Re: eBay to Hide Winning Bidders


"mazorj" <mazorj@xxxxxxxxxxx> wrote in message
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"Bruce Remick" <remick@xxxxxxx> wrote in message
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"Reid Goldsborough" <reidgoldsborough@xxxxxxxxx> wrote in message
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On Oct 29, 1:59 pm, "Bruce Remick" <rem...@xxxxxxx> wrote:

Why do you need to see the winning bidder's ID in an auction that's not
yours?

Here's why this is bad. This is how people get tipped off -- or used
to get tipped off -- that they're about to become victim of
counterfeit fraud, which as you no doubt know is rampant there.

Many people have been active alerting winning bidders to known
forgeries that they were about to buy as authentic coins despite this
being against eBay rules and despite risking their eBay I.D.s. Selling
forgeries is against eBay rules too though eBay is far more active and
spends far more resources in stopping "auction interference" than
auction fraud. With this new rule, the alerting of fraud will stop and
the selling of forgeries will only increase yet further in frequency.
Watch these Chinese forgeries explode on the market.

Others do it differently, but what I've personally been doing when
coming across transparently blatant forgery scams, if I have the time
(not enough time in the day ...) and inclination, is pointing
"winning" bidders to Web pages I or others have done about a
particular forgery type, giving them a chance to educate themselves.
No auction interference, just providing an educational service. This
will now be impossible too.

If some winning bidders are inclined to respond to third party
post-auction offers-- fraudulent or otherwise-- then they should be
prepared to accept any risks, as well as the wrath of eBay. I would
venture that the vast majority of items auctioned on eBay are not items
that are being counterfeited. With coins, I don't believe it's the
obligation of the educated to warn eBay bidders of a potential
counterfeit. Who's to say that the "warner" isn't a scammer or
competitor himself? If one must take up the cause, simply warn eBay
about a suspicious auction. That should satisfy any moral obligation.
Otherwise, I still don't see why an honest person should be that
concerned about not seeing the ID of a winning bidder in someone else's
auction.

I don't do much on e-Bay, but isn't that one way to spot a possible shill
bidder's ID? If Seller X has a lot of offerings being scooped up at the
last minute by Buyer Z for prices significantly below the BIN price, you
might be looking at "rescue buys" made by the seller because the
legitimate bids were below the seller's expectations.

Also, I would think that if you've regularly been bidding against
individuals who share an interest in a certain type of item, you might
want to know their bidding patterns, and that knowledge can't be complete
without knowing who is getting the winning bids and who is likely to drop
out at what levels.

I doubt that many buyers are fanatic enough to do this very often, but you
did ask the question.

Before eBay began to adopt rules to keep bidders ID's anonymous, I had
"competitive collector friends" who used to monitor my bidding to see if I
had stumbled upon something that they missed, rather than doing any
extensive searching on their own. Now they can't do that anymore. So with
that in mind, I'm for not disclosing the bidder ID's during an auction, or
even after. If I miss out on something with my last minute bid, I still
know I bid my max and don't really care if the high bidder was a shill or
not. The hidden bidder ID thing should not be a serious concern, from my
own viewpoint.






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