Explain this auction to me...
 

What am I missing here...

http://cgi.ebay.com/Traxxas-E-Revo-B...#ht_500wt_1156

High bid. This insures he will not be out bid beyond 300.

Something is really fishy about that. 2 people have bid over the 2 grand mark.

You should take a look at the "other" auctions this person has.

$1600 for a baby stroller?

What the heck?

If you're talking about maximum bid, I don't think listings show that -- only the actual bid. I don't think high bids really insure anything other than you won't spend anything higher than your specified amount.

But yeah, as mentioned before there is more than one bidder above the $2000 mark. What's the point? Is that going to attract real buyers or something? Apparently. If you look at his 5 sales done before, he actually has (real?) buyers buying stock Revos for $1000!

It's a shill bidding scheme for sure. Just wait- at the last second the seller will retract the high bid of his helper leaving the second highest bidder to pay their top bid by default. I'm going to report all of their auctions to eBay for them to investigate. The same guy with a (2) feedback rating has bid on many of the items, and someone else with a (1) rating has the others. Definitely a scam.

I admit there is a SLIGHT possibility that those auctions are legit. It just doesn't look right to me, as someone who was almost a victim of shill bidding.

It's probably good to report it anyways. Although he does have past sales...maybe it's with his/her own brother and then they just give back the money afterwards.

There's a sucker born every minute! And usualy they run traxxas and max amps.... What a joke.

How exactly does the shill bidding on Ebay work? What's the logic? Why would someone go over their own budget, or a sane amount of money, like absolutely max 500$ for a revo on ebay? If I was bidding for a car that was worth 500$ at a store, I wouldn't go over 500$. Or basically, I wouldn't bid higher than what an item was worth.

Somebody is smoking crack or Shilling, possibly both ?

I think it works like someone mentioned above. The seller has a phantom bidder (either himself with a different account or a friend) and if the item is not selling for what they want, the phantom bidder places an outrageous and artificial bid. The real bidder sees he is outbid at the $300 mark, and tries to incrementally win the bid by continuing to increase his max bid. Some people get stuck in a "I have to win this" mentality when doing this and keep on increasing their max bid. Anyway, then the seller retracts the abnormally high bid leaving the next guy as "winner".

True, but in this case there are two bidders bidding outrageous amounts. The real buyer willing to pay $300 has no reason to up his bid.

Another possibility: it may be the buyer(s) trying to scam a new seller, who gets a ridiculously high selling price, gets some fake payment and ships it out not knowing he got scammed.

:neutral:

Shill bidding is obviously more effective with hard to get items, out of stock items, etc, but I wouldn't bid more than it's worth. Atleast, not by much. Maybe 10%, maybe 30%, it depends on the items value. 10.000$ or 10$ will get different % increases for example. My question was directed to the people who bid 500% over, or regret it when they figure out they've been shilled. Like with this auction.

If you bid 1500$ for an E-revo that's worth 500$ in a store to keep up with the other "bidder", then it's nobodies fault but you. You should have stopped at 550$ and just bought it at another store... obviously..

Possibly, but you would still get raped by fees. Esp final value fees. You would be better off selling sticks of gum for .01 I would bet.


Some sorta BS going on for sure

Probably a shipping insurance or paypal insurance scam.