ebay question

[sevencyclist]

In a lot of cycling products, I frequently see bidders with names like e***4 or something like that. What's up with those names? Are those done by some random people who wants to jack up the price of items up to a certain level? Or are they inserted by someone to make sure the product is not taken off the market prematurely? Or are they done by the sellers?

[Ozz]

I think it is a way to keep bidders anonymous...not sure how it works.

[thwart]

The folks at eBay do it in "pricier" auctions to keep the level of scamming (by low-lifes stealing your user name) down.

Not sure it makes a big difference, however... :crap:

[flux]

It's "anonymous bidding". The seller controls that option in the listing.

[sevencyclist]

Thanks. That makes it clear. I understand how they want to make the bidding anonymous.

[gone]

I believe all of these responses are incorrect. In the past, whenever you bid, bought or sold something on ebay, you could be guaranteed to get an email within 24 hours or less of auction close, usually from somewhere in Singapore, saying "If you have another item like xxx I'll gladly pay you double for it" or "Sorry you lost your auction for yyy but I have one just like it I'll sell you for ..." or some other such scam.

Recognizing this, ebay now disguises the ebay id of all bidders on all auctions (not just high priced items). The only person who can see the identify of the bidders is the seller.

[SoCalSteve]

I believe all of these responses are incorrect. In the past, whenever you bid, bought or sold something on ebay, you could be guaranteed to get an email within 24 hours or less of auction close, usually from somewhere in Singapore, saying "If you have another item like xxx I'll gladly pay you double for it" or "Sorry you lost your auction for yyy but I have one just like it I'll sell you for ..." or some other such scam.

Recognizing this, ebay now disguises the ebay id of all bidders on all auctions (not just high priced items). The only person who can see the identify of the bidders is the seller.

Correct-o-mundo!

Darren, give this man a beer...

Just sayin'

Steve

[alancw3]

I believe all of these responses are incorrect. In the past, whenever you bid, bought or sold something on ebay, you could be guaranteed to get an email within 24 hours or less of auction close, usually from somewhere in Singapore, saying "If you have another item like xxx I'll gladly pay you double for it" or "Sorry you lost your auction for yyy but I have one just like it I'll sell you for ..." or some other such scam.

Recognizing this, ebay now disguises the ebay id of all bidders on all auctions (not just high priced items). The only person who can see the identify of the bidders is the seller.

ebay did this so people couldn't contact bidders directly to sell the same item and eliminate ebay from the equation i.e. their charges and commissions.

[torquer]

I believe all of these responses are incorrect. In the past, whenever you bid, bought or sold something on ebay, you could be guaranteed to get an email within 24 hours or less of auction close, usually from somewhere in Singapore, saying "If you have another item like xxx I'll gladly pay you double for it" or "Sorry you lost your auction for yyy but I have one just like it I'll sell you for ..." or some other such scam.

Recognizing this, ebay now disguises the ebay id of all bidders on all auctions (not just high priced items). The only person who can see the identify of the bidders is the seller.

Under the old system, I used to get bogus "2nd chance offers" whenever I bid and didn't win, sometimes even when I was 3rd or 4th high bidder. First time it happened I actually got competing offers from two different scammers.

The new system may cut down on this particular annoyance, I can't say since my one recent auction participation resulted in a winning bid. I did however get a direct email the next morning from somebody claiming to be in England (bike was in Arizona) directing me to to pay outside the Ebay/Paypal system. I replied that all my cash was tied up with the widow of a Nigerian oil minister...

To Ebay's credit, they did send me another email almost immediately alerting me to the phony message. But there was apparently no security for either my identity nor my email address.