From: Dan Maguire (dmaguire@mchsi.com)
Date: Sat Nov 20 2004 - 15:07:59 PST
Hi Steve,
> And how many of them know each other and, more importantly,
> are working in collusion? Near zero.
I thought that you said that you and eleven other people decide which
one of your group will bid. That group comes to mind. If each single
bid represents 12 people that have informal or formal agreements, that
means that instead of 144 people going at it, there are only 12. How is
that in the seller's best interest, again? :-)
You mention a case where it might help and I don't disagree that it
could happen. I would consider that, at best, a unique circumstance, as
there are a load of assumptions in that scenario.
Truth is that, as buyers, we are in it for the best circumstance for
ourselves (no collusion) or our group (collusion), shortterm or
longterm. It ain't charity - I would think that we could agree on that.
Fun topic. Oh... I was in Maine for the first time the day before
yesterday. Beautiful!
Dan
Steve Grammont wrote:
> 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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