Hi, Jerry, and guys,
I am a Japanese(American) ebay player, ebay is one of the great resources to find parts we need for vintage bikes. But what do think about my experience here?
I saw a bad trick; Say item worth about 100.00. the bid was running 40.00. Pretty low. So, I placed my bid for 98.50 in last 15 seconds left.
Well, I was outbid by unknown bidder who never bid in that auction before. The final bid was 99.50. I gave up, BUT 2-3 days later( not a week or 10 days), seller e-mailed me saying that the high bidder never came through, and offering me the item for 98.50 (my bid). But I refused.
Another case, again the bid was relatively low, so last minutes I and other bidders running up bid so high. Say this bidder who had a bid at 40.00 level, but never outbid by several other bidders even went upto 150.00. Then, if you check back feedbacks, there is no posting of happy exchanges even after 4 weeks. It means that it is possible that the second high bidder was asked to buy for his/her bid at 147.50, and NOBODY was able to outbid this SETUP bidder.
See you can get your buddy to place over pricing (proxy bid of say 300.00) to win, and trying to sell the item at the highest bid of the second bidder. This is not a fair auction. Do you see this tricky pattern??
KEN TODA, buying more than selling in ebay, am not sure how many times tricked!