Lately I've noticed it's getting harder to find a good bargain on eBay. It used to be the place I went first, to check and see if an item I was looking to buy was being sold there. I could almost always get a better deal through an eBay auction than I could buying it retail. Well, lately I've noticed a couple of things that never seemed to be an issue in the past.

First, the prices. People aren't offering their goods at bargain prices anymore. I've even seen a few things, lately, that I could positively buy somewhere else for less. For instance, I've been wanting to buy a set of Cavallini stamps. They retail for about $25.00-28.00 at most places. Granted there aren't very many on eBay, but the ones I've seen are at least $28.00 plus $9.00 shipping! I mean, really now. Explain to me how on earth you can justify charging someone $9.00 to ship a little tin of magnets that can't weigh more than 10 ounces. These people are insane.

Second, and the thing that kind of shocked me a little, was the amount of shill bidding I noticed going on. Shill bidding is when a seller either bids on their own item (using another account) or has someone else do it, in order to drive up the auction price and insure they get a certain price for their item. This week I was bidding on something, and during the course of the auction, I was snooping around looking at the seller's history and such. I started to notice a pattern of bidders that were always bidding on these same items time and time again, but never winning. It became obvious that this seller was involved in shill bidding. Now I can totally understand not wanting to let your items sell for a price that is lower than they are worth. But, ebay has a reserve price tool to use for this reason exactly. It is totally against the rules, and the law, for that matter to artificially bid on your own item, for the sole reason of getting the price up and more people bidding. I totally felt duped. I didn't win the auction, thankfully. But, this seller was a power seller, and my guess, eBay wouldn't bother putting a stop to this guy, being that he brings in the dollars for them. I looked around, and this seems to be happening much more than I would have expected.

eBay seems to have become filled with more dishonest people than ever before, and it seems like you need to be a lot more careful about which auctions you choose to bid on. So, investigate before you decide to bid.