking it to the evil corporations" with all their frivolous lawsuits.
They sue big "evil" company for millions of dollars.
Big "evil" company considers this a cost of doing buisness, and passes the cost down in the price of the goods they sell.
We, the people, then pay for it in higher cost of goods and services.
Perhaps you don't buy from Ebay, but no part of the economy is exempt from the lawyer tax.
Or it least, it was, the last time I used it years ago. The trouble is it's so easy to abuse.
You know the exact time the auction will end. You can price snipe at the last minute.
You can determine the high bidders maximum bid. Most people will bid an even amount, say, $100. Bid $96, see the current at $100, and you know you can bid $105 at the last moment. See above.
Surprised as I am to find myself saying this, the largest auction house on the internet could stand to learn a thing or two from a game feature. WoW's auction house avoids both these issues. You don't know when an auction will end, only a range, and bids delay the end of the auction by a small amount. And there is no proxy bidding, so you don't know how high someone might be willing to go.
Not only is this summary 1/4 as long as the article summary published by Slashdot, it displays a superior level of understanding by its author. More importantly, it encourages readers to read the entire article, rather than pissing them off with typos or stupid statements like this
and this
This is a case where, if I were a schoolteacher and "symbiot" was my student, I would encourage plagiarism.
This is what's wrong with America...a guy feels he got ripped off for $1.50, and from this he launches a multi-million dollar class action law suit.
I want a new quote. One that won't spill. One that don't cost too much. Or come in a pill.
I do agree with your point. It seems whenever I look for something now, the majority of them are all from the same seller, and at essentially retail price.
Current bid is $7. Bid increment $.25. I bid $10. Ebay informs me that I'm the current high bidder at $10.
If I am to believe this, the previous high bid was less than $10, because he'd still be winning if it was $10 (first bid wins ties), and more than $9.50, because otherwise I'd be winning with a $9.75 bid. So he apparently bid between $9.51 and $9.99. An odd bid, no?
Okay, I can believe this happened. Once. Maybe twice. Three times, a stretch. But it's happened more than that.
Odd?
If you keep delaying the end of an auction as long as there are bidders (like a live auction), wouldn't that encourage even more "stupid" last minute got-to-have-it bidding?
I only try to "snipe" on eBay if it is a "one-of-a-kind" object I want.
If it is a commodity item, my max is approximately equal to the get-off-my-butt and go out and get-it price. (random dashes were not harmed in making this post).
This issue is a bit more complicated than you think.
anyone...anyone???
In eBay, the buyers each place a semi-secret bid and and the highest bidder pays the amount of the second highest bid.
Quite so, UNLESS two people enter identical high bid. But in many cases, the winner WILL pay less than the maximum amount he was willing to spend. Thus, in many cases, eBay is a good place to shop.
Again, what seems to be whizzing past YOUR head is that the problem comes up when you UP your maximum bid. Never, never do that. Decide your max bid ONCE, and place it. Then stick to your guns. If you win, you'll pay no more than the maximum you stated in a contract that you were willing to spend. Chances are quite good that you'll pay LESS than that. And you'll NEVER get "cheated" by this "outbidding yourself" bug, BECAUSE YOU AVOID THAT BEHAVIOR ENTIRELY. If you MUST have an item, wait until you've been outbid, THEN enter a new maximum.
But the best strategy of all is to bid at the last second. eBay auctions are timed, and thus the winner isn't the person with the most economic weight to throw around, but the person who bids just as time is expiring with an amount that is just enough to win. Since you can never be 100% certain of what the current maximum bid is, you should always bid what you personally feel is the most you're willing to spend on the item. If you want to make a "profit" on the purchase, then (DUH) factor that amount into the maximum you're willing to bid. How many economists do you think you'd have to talk to to figure that one out?
And, lest I repeat myself too often, if you're WILLING to spend an amount, then you're willing to spend it. Don't quibble about it, just be happy you've got the item at a price you were willing to pay. Obviously we will always regret when we could have spent even less, but if you're willing to spend the amount, then you shouldn't cry about it even as you do so.
You see? You see? Your stupid minds! Stupid! Stupid!
there are plenty of open source sniping tools. See an item you like, decide on the highest price you are willing to pay, set it up and wait.
no bidder's frenzy
no shills
no stress
Many times you will get you item at a fraction of your strike price
"If you are the highest bidder already, tied for maximum bid, and proceed to bid again to raise your maximum bid then YOU ARE BIDDING AGAIN."
If that's what people were arguing about, I would agree with you, but that's not what happens.
Let me make this crystal clear, because you and a lot of people don't understand what the argument is about:
1) Current price of Auction is $4. Bid increment is $2.
2) You put in a maximum proxy bid of $10.
3) Bid is raised to $6.
4) You look at the bid and think... Damn...should have made that higher. Still a day left, and if two guys bid, I'm out of luck.
5) So, your bid is still $6. You are still the high bidder at $6, but you raise your proxy minimum to $20.
6) Your expectation is that (a) You are still high bidder at $6 (b) your maximum is $20
7) what actually happens is that ebay forces you to bid again to $8, with a maximum of $20.
Do you see the issue here? I don't know how to be more clear, but it doesn't react in a logical way, and (surprise!) it favors ebay.
I mentioned this in another post, but it bears repeating. eBay is--first and foremost--an auction house.
They behave like other auction houses do, and increase bids in an incremental fashion. This prevents ninja-bidders at the last second from bidding pennies more then someone else and winning the auction. (Imagine that you're bidding on a 4.1M dollar house, and someone comes in with 0.01 seconds to go and bids $4,100,000.01).
This practice is NOTHING NEW. Where eBay had to modernize the concept was the fact that everyone is a proxy bidder on their site, no one is bidding in person. This means that they follow the other rules that auction houses follow, which is that when two proxy bids are registered for the same amount, the first person whose proxy bid arrives gets the bid, and the other person has already been outbid.
This is effectively the same thing that would happen were one to visit an actual, honest-to-God auction house. Two people would raise their paddles at the same time. The auctioneer would pick one of them (probably the one whom he sees first), and would accept a bid from them. The other person would either then keep their paddle up for the next bid increment, or they would put it down because that really was the highest dollar amount they were willing to pay.
Ignorance of how auctions work shouldn't entitle one to any amount of payout in a lawsuit. It should entitle one to a swift "ha ha" and a kick in the pants for wasting the rest of our time.
I currently have no clever signature witicism to add here.
In fact, that's how a normal auction works. In a normal auction, you enter a bid at a given amount. It can generally be any amount over the current bid along a set of incriments (like a bid might have to be a multiple of $10 for example). Then, if someone else wants to, the can bid higher than you, and back and forth. Sometimes there is a time limit, sometimes it ends when people stop bidding for a set period of time.
So, if an item is at a current bid of $500, and you enter a bid of $1000 and win, you pay $1000. Doesn't matter that only $500.01 would have been necessary to outbid the current bid, you bid $1000, you pay $1000.
The problem comes from people that want to have their cake and eat it too with proxy pidding. The idea with proxy bidding is that you choose a price which is the maximum you are willing to pay and enter that. You bid willl then be incrimented as much as needed to keep you winning, until your maximum is exceeded. The idea is you don't come back and change it, since you already set it at the max you want to pay.
However people want to be able to use it like that, but then play normal auction games of bidding less than they are axtually willing to pay and upping it later. Well, sorry, but if you do that, be prepared to pay more. Don't enter a maximum bid amount that you are not prepared to pay 100% of.
A person CAN win an auction if their high bid is not a full official increment above the lower bidder. This happens in the following situation:
I bid $5.02 on an auction first. Then you bid $5 in the final seconds, in an attempt to snipe my bid which is showing as the starting price of $0.99. I win the auction with a winning bid of $5.02, even though the next increment should be $5.25.
What eBay says is basically that you are invalidating your original proxy bid if you place a new maximum bid, so it (the proxy system) increases your previous maximum of $5.02 up to the minimum increment above the opposing bidder's $5.00 bid. With your initial proxy bid you had the advantage of placing the bid first, so even if the opposing maximum bid was exactly equal to yours, you would still win. By placing a new maximum bid you invalidated that time advantage and reset the proxy system. Your previous maximum of $5.02 is no longer high enough above the opposing bid to be a valid bid, so your bid is increased to the next increment to make it valid under their system.
It all has to do with time, and whether the proxy system should be reset by a new maximum bid or continue to consider the old maximum as a valid bid and leave it alone, even if it wouldn't have qualified if it hadn't been your previous maximum. It's described fairly clearly when you read the help files on proxy bidding, so I doubt this will hold up in court. I'm looking at it from all sides and can't really find fault with eBay. You agreed to use their system, they described how the proxy bidding works (including what happens if you place a new maximum bid), so I can't see that there is really anything heinous going on. There is no manipulation, it's all above board for once.
If you want to save a dollar here and there, stick with your original maximum bid and quit futzing with the proxy system, or snipe it with a precise amount. Either way, don't complain when you lose the auction.
It's still a value for used items. It's a great place to save money if you don't mind getting something used, or to make it if you have something you no longer need. For example I got a Hafler P1500 off there for like $150. A quick search on the net shows that $350 is about the minimum you can get one new for. Well I don't need a new one, it's a solid state amplifier, it's highly unlikely to break if properly cared for. So I picked one up used. I was happy, I saved $200, the seller was happy, he got $150 for something he didn't need.
You are right that new goods generally aren't that good a value. That only generally happens in the event of overstock. Some companies eBay overstock becuase it's cheap and easy. However buying used gear is often the way to go. No, you don't want to do that for low-end consumer gear, that stuff breaks quick. However a deceant idea is to just spend a bit more on some used pro gear.
For example, if you want a VCR, you are looking at like $20-50 for a cheapie, and probably $100 for a "good" one. Not likely to be all that high quality, and not likely to last. Or, you could cruise to eBay and find a used pro unit. There's a JVC pro editing SVHS VCR going for like $100 right now. Thing is 6-years old, but guess what? They are built to last, it'll still probably work in 15 years if you take care of it and it will look a shitload better than a cheapie consumer deck.
Before eBay, there was a contingent of lonely, fat housewives and weirdos that collected tons of goofy, worthless crap that nobody cared or knew about. After eBay, this contingent of social malcontents has found a place on the net where they can let their obsessive pathology run wild. If you don't believe me, look at eBay's forums and see all the ADD/bipolar people complaining their their treasure hunt game is rigged. If you think Slashdotters are antisocial nerds, you have no idea... eBay locals make AOL people look like the M.I.T. graduation class.
Remember folks, this is the site that gave us the virgin mary grilled cheese sandwich. Of course it's populated by a bunch of loonies who are desperately looking to get their 15 minutes of fame and move out of their trailers. Why is Slashdot giving these people any publicity? Every other day someone is threatening a class action against eBay because they got negative feedback over the 18-century electric can opener they sold being claimed as bogus.
However, be prepared for the incrimental bid logic to up your bid if it is currently at your max, but doesn't fall on an incriment. That's not a real problem, just be ready for it to happen, should you decide you are now for some reason willing to pay more. The net effect is the same as if you had bid the higher amount to start with.
Why not just bid what you are actually willing to spend? When I buy on eBay, I research the value of an item, and set a hard maximum I am willing to pay. This value then goes in the bid box and I don't fuck with it. If I get outbid, well someone wanted it more than I did. I'll find another auction.
Con artists ;)
Comment removed based on user account deletion
AC= "Here it is simply. If someone else bids 100 then you bid $100.10 You are now the high bidder at $100.10. If you did nothing else and no one else bid you would win at $100.10. But if you decide you really want the item and bid like $150.00. Ebay will raise the price to $102.50. Which means you just bid against your self. This guy actually has a point in my opinion."
If you want to win an auction, hang out until there is 30 seconds left and outbid all those early fools.
The system doesn't work the way I want it to! Let's sue!
Cry me a river. I hope these guys get bitchslapped by the judge and/or jury.
Mod down posts with a "Free Mac Mini/iPod" sig, they're spam!
The plaintiffs may have a leg to stand on, but (and IANAL) it looks shaky at best. This has the markings of just another "last-minute" case attempt. If I were to wager, I'd say the attorneys are hoping for an out-of-court settlement.
I have had enough problems with ebray that I will not buy from there. Did you know that if you camplain, the seller can block you from buying again. It happened to me. I purchased something (a Sabre saw) from the Sears eBray store that was sent broken. (Physically in two pieces - and it was not caused by the shipper! Also it was the 3rd or 4th thing I had bought from them.) They treated me like dirt and it took a long time for them to agree to take it back - so of course I gave them a negative feedback. A few months later, I tried to buy something else from them and I was blocked. The reply was that they did it because I gave negative feedback. - Thus the feedback ratings are at best a sham. The real funny thing is that I went into my local Sears and bought a better similar item on sale for less.
This message was brought to you by "Lack of Sleep."
It's just a feature of the system, right?
I always wondered how this worked on Ebay.
if proxy.maxbid>=uppedbid {
Remember, Ebay acts as a proxy and bids on your behalf.
I think it should not alllow you to trump a bid of $5 with NEW bid $5.02, that is, instead it should at the point when someone else bids $4, then the proxy should not bid the minimum increment(making it $5), but should voluntarily bid more than the increment, making it $5.02.
People have been giving goood argument for both sides, but they missed this detail.
In code, since ebay is too stupid for this, I am lending a hand:
uppedbid= auction.currentbid+increment(auction.currentbid)
proxy.currentbid= uppedbid
}
if proxy.maxbid>proxy.currentbid {
nextuppedbid= proxy.currentbid+increment(proxy.currentbid)
if nextuppedbid>proxy.currentbid {
proxy.currentbid= proxy.maxbid
}
}
if proxy.currentbid > auction.currentbid {
auction.currentbid= proxy.currentbid
auction.holderid= proxy.forid
}
-- help save life and donate to the fireguard
"my max is approximately equal to the get-off-my-butt and go out and get-it price"
I knew there had to be people that stupid.
For commodoties, you never pay retail, because you're not getting retail from ebay.
I won't explain it to you because you seem to be willing to pay full price for something worth far less.
Now the all makes sense. I always wondered who was paying 5% under retail for used goods with no return policy. You are the embodiment of an ebay moron! OMFG!
After all this time observing ebay, looking at ebay is like looking at an UNETHICAL shady scam company speaking out of both sides of their mouth.
ebay does everything in its power to increase $'s. They talk out of both sides of their mouth. They'll say "just bid your max." Then when everyone does that and they don't have many buyers but they want more $'s, they start emailing people to "increase your max" and they don't care if they confuse people as long as they can sucker you into giving up more $.
Actually, I'm surpised with the huge number of other cruel, monopolistic things ebay does such that those things are ignored, but ebay gets sued over such a trivial manner as bidding increments.
This is like the time BEFORE they were going to increase fees this year, BUT AT THE SAME TIME, they CALL UP to SWEET-TALK EBAY MEMBERS (probably one of the first time in history many members get a call) to start up a store, increase their listings, etc. KNOWING THE MEMBERS' FEES WILL SHOOT THROUGH THE ROOF GIVING EBAY MORE $'s.
Or when they coax brand name designer companies to join their special VERO club and promise to be an enforcer for the designer companies to shut down sellers selling counterfeits. Well, people STILL sell counterfeits and ebay still gets their $'s. ebay deserves the Tiffany lawsuit.
There are SOOOOO many examples of this it isn't funny anymore.
* weedshare.com 50% to artists, webjay.org iuma.com CDBaby.com Epitonic.com ampcast.com
I wonder how much of that 3.27B came from "cheating a few pennies" on each auction?
I mean, the average person only gets burned a few cents, what's the big deal?
That's just smart business right? I mean, its every CEO's job to make money first, and worry about legality second. If he doesn't, somebody else will right?
All these people, if they don't like it, then they should stop using it, right?
Its just people trying to stick it to an ultrahonest business like ebay, right? After all, ebay is just trying to run a legitimate business, right?
It's described fairly clearly when you read the help files on proxy bidding, so I doubt this will hold up in court. I'm looking at it from all sides and can't really find fault with eBay. You agreed to use their system, they described how the proxy bidding works (including what happens if you place a new maximum bid), so I can't see that there is really anything heinous going on. There is no manipulation, it's all above board for once.
I think a crucial part of the lawsuit is that the email Ebay sends to encourage the high bidder to raise his maximum doesn't mention that it will also raise his bid. Quoting the Internetnews article:
"When bidders reach their maximum bids, they get an automated e-mail confirmation that they're the highest bidder. But it includes the warning, 'Important: You are one bid away from being outbid. If another user places a bid, you will not win. To increase your chances of winning, enter your highest maximum bid.'
The bidder would assume that his bid would only be raised again if someone outbid him. However, in some cases, the system automatically increases the bidder's already high bid by enough to meet the minimum increment."
The point that everyone seems to have missed here is that whether ebay are doing this or not, they're not profiting from it in any way, only the person auctioning the goods could ever profit. Ebay's "tax" on winnings is so low as to not increase nor decrease if this is true.
So they're not gaining from it at all.
The bidder are not eBay's customer, and their maximum benefit come from maximum prices.
So, when you use proxy bidding, you give eBay the information needed and the option to abuse the system, eBay can pretend to be whatever other person and raise prices up to your maximum bid because you are going to be the winner.
This has already happened to me and if you are really interested in an item, it's much better to be in front of your computer 10 seconds before the bid ends and make then your best offer.
How about this one...
I place a $50 bid on a item currently at $40, and of course become the highest bidder at $40.50. A few hours later, eBay tells me I've been outbidded, but then a few minutes later sends meanother email to tell me the latest bid has been withdrawn, and I am again the highest bidder... at precisely $50! if that doesn't smell of shill bidding...
Anyway, I was prepared and willing to pay fifty bucks, but hey! anyone likes a discount!
Xavier
Do I make sense? Please report if not.
Ebay goes out of its way to encourage people to only bid the highest amount they're willing to pay, on the first bid. If you aren't willing to do that, then how is it Ebay's fault? It's not like their policies are buried 6 levels deep in a 3-point font.
Now that is a scary thought.
No, not a world without eBay, but a world where someone thinks they can't live without eBay. You really need to switch off your broadband connection for a week, and remember that most of the good things in life do not occur in cyberspace.
If you disagree, post your argument. (-1, Overrated) isn't your personal censorship tool for views you don't like.
This is not "price gouging". This is nothing evil on eBay's part. So what if they get an extra cent from whatever small fraction of auctions in which this occurs? They didn't do this for the money, they did it because it was easier and not significantly better than any other way.
There's a lot of discussion here about whether or not increasing your maximum ought to constitute a new bid. eBay decided when they implemented the bidding system that it would. It was strictly an implementation question Odds are the people on the business end never comprehended such a distinction could exist.
Think about the bidding system. Each auction has a list of bids associated with it. If eBay is implemented with a relational database backend, they have a (very very large) table of bids. The table has columns for all the necessary info about a bid (auction it's connected to, user who made the bid, maximum value, time it was bid). When somebody bids, a new row is created in the table of bids. The question is what happens in the abstract case of "raising one's maximum". Let's look at this more practically.
"Raising one's maximum" is defined as entering a bid in an auction where one is already the maximum bidder. Simply determining if this is the case requires answering a few questions:
- Who is the winning user, and how large is their bid?
- Is the user making this bid that user? (I.e., is the current user already the winner).
- Is the new bid's maximum greater than the previous maximum (the previous winning bid)
Depending on how eBay is implemented, this may result in another database query. It probably won't, but it's certainly additional CPU time and complexity. The engineers may have decided not to write this special case, to save a little bit of computation. (And when you have as many bids per second as eBay does, it definitely helps.)In the absence of the special case as above, a new bid by the winning bidder is treated precisely the same as a new bid by a non-winning bidder -- i.e., it can be no lower than the next increment above the current price.
IANAL, and I don't know what legally constitutes "price gouging" or whatever the exact charges in the suit are... but this certainly doesn't seem to have any merit.
In conclusion, this was not an evil move on eBay's part. They're not trying to make a buck off anybody (they're already succeeding beyond anybody's wildest, most avaricious dreams at doing exactly that). This behavior is logical, documented, and most likely the product of an implementation decision. Case has no merit... wouldn't it be nice if for once the judge saw it that way too?
Save time now so you can waste it later
Simply ignore all e-mails from E-bay. Half of them are phishing attempts anyway.
The person willing to pay most money gets the item. You should bid your real maximum and walk away. If you don't get the item - well, it was too expensive anyway. There'll be another one along soon.
What I'd like to see is some sensible way of handling the auctions where shops sell hundreds of identical items at hourly intervals. I want one of them, but I don't care which one - so I want to bid on only those items which are not being bid on.
What next, going to sue a casino in Las Vegas because you didn't understand how to play blackjack or some other BS? Be responsible for your own actions.
If I were the judge I would put the plantiff in jail for being stupid. He is obviously a danger to the public. Maybe that would cut down on these stupid lawsuits that cost us all in the end. The legal system shouldn't be used as a lottery.
The full complaint can be read online in a PDF file http://www.lerachlaw.com/cases/ebay/complaint.pdf
www.gamesug.com
Their support is pathetic - "clear your cache and cookies" is their answer to everything. The fees are too high, then PayPal fees on top. The site always breaks somewhere, etc etc. Having said that, I have two silver powerseller accounts, my profit is about 75% and I am making more more money tax free than I ever have in my life. Bid High, Bid Often.
the message states you COULD be outbid, not you WILL, the end user then has to go and change max bid themselves, i actually find the service useful for taking care of those cock block poachers, my dreamcast recently fried, i checked every local store in my area, eb gamestop funcoland discreplay etc etc, nobody had a dreamcast so i turned to ebay where i found a dc for 9.99, if it werent for that auto bidding after waiting 2 days some asshole would have beaten me by bidding 2 seconds before the aution ended, i applaud ebay for their efforts to make it more like a real auction instead of having a you snooze you lose scenario.
and im only anoynmous cuz im at work. yah im a coward but i need a money to you know, buy stuff.
> But what drive's Paypal's fees (besides the usual bookkeeping/admin costs), are credit card fees.
> Remember that every time a vendor accepts a credit card payment, the VENDOR, not the customer,
> must pay the credit card company a fee, which generally ranges from 2-5% of the transaction.
> So Paypal is acting as the vendor so that each seller doesn't have to start up his own merchant CC account.
> You'll find that Paypal's fees aren't that much higher than the credit card fees alone.
> But that is also why Paypal started to try to encourage buyers to use their bank accounts to fund transactions,
> to avoid having to pay the CC fees.
According to PayPal, "PayPal charges Premier and Business accounts to receive payments. Personal accounts are free, but may not receive credit card payments."
Let's say you want to sell something for $300 on PayPal.
If you have a "Personal Account", you cannot accept money from accounts funded by Credit Cards at all -- so no CC fees for PayPal.
Otherwise, if you have a "Premier/Business Account", you pay $9 (comes to 3%) as fees, which will either cover the vendor CC fees, if the buyer's account is funded by a credit card or will go straight to PayPal's coffers if the buyer's money came from another source.
Either way, PayPal wins.
Oh, and if you got paid in international currency, that's another 2.5% for PayPal. Sweet.
PayPal wants you to use a bank account because that way they can access your money. That's right, in case of a "dispute", they can just withdraw any amount that wish from your account and hold it for half a year. Double sweet.
30 years ago, petroleum engineers did a study proven that fair honest auctions always favor the seller and the reason is actually straight forward:
The winner of an item being auctioned isn't the person with the best eye for bargains, it's the person with the most optimistic over estimate of the item's real worth.
I stopped bidding on anything on ebay after several incidents where I watched items get bidded right up past the price you could by them for on Amazon or Best Buy.
Clear, Dark Skies
Comment removed based on user account deletion