bwgride

FYI: 49cm Sakkit touring bike with panniers on ebay. Looks like many good components on it (e.g., Phil Wood 48 spoke rear, King headset, etc.)

Item #: 270269160783

NoReg

Funny fit, I wonder if he bought it several sizes too small.

seeker333

Yep. I wonder if he's the same one who's shilling it up - cuz they both appear to be stupid.

https://cgi.ebay.com/ws/eBayISAPI.dll...m=270269160783

bwgride

Is this a reference to me?

seeker333

Nope, not unless you're the one bidding $2800 on a used bike, portrayed by low resolution photographs, 2 days into 7 day auction, to a seller with zero feedback.

You may not be aware of this, but shill bidding is fairly common on ebay. Shill bidding means the seller or his buddies bid on an item with no intention of actually buying the item - in order to raise the sell price and convince potential legitimate buyers that the item has value and that they should bid on it.

Happens all the time on items from $30 to $30,000.

Ebay officially is against shill bidding, and has policy/ procedures for it. A few high $ cases (art IIRC) have been successfully prosecuted by US - but thats only 1 case in a billion, I guess. Ebay is a little conflicted in enforcing this policy since they make a % of the sale price.

njkayaker

Yes, ebay would be smart to make a little bit more and risk losing thousands of customers and their reputation due to shills!

The problem with enforcing it is that it is nearly impossible to do so.

bwgride

Thanks for the clarification and explanation about ebay activities.

seeker333

Sure, you're welcome.

Ebay is not all bad. There's a lot of decent, honest people really hustling to profit only $5 off a stem or seatpost. I don't how they compete with the online bike shops selling the entire QBP catalog for a few dollars over their cost.

Unfortunately there's a lot crooked sellers too.

I won a "buy it now auction" recently for a voip adapter, at $25+9 s/h, along with 9 other buyers (10 offered for sale in auction). I paid immediately. A week passes - no communication from seller, no shipping notice or tracking number, no item delivered. I email seller, kindly inquiring on status. No answer for 3 more business days. On day 11, I email again, saying i need to know status immediately or I'll be forced to file negative feedback and initiate a dispute case with ebay. I figured I'd been defrauded at this point by an identity thief and that my email is probably futile.

I go for a bike ride, come back and there's an email and a phone call, no msg left. Seller says he's had a family emergency, item will ship immediately. I get a paypal shipping notifcation an hour later. Next morning I get an email saying seller miscalculated inventory and has no items, and is cancelling order and will refund money. Now waiting for refund confirmation from bank to post to account.

Now, this guy runs an internet cafe / voip company in NYC. They install and setup internet cafes (the tech part, not the coffee), and they sell voip and other networking equipment directly and via ebay. The item I won via auction is easily available - there's exactly 12 sellers listing this item as I type, listing anywhere from 3 to 50 available per seller, at $35 to $60. I could buy hundreds of em right now.

How do I interpret this situation? A guy running an internet company in NYC can't send an email as followup to an auction for 10 days, until I threaten action, then he's magically there right away. He evidently can't count to 10, and doesn't know how to order new stock or care to do so. Technically its breach of contract. He offered the item, i accepted the offer and tendered payment. The 3 elements of a contract.

Here's what I think - seller was distracted for some time, comes back, sees he's only making a buck a sale and says the he!! with it. He may have sold the whole batch for 300 bucks - i dunno.

Long story longer - this is just one of the ways sellers can rip you off on ebay. Others I have experienced include:
1. seller misrepresents condition - looks like new is closer to looks like *****
2. seller fails to disclose significant damage or defect
3. seller sells you a used item they claimed was new.
4. seller delivers item different from described/pictured item, claims they're "the same" when you complain.

Aside from these relatively uncommon situations, shill bidding is the most annoying. You know they're doing it with some confidence when they bid early, on a very low demand item, and drive up the price to that of a new item when its a used item. You click on the bidders name and its shows he's got single bids in on 20-30 items from 20-30 sellers - now who the heck bids that much? Well, people who are going to resell these items might, but they're not going to bid untll the last 30 seconds - not when there's 4 days left in the auction.

It's simply illogical. Nobody trying to get the best deal is going to bid until the last minute. No one is going to take the risk associated with buying from anonymous, unknown sellers where your opportunity to return defective, unsatisfactory items is uncertain - when you can get it from a reputable source such as nashbar, jenson etc for 2 bucks more.

I'm wearing sandals right now that took 4 weeks and 3 auctions to get at my price. The sandals had a defect visible in the auction picture (small knife cut from shipping/packing) . They normally go for ~70 retail. First auction went for ~75. Relisted a few days later, same defect, same sandals. Sold again for ~65 this time. Relisted next day, with excuse "deadbeat buyer backed out of auction". Sold a third time to me for 47, which I consider fair deal. I bid in the first 2 auctions at last minute and lost to shillers. I bid with a day left on the third auction at same price as previous 2 auctions, tired of fooling with this guy, decided to give him time to consider his strategy. He knew my bids from 2 auctions before, decided to actually sell the sandals, and didn't shill the third auction. I think I was the only actual buyer bidding on the cut sandals - the other 3-4 bidders were shills.

These sellers are working pretty hard to defraud some uninformed customers, frustrate a far greater number of informed potential customers, and degrade the ebay experience to a game of "who's the smartest crook with an internet connection" - all for a relatively small profit.

I'm writing this long winded post not just for the benefit of bwgride, but for all the idiot sellers out there. Hey - we're not morons. Just list the item at a fair price, we'll probably buy it if its a good deal. If you're any good at what you're doing, you should be able to profit without these shenanigans. If not, then you should go out and get a real job.

Please, no more $0.99 opening bid Litespeeds, followed by 10 first-day bids driving price up to 95% of MSRP.

BengeBoy 

FWIW, this bike has been for sale over at www.crazyguyonabike.com for a month. I recall seeing it over there and thought it was a very nice bike but very expensive. I forget what the seller was asking for it, but notice that the crazyguyonabike.com ad was edited on Monday (before the eBay listing was up).

https://www.crazyguyonabike.com/class...ied_id=652&v=J

Beautiful bike, but overpriced IMHO.

I see lightly used custom tourers come up on Seattle CL from time to time at better deals, like this one...a 56CM Rodriguez tourer with S&S couplers for $2150. This bike has been on CL for about a month...I think it was $2500 when originally listed. I'm guessing by now the seller might take less..


https://seattle.craigslist.org/see/bik/808886956.html

BengeBoy 

The Sakkit sold for $3,000. Buyer listed as being from the UK.

Rammer

It's baaaaack... I'm guessing the buyer backed out?


RBD Sakkit 26 Expedition touring bike, racks & panniers

vik 

Do you have to pay the full Ebay fees on a % of the sale amount even if the buyer backs out and you have to relist the item?

birvine

Is it within the realm of possibility that a person could list on eBay, shill bid (today is the first I heard of this term), but if nobody 'really' bids, have a friend in 'UK' bid it up to make it look like it was sold to generate excitement and then re-list immediately after? Not that this is what is happening... only asking hypothetically. Hmmm - I'll be sticking to LBS for my purchases.

B

birvine

By the way... I did not list the bike. Only surmising what is going on here.

Brent

njkayaker

If one is bidding on something that can be purchased new, it would seem rather obvious that one should know the price of the new item. I'd say that, if people make bids on stuff they can get new otherwise for about the same price, then it's their own fault.

seeker333

No. You have to do a few things which compare in difficulty to posting this message on bf.net.

Not only that, ebay gives you a discount on the relisting fee.

That's partly why there's so much shill bidding - there's no penalty to the seller.

https://pages.ebay.com/help/tp/unpaid-item-process.html

vik 

Thanks for the info. I'm EBay ignorant. I guess I better go list the bent I want to sell and jack that price up over retail...