THIS ebay "thing" has happened to me a LOT LATELY....

[tongueriver]

"eBay has analytics capability that far exceeds what it would take to identify stuff like this. eBay chooses not to act." For the most part, Ebay will not punish any seller for any of the offenses that are not criminally egregious. Every dollar lost by sellers is money lost by Ebay. They don't care about buyers at all. I have reported some stinkers who do keyword spamming repeatedly and nothing ever happens. Big sellers especially are sacred cows to Ebay. Meanwhile, I have never bid on any item except with a sniping program. Why would anyone EVER do otherwise???!!!

[bladecollectorr]

I always snipe. Sometimes I will put in a lowest possible first bid to make a buy-it-now price or "make offer" disappear. Sometimes I will also bid early and low so that the item I want will not show in any zero-bid searches. My high-bid never gets revealed before an auction is over.

ebay makes more money when things sell for higher prices so shill bidders help their bottom-line. At the same time, shills basically end up stealing money from people so it's against the rules. As cynical as I have become regarding ebay's "protect people" rule enforcement I am still quite shocked when I see a 287 retracted bids statistic. So obviously a shill or a troll. That's the highest retraction number I've ever seen (and I look).

ebay should have permanently banned them by 50 retracted bids if not only 10. I had no idea they would let the count climb so high in search of inflated profits. Now I do.

[Meridian_Mike]

Know what the difference between ebay buyers and sellers and a new puppy is? After a couple weeks the puppy stops whining.

LOL.... I don't think I will EVER stop whining.... and I am 65 years old!

[Lansky1]

I'm just a long time eBayer that uses the old stopwatch method so I get my bids in 3 seconds or less ... don't use a sniper program. I never show my hand early and always snipe - so if I want something bad enough, I just bid high; on the rare occasion I have to have something, I'll bid stupid ... so the only time the guys with the sniper programs get the better of me is if I'm trying to lowball or get a deal, so I'm ok with just taking my chances using traditional sniping methods - can't win 'em all, but I do pretty good with the sniping method I use ...