From: Steve Grammont (islander@midmaine.com)
Date: Sat Nov 20 2004 - 14:03:37 PST
Dan,
> I rarely see more than a dozen
>bids for any one item.
And how many of them know each other and, more importantly, are working
in collusion? Near zero. And as far as the chances of bidders ensuring
that this is the case, absolute zero.
>And if those dozen are working together, it
>isn't an auction any more.
On eBay, at least, this is simply not possible. Even when only ONE
person appears to be bidding on an item, the bidder has no idea who else
might be looking to place a bid. Some bidders always wait until the
final couple of seconds to place a bid for exactly this reason.
Therefore, if the ones colluding REALLY want the item they had better put
in a serious bid or they have a very big chance of losing because they
CAN NOT CONTROL THE BIDDING.
As I outlined in an earlier email, collusion between friends can actually
be beneficial to the seller or at least have no effect. For a real life
example:
I found something I wanted but the high bidder was a friend of mine. We
had no preexisting agreement (collusion), so I did not place a bid.
Instead I emailed him and asked if he was serious about bidding. He said
no and that he was fine with me outbidding him. That is collusion. His
top bid was 30 Euros, I put in a bid for 100 Euros. The bid indexed up
to 31 Euros, 11 Euros higher than before. Now... if nobody else bid the
seller would have walked away with 11 more Euros than if I hadn't bid at
all (which I would not have if my friend hadn't "colluded" with me). As
it turned out someone in the last hour bid over me and then someone bid
over him, ending in a bloodbath exchange during the final seconds. Final
price was 156 Euros. Did our collusion hurt the seller? No. Could it
have helped him? Sure. Did it preserve a friendship between two people?
Yes. So what is wrong with that?
Collusion on eBay of the sort I outlined above is harmless to the seller,
therefore not ethically questionable. Shlling, on the other hand, is a
totally different matter.
Steve
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