Posted By:
Jeff ODavid - there are some important considerations here. Saying that snipes are a cause of sellers ending auctions early doesn't really hold up. The seller chose the list price, and if he chose a list price that is less than he is willing to sell the item for, that's his mistake. Sniping is within the rules and pretty much everyone is aware that it goes on.
As for shilling... eBay is far from perfect. We all know how stupid some of the rule are, but we know the rules going into the game when we enter into the contract. Besides which the only way that shilling hurts the seller is, as you mentioned, by encouraging snipes. What's funny is that sometimes snipes end up nailing the buyer - two guys with crazy high snipe bids can make an entire auction a lot more profitable than it would have been otherwise.
Don't get me wrong here - I'm not trying to be the ethical police, and I've certainly done a lot of stupid things in my life. I just don't like to see people try to cheat a contract that they freely entered into and benefitted from.
The easy solution, one that I've done a couple of times, is put a BIN on the item that is for the amount the buyer is willing to pay. He wins it with the BIN, you make the sale, eBay gets paid.
Jeff