puzzled about ebay situation

[Goldfish4209]

I'm bidding on a water gun on eBay. But as soon as I bid, I was outbid immediately. I tried again and I was outbid right away. Like, on the screen right after I finished bidding, it said "You have been outbid..." Anyway, I'm wondering if the guy who keeps outbidding me has a program to automatically bid because he keeps raising his bid by the minimum increment. If he is using a program, is it allowed? (sorry I don't have much eBay experience)

[cantab]

Nope, that's how eBay itself works. eBay uses a 'proxy bidding system' where you enter the maximum you are willing to pay. However, you end up paying only a dollar more than the next highest bidder. eBay then displays said dollar-higher value as the 'current highest bid'. When you put in a bid higher than the current, but lower than the maximum another is willing to pay, eBay raises the current highest bid to a dollar more than you bid, by the original highest bidder.

Basically, for eBay, just bid the most you're willing to pay. You might not have to pay it, only more than the next person is willing to pay. It's also a good idea to bid as late as possible ('sniping')- this gets cheaper prices as you don't give others the chance to get an idea of how much you think the item works, and because lots of people DON'T just bid the most they'll pay straight off.

PS: the 'a dollar' amount varies depending on the current bid, for more costly items it's higher, for really cheap stuff it's lower

[Silence]

Good explanation. cantab, would you mind if we used it on the website? We do have some eBay tips articles already, but we don't talk about the bidding process. That's something we'll probably add eventually anyway.

[Goldfish4209]

I see. Thanks, cantab. Strangely however the auction just vanished into thin air even though there was supposed to be one more day left...(it was the CPS 1700 NIB)

[cantab]

Sure, feel free to use the exp.

eBay acutions can vanish. The seller can end the auction early selling to either the current high bidder or no-one. The latter is common when people offer items for sale in other places as well as eBay.

[Goldfish4209]

Weird, The auction came back, except this time there are 2 CPS 1700s for sale. I wonder why the guy didn't sell both the first time. I think there's something fishy about all this.

[Silence]

Maybe he didn't realize how much it would go for?

At any rate, make sure you check the seller's rating beforehand by clicking on his name. It should show his feedback, which should be over 99% positive to be safe. As far as I know, there isn't any history of scamming in water gun sales, but you may want to check his other current items to make sure he didn't sell $1 items to inflate his rating.

[Ben]

I explained a few things about how eBay works in this recent article: http://www.sscentral.org/faq/discontinued.html

Let me say though that I think cantab did a better job explaining the bidding process that I did. It works as he described it in a nutshell. I offer some other tips for eBay in that article so check it out.

[Silence]

You may want to add something about checking sellers' ratings/history/items for sale. Questions about legitimacy are probably common (and for good reason) among new buyers.

[Goldfish4209]

Yeah, I figure there's not much danger of being scammed while buying water guns due to the fact that if someone really wanted to cheat others out of money, they'd do it with a more popular and expensive product. Why sell a fake water gun for $50 when you can sell a fake video game console, computer, etc. for more?

[Ben]

That's a good idea. I'll add that in tomorrow. I should also at least link to a few guides about eBay scamming. While I realize it's most common on electronic items, if we introduce people to eBay they'll probably use it to buy other things so we might as well warm them.

Edit: We've been too active lately. This is like the trillionth post I've made that was at the same time as another one!

[DX]

You can always trust Warmaster_Water_Guns.........to scam you for EVERY SINGLE DOLLAR MUWHAHAHAHAHAHA...just kidding of course.

[cantab]

The most likely eBay scam on guns are rip-off guns. At first glance the pic looks like a CPS, and the seller will often describe it as such "HIGH-POWER CPS SUPER SOAKER WATER GUN", but it turns out to be an oversized underpowered air-pressure gun.

To spot these - look carefully at the pictures - if there are stickers saying things other than Super Soaker/SS/CPS (eg "HH Dream"), then it's a ripoff. If you can't see the reservoir cap, and the reservoir looks the wrong shape, it's a ripoff (lots of them use bottle-type reservoirs). If you're still in doubt (ie gun looks normal and no stickers at all, which could be a ripoff or the real well-used thing), ask the seller for a photo of the nozzle. CPS nozzles are a lot bigger than the ripoffs. Or there might be other distinguishing marks (embossed notices perhaps?).

[Goldfish4209]

Yeah, there are tons of those. One looks like a CPS 1-3-5 with different colors. I don't mind fakes on eBay as long as the sellers don't actually go out and say "This is a CPS super soaker". then i think, uh, do you really believe someone's going to fall for that?

[Silence]

Yeah, I was mainly referring to scams such as taking the money and not sending the water gun, or sending a broken one. I should have been clearer. It's more obvious when the seller is selling a fake, although that's something we should tell people to watch out for, too.