http://offer.ebay.com/ws/eBayISAPI.dll? ... 0070006217

Would someone care to explain?  Is this the trend for all auctions are just this one?

So far I've only seen the hidden bidder thing under this auction.  Subsequent auctions I've looked at have the normal bid history results.

napoleonsdad wrote:
So far I've only seen the hidden bidder thing under this auction.  Subsequent auctions I've looked at have the normal bid history results.

It depends upon the value of the auction (over $100 or $200?).  If you look at other auctions which have large ticket values you will see this feature.

napoleonsdad wrote:
Someone should check on bclarkie.  I've read some of his opinions on this and, well, let's just say things are going to get a little verbal.

Ahh, no need to rehash all my opinions, they are already well known.   Lets just say that I am slightly against this idea.

improvstone wrote:
Brian,  Aww... You just ruined my fun for the day. I was looking forward to the fireworks.  

Just for you M:

bclarkie wrote:This is the biggest load of F**king Bull S**t that I have ever seen in my entire life on Ebay.  Let's face it, this was not done to protect anyone's idenity, it was done so Ebay can secretly do away with their shilling policy under the facade of protecting their bidders idenity from phishing emails. Ebay has probably just realized that it would be a good business decision to allow sellers to shill the hell out of thier auctions because it just means more and more fees for them to collect.  Everything else that they try to say is just a crock of f**king sh*t.  Ebay can go f**k themselves for all I care.  At this point its the only viable option, but come hell or highwater, the nano-second a suitable competitor comes along, Ebay will never ever ever see another penny from me again.

napoleonsdad wrote:
I think ebay give every seller a random phenomenon that they can't figure out.  Mine has to do with not being able to view some listings.  I mean there is a price sitting there but no title.  I have to check on the compare box and view the items in the compare format.  If I look at my items in the store probably half of them I can't see.  Makes no difference if it's gallery view or not.  Same thing occurs if I'm in Badmike's store.  If I'm in the RPG category I can't see about half of it.  If I'm in the Doc Savage category I see 100% of the items.  Weird.

I hear you.  I have figured out through the year or so I've had this problem, it is something running on our computers.  For example, it doesn't happen on my laptop.  And on my brother's computer.  However, I've been to KingofPains's house and it's exactly the same on his computer.  Now, the interesting part, it only occurs on listings in the RPG category that begin with "AD&D".  Anything else is fine...it's like the "&" sign is screwing everything up.  I only figured this out through much trial and error.  Sigh.  I'm in the process of slowly removing "AD&D" from every listing, including AD&D items  

Mike B.

improvstone wrote:Thanks    I feel much better now.

I just noticed are have ebay changed their policy on being able to see what others are bidding on?  I can now only see auction ended items.

improvstone wrote:Thanks    I feel much better now.

GraysonAC wrote:

One MAJOR problem that I've had with my eBay store is that despite setting auctions to never expire, many, many do. It's not a phenomenon limited to me either, and I'm 100% certain it's not my error (believe me, I've checked over and over again).

It's funny you mention this, I was just noticing the same thing, doing a full inventory on my stock (Because it's the end of the year and it's been a LONG time) and I'm finding MANY items that I thought were listed that apparently had "timed out" despite my listing through Blackthorne with GTC as my choice.  Finding a TON of these in my slow categories especially, because I would never have noticed say a "GURPS" book that hadn't moved in 6 months since they sell so slowly anyway.  I have "caught" many of these problems through time in my quickly moving categories and at the time probably just blew them off as a personal error in missing relisting a duplicate item but now I wonder...

"WHY hasnt a competion auctionwebsite been created, cleary its a moneymaking business otherwise Ebay wouldnt have gotten so big and arrogant."

A few have been tried, and failed. Ebay got into the game early, and getting any serious competition up is pretty much impossible unless Google does it. Or Microsoft, I suppose, but that seems unlikely.

In 7 years of eBay, I've had very, very few problems with them. I follow the policies they lay out, and haven't had them crap on me. Some of the policies are asinine at best, but it's their house, so it's their rules. Yelling at them for enforcing their policies doesn't make a lot of sense, imo.

I think the thing to stress here is that there is competition, but its not competition among firms, but competition for the entire market. Due to network effects -- that is, an auction site is increasingly useful the more people use it -- the market will naturally be dominated by one firm (in much the same as Microsoft Explorer, and before that, Netscape Navigator for web browsers.. bundling issues aside).

But all it takes is for one company to do things better than eBay. As it gains in popularly it becomes a massive threat to eBay's existence: after all, once the majority prefer one auction site to the others.. it will gradually capture the entire market. It is sort of like catastrophic entry.. hence the competition is much an all or nothing affair.

As much I don't like many aspects of eBay, they have tended to do things MUCH better than any other would-be competitor (for buyers and sellers alike).. and eBay does this because of they face the continual danger of losing all of their business to some upstart.