Has any one noticed weird things happening on eBay in the last day or two?

I was following two, of many, auctions and one was ended 3 or so days early for no reason by the buyer when the item only had one bid at $0.99 without a "Buy-It-Now" option. I was going to bid but didn't want to drive up the price so soon.

That might not seem too strange except the other auction was for land and it was present this morning with 15 hours left but now, at lunchtime, there is no listing what-so-ever. I am not saying it was ended early, the whole thing is gone.

Was just wondering if it is me or if other folks have been having incidents like this?

 

Haven't experienced it but have heard of it. Inform e-bay and get them to check it out to make sure someone isn't contacting the seller and buying it behind everyone's backs without bidding.

 

> them to check it out to make sure someone isn't contacting the seller and buying
> it behind everyone's backs without bidding.

Total waste of time, with millions of sales do you think E-bay is going to put someone on investigating a non-sale? How will they punish the person, by not allowing them to sell on E-Bay, so E-Bay does not make more money? Like that will happen. E-Bay got the listing fee, they are good to go.

> I was going to bid but didn't want to drive up the price so soon.

I end many auctions early so snipers do not get the item if the item is not going to sell or not going to sell for what I think it should. I put this in all my auctions:

"I reserve the right to end this auction at any time, if no bids have been placed, especially for a local sale !"

> I am not saying it was ended early, the whole thing is gone.

It might have been removed because it directly violated E-Bay policy in some way and more then one person reported it. During the Christmas season I would not be surprised if E-Bay moved non-sale auctions that were entered early off the system for faster response times.

 

I had bid on a gear for my snowmobile last week. I was the only bidder. I get home from work to check if I won it, and it was just gone. Not in my not won, watched, or won sections, just gone? Never got an email or anything.
Yesterday I used the buy it now option for some snowmobile studs. Buy it now was $9.99, + $18.99 shipping. I paid right away. After work I get emails saying he's sorry he can't sell them that cheap he meant $199.99 and my money would be refunded. How would you accidently enter an amout of $190 less than you intended.
I am getting allot of SPOOF emails regarding items I never bought, sold, or have any interest in. Getting wierd...

 

There could be many reasons, it happened to me once. I was bidding for a truck that was posted 24 Hrs ago for 7 days listing. I was the highest bidder at 10:00PM one night and next morning the auction was closed. I contacted the EBay and they said that they cannot disclose the reason as to why the truck was taken off. The seller said that we had forgotten to put it the VIN number, If that is true, I'm not sure how he got in in the first place !
I would write to EBay and let them know about…

 

if an auction is canceled by ebay It will dissapear.

as far as snipers, They only drive the price up, It's the highest bid that wins

 

I have seen several items vanish lately, some of which I have bid on, not sure why. I usually report the item to ebay and get their standard PC reply nonsense back.

I snipe all the time. If I bid early people just come in and bid repeatedly until they go over my bid or until they get as high as they want to go which just drives up my cost for the item. Sometimes it seems like these bidders must be working for the seller just to drive the price up. Many similar items are listed and nobody bids on any of them until I bid on one. -Very suspicious. So I just snipe with my max bid on single items or just make a bid on one of the similar items and let the shill bidders have the first item.

If sellers do not want to sell their item for $.99 then they should set the price at the minimum they will accept and let people bid accordingly. I very seldom waste my time with items that have a "reserve price". I do use "buy it now" if the price is reasonable. Unfortunately so much of the stuff on ebay is priced (or goes) for more than the same item can be purchased for from a local retailer or regular catalog dealer. Shipping is also part of the price for the item and many vendors pad the shipping price.

After the recent re-design of their listing pages there are a number of bugs in their code. I have reported them also and just get ignored or the standard PC nonsense reply. I just don't search and bid very often anymore due to the bugs. I can't be the only one and that just hurts ebay traffic and sales in general, but they don't seem anxious to fix the bugs. For a while there stored searches didn't even work. It was really bogus. I had to re-write all of my searches multiple times and save them. It made a trip to ebay the last thing on my mind for a while. It just was not worth the hassle.

 

> as far as snipers, They only drive the price up

Not on bids where there are zero bidders and mutiple watchers, especially on niche items, that look to snag it at the last possible moment for the cheapest price. I do well canceling it and then just relisting it again.

 

I had a truck I was bidding on get pulled even after I met the reserve because the seller decided to sell it to someone else under the table....Lucily the guy put his phone # up on the auction so I could tell him what I thought!

People complain about snipers BUT what about sellers who have friends shill bid to run the price up?? It's usually pretty blatant too!

If you don't want to sell it for $.99 DON'T LIST IT FOR $.99! It's that simple...

 

ebay is unable or unwilling to police their business. The more you know, the more frightened you will become. I've been ripped off quite a few times & never got any meaningful response from them (just auto-generated stock responses). Try reporting fraud, copyright infringement, misrepresentations, shill bidding, etc. & see how "responsive" they are for yourself.

What's worse, your local police force will respond immediately if your house is robbed of a $10. item, but not if some con-man rips you off for thousands online (happens every day). I urge all ebay users to visit the Safe Harbor forum/bulletin board (in the Community area) to learn about the latest scams & rip-offs. You'll be shocked at the extent of the corruption.

 

Thanks for that daddio360; hadn't used ebay for 5 years or so and had just started looking around again.

 

I never use Ebay or anything else online anymore. For the vast majority of items, if you count shipping, it's cheaper to find it locally.

 

For me, eBay seems to be my best avenue for finding items; especially those I can not find in the catalogs.

As for the other responses here, glad to know I am not alone with the problems.

 

> what about sellers who have friends shill bid to run the price up

That is why people should avoid auctions where the ID is kept private or the feedback is private. Or watch and see if the people bidding the price up all have zero feedback.

 

Most of us are used to that so we just bid once to hold the auction. Occasionally a seller that thinks like this will claim an error in the listing. I just report those and watch for the same item later. If the listing is the same they get reported with the details. If multiple people snipe at the end of the auction none of them have to pay more than they wanted and the highest price wins. That is the way I do it. I have purchased numerous items off ebay (from $5 to $2200) and have only been ripped off once for a item less than $20 and even that was taken care of. It is still amazing that people will spend more on an auction than they can buy the item in a store. Doing your "homework" is really important.