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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
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.
Once again the little-guy gets the short end of the stick
Maybe the 'little guy' needs to be a little more careful with the pointy end of the stick, if he doesn't want the big guys to come and take the stick away.
This is a perfect example of a frivolous lawsuit. Some functional illiterate from the Land of Fruits and Nuts logged onto eBay and placed a couple of bids without having his mommy read him the eBay terms of service first. It's amazing (and frightening) how few eBay users actually understand how eBay auctions work.
Dahlmann tightly grips the knife, which he may have no idea how to use, and steps out into the plain.
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
I think that's going a bit far. Have you never tried to buy an item where lots of people are selling the same thing? Sure, I might be prepared to pay up to £100 for one, but if someone lists an identical one the next day, I'd rather have the option of trying a £50 bid on the first, and then bidding on the cheaper one if I get outbid. There's nothing worse than having your bid automatically incrementing whilst you are watching someone else get the same thing much cheaper.
Of course, auction sniping is the real way to go. Prevents all those fickle people upping their bids maximums.
Homme petit d'homme petit, s'attend, n'avale