eBay experts: Rapid fire bidding

Mark

A friend of mine bid on an old pulp mystery oneBay. He won the pulp for $30.01. The underbidder, however, managed to bid 14 times less than 30 seconds--about 2 seconds per bid. The underbidder's bids started at $12, then went to $13, to $14, and so forth until he or she switched to $2 increments. But the puzzling point for me is that these bids were registered on eBay as being almost all 2 seconds apart; that is, the underbidder bid $17 and then 2 seconds later bid $19 and then 2 seconds later bid $20 and so forth. So here is my question to all eBay experts: how can someone make 14 bids in less than 30 seconds? (And, a second question: Does anyone have any idea what was this bidder doing? It's probably not a shill because the bidder has over 5,000 feedbacks. My friend's max bid was $30.01 and the underbidder stopped bidding--with 4 seconds left--at a bid of $30.00.)

Thanks in advance.

yellowkid

It had to be his sniping service.

Wolf359

It's not possible to bid every 2 seconds, I don't care how fast you are. Could be a snipe program, but why program so many snipes when one will do? Sounds ominous to me.

Mark

Guys, I also think the bidding had to be automated. But why such a bizzare pattern of bids? Every 2 seconds? What kind of really strange bidding program would be programmed to bid every two seconds?

Robb

eBay has had real time bidding for a while now. Anyone can sit at the computer and bid in 2 second increments. Why they would want to is beyond me.

rld14

Do they still do 1 Click Bidding? You could probably bid 2 times per second with that.

Weather11am

Yeah, it's definitely one click bid.

19Lyds

One click bidding and all I can say is lucky for your friend the bidder didn't start 32 seconds before auction end!

TigerGirl1398

<< <i>It's not possible to bid every 2 seconds, I don't care how fast you are. Could be a snipe program, but why program so many snipes when one will do? Sounds ominous to me. >>



It's so simple to do. Open a bunch of different windows and put in your different bids and then start clicking on them when it's time.