"S. Anderson" wrote:
> Sorry, but I don't understand this entirely. When I checked it out, it said the minimum bid was
> $6200. If someone bid $800 and it's an auction, isn't the next bid, even if it's $801, the
> winning bid? I assumed the "minimum" bid is really a reserve of some sort? Meaning, if he didn't
> get a bid or $6200 he was not legally forced to sell? Haven't bought much on e-bay as you can
> probably tell...
Clearly, you don't understand how Ebay works. That puts you in the same boat with about 90% of the
buyers on Ebay. That minimum bid of $6200 is not set by the seller. It's set by the previous 2
highest bidders. Someone has already bid $6000 and someone else has bid at least $100 more than
$6000 so the current bid under the Ebay system is $6100. When bids are that high, Ebay requires
larger bid increments ($100 in this case). You need to beat the current bid ($6100) by the current
bid increment ($100) so the minimum bid now is $6200. With the Ebay system, the final bid is
actually set by the second highest bidder.
Oh, and just because the minimum bid was $800 when there were no bids, that doesn't mean the initial
bidder can't bid much higher; in this case, it had to be $6000 in order for the second bidder to
drive it to $6100.
http://pages.ebay.com/help/index_popup.html?new=bid.html
I do suspect shill bidding though. There's just too many signs. I notice it doesn't even seem to be
in the database anymore. That suggests Ebay noticed suspicious behaviour and removed it.
--Bill Davidson
--
Please remove ".nospam" from my address for email replies.
(wife's rule)
