lelands and his type auctions should be made illegal

[Exhibitman]

Originally Posted by sflayank

its a simple fact that placing a maximum bid promotes a high probability of dishonesty

That is so not true. Bad character and lack of respect for others and for the law promotes dishonesty. Honest people don't steal, regardless of the temptation. Like The Clash said, "I been very tempted to grab it from the till; I been very hungry but not enough to kill."

[hcv123]

Originally Posted by Exhibitman

That is so not true. Bad character and lack of respect for others and for the law promotes dishonesty. Honest people don't steal, regardless of the temptation. Like The Clash said, "I been very tempted to grab it from the till; I been very hungry but not enough to kill."

While the idealistic sentiment is nice, stealing/dishonesty imho is a question of motive and opportunity. Put the right person (otherwise honest) in the wrong situation (needs to put food on the table) and give him opportunity(make it easy) for him to steal and think he/she will get away with it and it's a formula for disaster. That stated, it becomes almost like a math equation, the easier it is to get away with (opportunity), the less extreme the motive needs to be to open the door. I personally think the whole auction system offers easy opportunity - where are the controls? 3rd party oversight? Anything independent? Too much dependence on people to do the right thing. I want to qualify by saying I am sure that most DO the right thing, but little to assure those using the sytem that is the case.

[sflayank]

hi howard
in fact the item was only at 2100 i put in the 4100 at 1am
and was still hi at 2100...i purposely only put in 4100 because
they are on my list as usally forcing me to pay the max
but i knew they wouldnt let me steal it at 2100 so i hoped for 4100..instead they bought it back and sold it to a well known collector..or so ive been told
if i had put in 6500 or higher thats what i wouldve won it for
the price would have been ok for me but knowing that they shilled me to get it up to that price would bother me even more than losing it
if they had a 1/2 hr clock on it and there was a real bidder opposing me you would have easily seen it go to 8500 or higher
larry

[doug.goodman]

... who doesn't bid until the last few seconds.

On ebay, my logic is that this allows as little time as possible for anybody to outbid me, assuming that there isn't already a higher bid, and if there is a higher bid, then I don't have time to get "auction fever".

In other auctions, with moving end times, the later it goes the fewer people who stay up to bid against me. If it gets to late for me, I usually put in one more bid and then sleep with my fingers crossed. It ends however it ends.

Each auction has it's rules, many of them I don't particularly care for, but they are what they are, and no amount of bitching by me is going to change them.

I feel for Larry, it sucks to lose an item that I would have paid more for, but ultimately there was an easy way to not lose the item for that price, bid more. If he feels that the auction house is dishonest in it's practices than I really don't understand why he would be bidding in their auctions anyway.

Just my 2 cents,
Doug

[FUBAR]

If i could bid the day after, i would win every auction i wanted to!

I think Rob D opinion makes the most sense to me!