Generally in the past, a "private auction" was used for items where it was likely that people wouldn't want their friends to know what they were buying. Prime examples would be items of a sexual or fetishistic nature, or unusual items out of the "mainstream" of society. Applying it to auctions in general does protect bidders, I can see eBay's point, but it also makes it harder to detect fraudulent bidding too, so I have to lean towards the side of opposition to the new policy. Don
Daniel Melvin <[email protected]> wrote: I have always avoided auctions that hide bidders. I agree with Jeff's suspicions. I just don't trust sellers that hide things. It just feels wrong. I suppose many people have had OK transactions this way. It's not for me though. Dan ----- Original Message ----- From: To: Sent: Tuesday, January 16, 2007 5:57 PM Subject: Re: [Phono-L] Protected Bidding on ebay! > > In a message dated 1/16/2007 4:13:48 P.M. Pacific Standard Time, > [email protected] writes: > > Has anyone bid, or won anything with these bidder identification > protected > auctions? The seller of the Zonophone-A is doing that with that particular > auction. > > > > ==================== > eBay has always had an option for keeping bidders private, but this is not > the case here. Recently eBay instituted a new policy whereby anything that > tops > $200 becomes "protected." It's not the seller's choice. Instead of showing > bidder IDs it shows "Bidder 1, " "Bidder 2" etc. This is an attempt to > combat > rampant fraud since so many scammers are sending fake "second chance" > notices > to underbidders. By hiding bidders on higher-priced items they hope to > cut > down on these scams. It will also prevent people from offering similar > items > to underbidders by private message. > > On the bid history page you can view some statistics on the bidders. > Perhaps > the most telling is the one that shows what percent of the bidder's total > bid activity is with the particular seller. In the Zonophone auction, for > example, the current high bidder has 42% of activity with the seller. > That's > certainly very high. It also shows the categories the bidder has been > active in, > so it's very easy to see if a person who spends most of his time buying > Christmas ornaments is suddenly a player on high-end collector > phonographs. > > The new system is far from ideal, and I confess I liked to see what other > people were bidding on. But by the same token, I never liked airing my > own bid > history publicly so I guess I'm a hypocrite at heart! Overall I think > this > new system will have more pros than cons. (And it will hopefully stifle > some of > the con artists, pun intended....) > > Best regards, > Rene Rondeau > _______________________________________________ > Phono-L mailing list > http://phono-l.oldcrank.org _______________________________________________ Phono-L mailing list http://phono-l.oldcrank.org
