Just how reliable is Manchester Music Mill. I feel this company is bidding against their own product

[Anonymous]

It is a little suspicious that I am consistently being out bid by $5.00 and  the item is in the remarks as being received and how great the shipping was less than 24 hours on a weekend. The bidders must live across the street from the store for this to be possible. I also notice that as soon as the item bid has ended another appears avaliable to bid on. Have they bought every Limited Edition EG50th aniversary Takamine that was built? There is no mention of a reserve on this item. Very suspicious to me!

[ypdc_dennis · Accepted solution]

---

@Anonymous wrote:

It is a little suspicious that I am consistently being out bid by $5.00 and  the item is in the remarks as being received and how great the shipping was less than 24 hours on a weekend. The bidders must live across the street from the store for this to be possible. I also notice that as soon as the item bid has ended another appears avaliable to bid on. Have they bought every Limited Edition EG50th aniversary Takamine that was built? There is no mention of a reserve on this item. Very suspicious to me!

---

I suggest that you read up on how ebay auctions actually work. Once the price goes over $250, the bid increment is in $5 amounts.

http://pages.ebay.ca/help/buy/bid-increments.html

They've gotten feedback on 15 of these "limited" guitars in the last month -- I don't see any that took less than 24 hours to arrive.

Not very suspicious at all.

[femmefan1946 · Accepted solution]

You can Report any listing. There is  a Report button on every listing.

EBay will send you a polite note. That's all you will ever see. They want members to police the site, but do not want to encourage vigilantes.

If you are consistently being outbid, perhaps your bids are just too low.

You have no way of knowing the maximum bid of the winning bidder, you only see the high bid. If you bid $250 and the item sells for $255, it is quite possible that the winner's maximum was $300 or $3000. You and the seller will never know.

Remember, a shill bidder does not want to win. He wants you to win at the highest possible price. It is not unusual in shilled auctions to see bid retractions that leave the underbidder as the high bidder.

If a seller bids on his own auctions, he not only pays fees on the sale (and on the shipping) but he does not move any merchandise. There is no profit in bidding on your own auctions and winning.

[toby_le_pue · Accepted solution]

Have they bought every Limited Edition EG50th aniversary Takamine that was built?

If you read all the listing you would have seen the following.

This guitar was discontinued (and only made one year) to make way for new offerings by Takamine and Manchester Music Mill made a deal with Tak to buy out ALL remaining last year's EG and G models at discounts.

[nubian_treasures · Accepted solution]

It is not unusual for new members to suspect something is going on because they're not familiar with how ebay works.