£50,000 fine for eBay seller who bid up his own items

[Joemanji]

http://www.guardian.co.uk/technology/20 ... ion-fixing

[purdindas]

People do it all the time. It's about time someone got in trouble.

[Wylder]

I don't really understand the problem. Upbidding your own item is only a problem if someone is willing to pay more than said bid.

If they don't, then you are only paying fees to ebay for nothing since you end up "buying it from yourself".

If someone is willing to bid over the sellers bid, whats the problem?

[Darkson]

If someone is willing to bid over the sellers bid, whats the problem?

You bid £5 for something I'm selling, my 2nd account then bids £5.50, to which you increase your bid to £6 - that's cost you an extra £1 (and I'd assume the items in question were going for higher sums).

[Don__Vito]

The hypothetical problem is this.

Bidder A decides he wants to but my well painted Blood Bowl team. It has a bargain starting bid of 99p, and he puts in an honest bid of £99 to secure it on day one of the auction.

Several days go buy, a few more bidders join in, and the price gets up to £50 with an hour left.

The seller then logs into his second account, and bidsan ever increasing minimum increase on his own auction, or takes a good stab at where he'd like the price to be. He picks a round number of, say, £100, and the auction ends.

He then waits a day, and contacts Bidder A saying that the new winning bidder has pulled out for whatever reason, but 'luckilly' you can have a second chance offer of your full £99 bid, effectively making you pay £49 more than you would have done had he not got involved.

EDIT - Darkson said it only quicker!

[purdindas]

Exactly.

I ignore 2nd chance offers because I know the guy is trying to scam me out of more money. If it happens anymore then I'll report them.