Is Ebay rigging bids?

[jmelson]

eBay uses "dutch bidding".  This is where the highest bidder wins the auction, but the winning PRICE is that of the 2nd highest bidder.  If two bidders offer the same bid, the earlier of those wins.
So, A bids $55, then later B bids $75.  B wins, but he pays $55 (or $55 plus the next price increment at that price level, which can be just a couple Dollars.)

Jon

[Stray Electron]

Yes, you are right -  AM/PM thing messed it up, but that's correct sequence... It would be too obvious - but now when I think of it - since e-bay charges a
percentage of sale, it's in their interest to get the highest price possible. When you enter auto-bid value, it's pretty easy to manipulate bidding process,
since you can't see actual account names (and links can point to basically anything). Say, you enter $500 as your maximum bid, algorithm can decide to
create a few fake bids and pump out more money from you than you should actually pay as long as the final amount is less or equal to $500.
You do it randomly, with various end-price differences and at various times, so there won't be visible pattern. Randomize the whole process good enough
and buyers would not  be able to spot it, sellers does not care since they will get more money for their stuff and everybody is happy... Best of all - you can't be caught !
Of course, if buyer is not using auto-bid then the whole scheme falls apart, but I guess there's a lot users using auto-bid, as you normally cant' spend the whole
day looking at e-bay.
Or I am just paranoid?

  yes, I think you're being paranoid.  Ebay could technically run up the bid to get a higher profit but the problem would be that since there was no real buyer, then the item would never be paid for and in that case, the seller would refuse to pay E-bay.  So end the end, E-bay would make nothing instead of a small amount.

   It would only take a few instances of non-existant buyers before the sellers caught on and once the word got around, everyone would stop doing business on E-bay.

[TerraHertz]

  yes, I think you're being paranoid.  Ebay could technically run up the bid to get a higher profit but the problem would be that since there was no real buyer, then the item would never be paid for and in that case, the seller would refuse to pay E-bay.  So end the end, E-bay would make nothing instead of a small amount.

   It would only take a few instances of non-existant buyers before the sellers caught on and once the word got around, everyone would stop doing business on E-bay.

I agree. But still never bid on ebay other than via a snipe service. There are multiple advantages - avoiding bidding wars and the stress that causes, not signalling your interest, eliminating all this waste of time wondering about bid sequences and cheating (for eg, seller bidding you up), saving my time by not having to pay attention to the item during the bidding period, etc.

[Deni]

And it raises the question: why is a Croatian using eBay in 12-hour time, in the US Pacific timezone?

Well, that's beyond me. If there's an option to change that, I can't find it - do you know how to change time display format as a buyer?

[Deni]

  yes, I think you're being paranoid.  Ebay could technically run up the bid to get a higher profit but the problem would be that since there was no real buyer, then the item would never be paid for and in that case, the seller would refuse to pay E-bay.  So end the end, E-bay would make nothing instead of a small amount.

OK, imagine this scenario - item initial price is $25, I enter auto-bid amount of $100. Now I am the highest bidder with $25. Then some "robot" with fake account kicks in and places auto-bid to $90.
Who will win that auction and what will be the end-price? Me, with end price of $91. And how can you tell that it was not a real bidder? You can't and since I will pay for the item seller won't know either.

[I wanted a rude username]

Ah, my mistake: the various ebay.ccTLD sites (ebay.co.uk, ebay.com.au, ebay.fr, etc.) are localised for timezone and time format, but ebay.hr (and also ebay.eu) just redirects to ebay.com.

eBay doesn't support changing either the timezone or time format on any site, even ebay.com.

[donotdespisethesnake]

They are unambiguous. They are just illogical to us, because we are aware of the concept of zero.

Well, NIST does think so (https://www.nist.gov/pml/time-and-frequency-division/times-day-faqs) - see first line after sub-title "Are noon and midnight referred to as 12 a.m. or 12 p.m.?"
And I take them as pretty good authority on the subject 

I think that FAQ is badly worded, because they then proceed to completely contradict themselves and give an unambiguous definition: "[the time at] the shortest measurable duration after noon should be designated as p.m.". According to NIST, the shortest measurable duration is about 10^-15 seconds, which in human terms can be specified as "instantly".

What they really mean is that "people are often confused by am and pm", which is unambiguously true.

[peter-h]

"A sniping service is only useful to that emotionally weak people who can't stop bidding and that take it as a personnel challenge when someone outbids them"

Yet, that is precisely the biggest problem with Ebay. Most bidders are amateurs who just can't resist...

That is why one should decide the max one is prepared to pay, and esnipe it. I have been using esnipe.com for years. I set mine to t minus 5 seconds, to beat the t minus 6 seconds which a lot of other esnipers use

[I wanted a rude username]

I set mine to t minus 5 seconds, to beat the t minus 6 seconds which a lot of other esnipers use

Leaving less time thwarts manual bidders who might otherwise react to your bid.

It only disadvantages you against other snipers ... in the rare case that they snipe exactly the same price.