SofaSurfer wrote:The 'j***j' is randomly generated, it has nothing to do with the sellers/bidders eBay name. This looks more like an irate customer ruining the sale by ramping up the final value fee, then not paying. It causes a lot of hassle for the seller to get the fee refunded.
Buy It Now is more popular than it used to be because listing fees are no longer charged on the start price. There is no point in starting at 99p if the item is worth several hundred pounds. I always list items at the lowest price I would be prepared to accept.
Actually that's not quite correct...the concealed name is indeed randomly generated but it only contains letters or numbers that are actually in the seller or buyers real usernames. It is always the same on any given day too, so for instance....if you were to look at any previous transactions by that eBay user there would be the same partly disguised username in use.
This is how we once tracked down the buying pattern of a suspicious seller of restored rods who had shill bidders ramping up his sale prices for him. Fortunately for us he had been using the same account to buy his secondhand rods and later sell them once restored.
Quite what's going on here is anybody's guess .....there can't seriously be two people bidding that high on those floats with any intention of actually paying for them. Therefore it's either a joke or an attempt to ruin somebody's sale....I can't think of another viable option.
