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Ponkochan
PostPosted: Wed Mar 12, 2008 8:43 pm    Post subject: Anyone Notice E-Bay's New TRICK?

(This was originally posted by Rick (fire81) and then I inadvertently deleted it........ after it had been moved to the ebay "Pros & Cons" section. oops! Sorry, Rick! Smile My original reply is after it.)







I hadn't noticed that until you mentioned it, Rick. I thought they were using that policy only on auctions when they reached $200.00.

I checked out ebay's forums and this is one answer that seems to explain this policy. I think that it sux!


Quote:

On March 3 the practice of masking bidders' identities, which had been in effect for some time when an item was bid over $200, was extended to all items. The reason given was to prevent spoofed "Second Chance" offers. The harm this change does is that it prevents bidders who frequently bid on certain types of item from recognizing whom they are competing with, and adapting their bidding strategy accordingly. For instance, if I know that the current high bidder on an item bought a similar one recently he may be less aggressive on the current one.

This policy seems misguided to me. First, eBay has repeatedly warned against out-of-system messages purportedly from eBay or eBay sellers, and legitimate, prudent users should not be inconvenienced to protect foolish ones. Second, the number of legitimate "second chance" offers has to be tiny compared to the total number of auctions, and if they were eliminated altogether there is nothing to prevent a seller whose item went unclaimed from relisting it and sending bidders on the first auction a note that it has been relisted and giving the new item number. In bidding in several hundred auctions I've received ONE "second chance", on an item which another bidder and I had bid back and forth several times in the last half hour and doubled the bid. When I got the "second chance" I suspected that the other bidder was working in coordination with the seller to bid me up (a "shill"), and since he had won I was under no further obligation to accept the "second chance".

Last August the previous policy was "tweaked" by replacing "Bidder 1", "Bidder 2" with "a**b", which is an encoded version of the bidder's user name. His feedback rating was also appended, somewhat addressing issues raised earlier in this thread. The message announcing this indicated that eBay recognized that tranparency was important to the user community. It still is important, and I feel there are better ways to deal with spoofs and second chances.


Here's the link to the ebay forum where I found this:

http://forums.ebay.com/db1/thread.jspa?threadID=2000298866&start=4800

Lizzy

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