markerbids.com

[tigar19]

The funny thing about this design is that it would take me less than an hour to write a script that simply captured the count down timer, and notified me when it got below the threshold, and then manually bid against them. That way, a user could live their life, and still easily win auctions against these "people" who waste insane amounts of money on their autobidder. Of course, having an intelligent autobid system that varied the bid timing would make this much harder, which is why I asserted that these "people" are not actually using the autobid system. If I'm wrong, then the developer Mike hired to write his autobid system is seriously incapable.

Your idea will not work because as soon as you place your bid, time gets added to the countdown clock; and when it ticks down to the last 30 seconds the autobids will place their bid on top of yours. Get it?

[stevewar]

^^^The whole point behind the autobidder option is so you do no have to sit in front of your computer the entire time. You establish the maximum amount of bids, turn on autobidder, and go to sleep. The autobidder will continue to place a bid for you during the final 30 seconds until it has reached your set max.

There is a great section in the site's Forum about the different strategies that may make some sense of what you're seeing and calling suspicious. I suggest you read this. LINK

I've read the link, and of course this is what it says; the forum is attached to the website. It's designed to make Mike money (which I can't blame him for that).

The best way to win penny auctions is to be willing to stick out your head to head bidding longer than the next guy. Unfortunately, if somebody like Mike tampers with the bid cost system (IE, gives out free bids, or auctions off bid packs), then people don't have any insight into the cost per bid the person their bidding against is paying.

So tampering with bid pricing is a big issue, which is why I called out collusion as being a problem as well. I'm not saying this IS happening, but the following is certainly a plausible scenario.

Let's assume for this scenario that CrewNYC and Kiabuckets are actually real people who are Mike friends or cohorts. If Mike were to make their bids cheap enough, or was to give them bids, then they could setup their autobids with insane max price and max bid numbers without costing them much, and either guarantee they win the auction, or, massively drive the bid counts up, extending auctions, and increasing the number of legit bids for items. This is the reason why the videos these guys put up showing the products they received from markerbids doesn't prove anything. It also explains how / why they're willing to waste literally THOUSANDS of bids which if legit would cost them MORE than the merchandise than they're bidding to win.

When I called this scenario into quesiton, mike explained their bidding history as buiding or protecting some kind of reputation as experienced and serious players on the site. You can see why I didn't accept his answer. Somebody who has experience isn't going to waste their money at the beginning of an auction.

[stevewar]

Your idea will not work because as soon as you place your bid, time gets added to the countdown clock; and when it ticks down to the last 30 seconds the autobids will place their bid on top of yours. Get it?

I get it far better than you think. Watch the actual auctions in progress. The bid timer resets at EXACLTY the same time remaining every time one of the people with the red star next to their name (indicating they're an autobid) places a bid. Since their bid timing is predictable, it would be easy to beat programatically.

Get it?

[tigar19]

OK, let's say the autobidder places a bid at exactly 18 seconds left. You manually place your bid when you're notified that there are only 10 seconds left. You now have the winning bid and the timer gets pushed back from 10 seconds to 45 seconds. Once again at the 18 second mark, the autobidders place their bids outbidding you and once again time gets added to the clock. You are no longer the winner.

You're also not taking into account anyone else who may be watching and for one of the autobidders to run out of bids before he manually places a bid.

So I still don't see how you're going to beat the system. Maybe I just don't understand your idea.

[StygShore]

I think it is just the point that CrewNYC bid 4574 times on this marker, and Kiabuckets bid 3045 times (That's $5,333 those two spent on a marker they didn't even come close to winning.

I misunderstood, I thougth that was the count of ALL the bids those users have put in, not just the bids on a single item...


Sounds like a Bot scam to me or Mike's shipping bricks of pot or heroine with the guns


Styg

[cockerpunk]

Mike's shipping bricks of pot or heroine with the guns


Styg

i like this idea the best

[Magmoormaster]

This thread is hilarious.

[kcombs9]

now we have penny bid ads on the top of the AO site popping up

I myself think this is not the place to bring this up, this is what Id expect to see on Techpb or PBN sites not here...

[stevewar]

OK, let's say the autobidder places a bid at exactly 18 seconds left. You manually place your bid when you're notified that there are only 10 seconds left. You now have the winning bid and the timer gets pushed back from 10 seconds to 45 seconds. Once again at the 18 second mark, the autobidders place their bids outbidding you and once again time gets added to the clock. You are no longer the winner.

You're also not taking into account anyone else who may be watching and for one of the autobidders to run out of bids before he manually places a bid.

So I still don't see how you're going to beat the system. Maybe I just don't understand your idea.

I appreciate what you're saying.. However, if you know the autobid system ALWAYS bids at 18 seconds, then you know by bidding at 10 seconds that there isn't an autobid in the queue. Conceptually someone else could create a new autobid, but that just means you start the process over only having spent 1 bid.

The entire purpose of my script would be to beat autobidders, and to root out the shills that have been put into place to either 1) increase the length of the auction and hence the number of legit bids, or 2) to actually wiin all of the auctions; it wouldn't be useful, nor should it be used against manual bidders.

[stevewar]

now we have penny bid ads on the top of the AO site popping up

I myself think this is not the place to bring this up, this is what Id expect to see on Techpb or PBN sites not here...

I appreciate what you're saying, but I also think that trying to go to a bunch of Mike Phillips supporters for perspective isn't going to be very constructive.

[cockerpunk]

I appreciate what you're saying, but I also think that trying to go to a bunch of Mike Phillips supporters for perspective isn't going to be very constructive.

wow, thats insulting.

[stevewar]

wow, thats insulting.

I didn't mean it to be so. PBNation would also be valid, but I didn't feel there could be an unbiased discussion on techpb.

my apologies for being insulting.

[kcombs9]

I appreciate what you're saying, but I also think that trying to go to a bunch of Mike Phillips supporters for perspective isn't going to be very constructive.

I don't mean for you to go to those sites, my point was this is not normal discussion for AO forum. imho

[cockerpunk]

I didn't mean it to be so. PBNation would also be valid, but I didn't feel there could be an unbiased discussion on techpb.

my apologies for being insulting.

thank you.

i find most folks who think techpb is a bunch of mike blowers havn't really met anyone or been on techpb very long. there is hardly a legion of 14 year olds all beating it to mike on techpb. and i find it insulting when otherwise respectable and rational poeple allude to that.

[TOTShadowCompany]

Puts another bag of popcorn in the microwave...