I honestly think that most of the time the people I am bidding against are the person putting the item up for action.

That's forbidden, Chas.

I broke my Ebay Cherry literally a week ago

Wouldnt it be possible to have a second screenname and bid it up?

EBay multing?

Bid History

Chas
Kim Jong Il
Chas
Kim Jong Il
Chas

I don't even understand the the practice of waiting until the end of the auction to enter one's max bid. I simply enter my max bid on my opening bid. If an item is not worth more $100 to me on Monday then why would I all of a sudden on Wednesday feel it is worth more to me just because someone else feels it is worth more to them?

Either I get it for the price I am willing to pay or someone else gets it for more than I was willing to pay.

Buy It Now.

I don't even understand the the practice of waiting until the end of the auction to enter one's max bid. I simply enter my max bid on my opening bid. If an item is not worth more $100 to me on Monday then why would I all of a sudden on Wednesday feel it is worth more to me just because someone else feels it is worth more to them?

Either I get it for the price I am willing to pay or someone else gets it for more than I was willing to pay.

Nas is exaggerating what actually occurs on eBay.

Just enter the amount you're willing to pay whenever you want. Everyone else will do the same and someone will win the item.

But don't you simply set the maximum bid and it is hidden? It only outbids the last one by $1. Do the fakes enter 80 bids to get it up to where they want?

I think you're upset because other people value items more highly than you do.

You lost some auctions. Get over it. It was worth more to someone else than it was to you.

My experience: I work for an auctioneer.

1) Seller has no idea if a max bid has been placed.
He can continue bidding until he hits that max bid
2) If Seller assumes there is one, he doesn't know what it is.
Again, he can keep bidding until he becomes max bidder.
3) If Seller bids too high, and wins the auction, he now has to pay eBay their cut. (And if he puts in a "nonpayment" case, and this occurs a couple times...eBay finds out about his proxy account. Game over.)
He can non-pay, and just cancel the account if this happens, and start a new one. If you're careful, how would ebay ever find out?
4) Even if you still think the seller would do this, then what would stop the seller from putting in his own max bid on his proxy account...which means your last second bid will STILL get pushed up?
The power seller on ebay has hundreds of items listed at once. There's no way he's going to be able to bid up items at the last second with that kind of volume. But if he/she wanted to bid something up with a few days to go in order to drive a higher price, that could be done.

My experience: I work for an auctioneer.

I think you're upset because other people value items more highly than you do.

You lost some auctions. Get over it. It was worth more to someone else than it was to you.

1) Seller has no idea if a max bid has been placed.
2) If Seller assumes there is one, he doesn't know what it is.
3) If Seller bids too high, and wins the auction, he now has to pay eBay their cut. (And if he puts in a "nonpayment" case, and this occurs a couple times...eBay finds out about his proxy account. Game over.)
4) Even if you still think the seller would do this, then what would stop the seller from putting in his own max bid on his proxy account...which means your last second bid will STILL get pushed up?

My experience: I work for an auctioneer.

Those wounds are still fresh...

I don't think you understand Nas' point fully. By setting your max bid early, you're giving the seller an opportunity to bid up the price of the auction with his other fake account. If something is up to $100 on day 2 of a 7 day auction, that seller probably thinks he could at least push the bidding up to $125. By throwing in your bid in the closing seconds, you take away some of the opportunity for bidding shenanigans by the seller.

This forum is proof enough that a very, very small percentage of internet users know how to use internet proxies. eBay logs all activity with IP addresses. Logs are usually referred to on any web auction platform on resolution cases.

Waiting also protects you from the half-ass bidder that doesn't really want the item but sees the price is low.

If you bid $100 max on Day 1 and that puts the price at $20. Then, you might see that guy on Day 2 that says "Hey, that's only $20, I'm going to bid $22. Oh, not enough, $25. Damn! I'll go $35 but then I'm stopping. Shit! OK, $40. Forget this."

Now you pay $41.

But, if you had not bid at all, DoofusBidder bids his $20 on Day 2 and thinks "I've got this". You sweep in on the last day and bid your $100 and grab it for $21 and save yourself $20.

No one does this.

The super cheap buyers jump in late, and the "max value to me" buyers place max bids whenever they want.