I am asking this question of those eBayers who are expert bidders. I am referring to those who spend a lot, bid a lot, study their bidding competition, know all of the competitors' ids, know names and regions of most of the competition - and as a consequence have developed effective search techniques to find the rare and valuable, and who have developed advanced bidding strategies so that the competition doesn't learn their search techniques.
On a daily basis I find the rare and valuable that sellers put in wrong categories, who don't describe the item accurately, and who don't use any of the normal key words for the auctions to come up in more normal searches by the regular run-of-the-mill collector. As a result, I get bid stalked ferociously by the competition. Thus I esnipe all of my bids.
However, every now and then I become too obsessed, when I have found something extraordinarily rare, worth thousands of dollars, and I will bid in advance of the end of the auction by 5-10 minutes, just in case this is the one time esnipe can't make a connection. And every time I do this, maybe one time every few months, I get outbid by a specific competitor who normally doesn not bid outside of the items found in specific categories. What I am saying is that this id bids only on auctions contained within the categories and which are described accurately, except for these few times I bid in advance on auctions that are not in the categories and don't use any of the words to come up in normal searches, meaning she bid stalked me and that is how she found the auctions.
Here are my questions. Is there a software program that exists that alerts this competitor to when I make a bid? I make a bid ten minutes before the end of an auction and a big alarm goes off in her house, or a pager beeps on her body? Or she is just sitting on the computer all the time with a screen up and doing a refresh on a Bidder Search with all of my bidding ids?
This competitor has bid stalked me for years. Esnipe solved a lot of my problems regarding her and other stalkers. However, this newest twist started about eight months ago, not even being able to make a preliminary bid a few minutes before the end of the auction.
The only comfort I have is that I bid high, and when she outbids me she ends up paying in excess of one thousand dollars each time. The downside is this lady spends more than fifty thousand on eBay each and every month among all of her eBay ids so her wealth must be considerable; it may seem like a big chunk of change to me, but perhaps it is only petty cash to her.
posted on April 29, 2002 01:50:30 AM
Your nemisis is using a scale program which checks the amount of items in your bidder listing, every time that list increases, an email token is triggered.
posted on April 29, 2002 07:27:45 AM
why don't you just get a couple of id's and use them instead of the one your nemesis knows about. easy solution to a nasty problem.
There's no danger of developing eyestrain from looking at the bright side of things!
posted on April 29, 2002 07:38:32 AM
I already have three ids.
One I sell under. The other two are for bidding only.
The third id, that is my newest one, about a year old. She figured it out within a month. I don't want to keep on getting ids; I find having three ids to be too burdensome.
She finds out ids real fast because she buys so much herself she gets to know a lot of sellers. She asks the sellers who new ids belong to and the sellers tell her.
I can't outbid her because this lady snipes high amounts that are up there next to the moon, so her snipe bids sail in higher than any other bids. I bid high, hundreds of dollars more than is practical, and her snipe bids will still come in over me and over others. She thinks nothing of paying $20,000 for just one item. The rest of us, if we have that kind of money it is in our savings portfolio and we don't touch it. But this lady, she spends like she has over one million a year just in petty cash.
posted on April 29, 2002 07:42:04 AM
This is bid stalking taken to the extremes, if this is what the other bidder is doing. Bidding 5 or 10 minutes before the close of the auction is giving them way too much time. Perhaps use esnipe and find another one also in case one of them fails?
posted on April 29, 2002 08:09:16 AMShe finds out ids real fast because she buys so much herself she gets to know a lot of sellers. She asks the sellers who new ids belong to and the sellers tell her.
I'm sorry, but I'm having some trouble believing this whole scenario.
If you know this for a fact, those sellers are violating eBay's privacy policy. You can turn them in.
However, I've never divulged personal information about my customers to anyone (no matter how much they spend with me) and I doubt many other sellers do either.
The obvious and effective solution to your supposed problem is: create one-use bidder ids. Of course you've already said that managing ids is (what was it) "too burdensome".
posted on April 29, 2002 08:23:59 AM
fluffythewondercat,
What you don't understand is that in the high end areas, collectors and dealers go to great lengths to track their competition. Within my category I know of two individuals who keep data bases on everyone: names, addresses, email addresses, all known ids, all suspected ids. I received a copy of one data base last year, have it on my computer, and believe me, it is incredibly thorough. And of couse, all of my ids were contained in it.
You say get another id. Once the known ids stop bidding, or there is a decrease in the bidding, the others are alerted to the fact that you have another id. It takes them less than a month to figure it out. So why bother? It doesn't make sense to go to the expense and burden of getting a new id each month. It is exactly as I stated, it is too burdensome.
posted on April 29, 2002 09:47:09 AM
The real crime here is that the two of you arent' bidding on MY auctions. (Sigh..)
Hotcupoftea: it sounds as if last-second sniping is your only defense, which is sad.
Perhaps nanntique can enlighten us more about the scale program. If it is a violation of eBay's policies, maybe you can get them to do something about it. (What am I saying? This is eBay.)
posted on April 29, 2002 10:40:36 AM
It might be possible to discourage the stalker by placing many bids such that promptly looking at everything you bid on becomes too much of a waste of time. In finding all the difficult to find etc. you must look at a great many auctions, if you make a habit of placing low low bids on things you are not interested in but are valuable and listed with tiny openings the volume of "false alarms" might get you removed from such a watch.
posted on April 29, 2002 02:41:35 PM
If I am bidding on anything of very high value, I always e-mail the seller first before bidding. I let them know that I am interested in the item and others like it, that I am a professional, and that I am very serious. I ask for a little reassurance, and let them know that I am also interested in any similar items the seller may have which are not presently being offered through auctions.
This has never failed to produce positive results. Invariably, the seller contacts me and, wanting to make sales, offers me things that aren't up for auction. There is nothing sneaky about this -- sellers can sell anything they want, as long as it's not being auctioned at the moment. I got a gorgeous piece last week for 1/3 of what it would have commanded in auction -- no question about it. I basically saved the seller the aggravation of having to go through the motions of listing the item and dealing with the subsequent hassles. He was delighted and so was I.
In those (few) cases where I've seen the same bidder names appearing on auctions in which I am a participant, I just let the seller know this is happening at the time, and suddenly I receive all kinds of non-auction offerings. That's where most of my purchases are made.
I think it is possible you are focusing too much on achieving the instant gratification of winning a particular auction, and failing to make use of the valuable contacts that present themselves. To me, "winning" a specific item is not as important as establishing business relationships with people I can count on. Indeed, if I want something, then I want to BUY it, not bid on it. Bidding is an exercise in time expenditure to save a little money, and it's been my experience that it's not worth it.
That's also just me -- your experiences and needs may be different.
posted on April 29, 2002 03:32:13 PM
What kind of expense is there to get a new id? You can have 5 I think for each bank account. I may be wrong on my numbers.
I still think that if you bid and win, you should request that the seller not reveal your id to anyone else. Seems fair. I know as a seller I would never let anyone know.
Good luck.
posted on April 29, 2002 09:03:34 PM
I would pick up a couple of more id's. Then use your old ones to bid on items that aren't even related to what you are looking for, but make sure those have reserves. If you are worried about bidding above the reserve amount, ask the seller what the reserve amount is. When you register your new id's, mis-spell your name or change one letter in your street address. This should slow them down.
posted on April 29, 2002 10:03:55 PM
I too have heard of this happening! I have a (rich) friend who collects expensive English china with birds on it (I forget the name). She has been stalked for a couple of years by one specific buyer too lazy to find her own stuff and do her own research. We solved it by my bidding FOR her on just a couple of items months ago--at least, she did get the couple of things she wanted. But that is not a long-term solution.
Too bad you don't have a friend with phony copies of the stuff you collect, so she could put them up as is and you could bid on a few. Maybe that would discourage the stalker b---h.
posted on April 30, 2002 06:46:39 AM
Well there is another strategy that I think you are missing...
Spamming bids.
Simple go in & bid as low as possible on many newer listings...
It could be anything. Not necessarily in your normal catagories. Go after just about anything. If possible do this while you have a snipe bid going in.
While you may wind up winning a few pcs of junk it will make their method totally useless.
If they do maintain their pattern then they will follow your bid with their own & win a load of crap that you didn't want in the first place.
I generally do this to promote my website since the URL is my ebay name. Once a month or so I will go in & place 100 rock bottom bids on items that i really should not be winning. In 2 years of doing this I have won 2 items both under $5 that I didn't care about.
[ edited by GU1HToM on Apr 30, 2002 07:09 AM ]
posted on April 30, 2002 12:52:46 PM
Doesn't anyone read for content any more?
[i]You say get another id. Once the known ids stop bidding, or there is a decrease in the bidding, the others are alerted to the fact
that you have another id. It takes them less than a month to figure it out. So why bother?[/i]
I said, "create one-use bidder ids."
Absolutely impossible to track. It's an old spy trick. Look: any secret code can be broken if enough examples of it are found. But it is insanely difficult to break a code that is ONLY USED ONCE and discarded.
Same with bidder ids. And it's so simple to do. AOL gives you, what, seven screen names now with an account? OK, there's your first seven bidder ids. Let's call 'em:
You use xgrumpyx to bid on a reticulated widget. If you lose, no problem. You go back to AOL and drop that screen name. (If you win, you keep the screen name alive only long enough to complete the transaction.) You create espritee to replace it.
Next, you use ydopeyy once, then replace it with fsevenupf.
zbashfulz becomes gjoltcolag. Etc. Etc.
It doesn't matter if your "competition" figures out that you are using one-use ids. All they will know (and only if a seller tells them) is that it's an AOL account. They can do Bidder Searches on it until the cows come home, but they'll never find anything because you'll never use it again.
If you really want to use misdirection, keep bidding simultaneously with one of your "known" ids.
posted on April 30, 2002 01:20:46 PM
If I were Having this problem , Id take a month long vacation from serious bidding and Locate Items which mabe fit the profile of a steal. Id find low low low cost auctions. Make your stalkers think that your on to something then let them steal everything from you. Soon they will have a house full of junk and think twice about stalking you. Elvis wall tapestrys are a great place to start....... go get em tiger !
Ok4
