Bizarre eBay Bidding: Any theories on this one?

There are still back orders and delays on the iPhone 6, and I don't see what's bizarre. The market dictates the price and a 100 dollars over retail isn't all that bad for a phone that is in short supply.

Of course the bidding is for an iPhone 5s not the 6...

shunting123 said:

The auction is for the 5s, not the 6.



If someone could buy one straight from Apple (right now, no delay) for $100 less, why wouldn't they just do that? There is no "short supply."

Click to expand...

Ebay is a place that you can get incredible bargains (fairly rarely these days), and horrible rip-offs (much more common).

shunting123 said:

The auction is for the 5s, not the 6.

If someone could buy one straight from Apple (right now, no delay) for $100 less, why wouldn't they just do that? There is no "short supply."

Click to expand...

Duh, brain cramp on my side - well throw out my entire post since it makes no sense to me

shunting123 said:

http://www.ebay.com/itm/Apple-iPhon...1630989959?pt=Cell_Phones&hash=item339a3c8687


The current bid is $710 for a 16GB iPhone 5s (unopened).

Given that the price directly from Apple, including sales tax in any US jurisdiction, is not more than $610 (i.e., $100 less than that), and that there is currently no backorder/delay in getting them directly from Apple, can anyone explain this?

Thank you.

Click to expand...

Keep in mind that just because people are bidding it that high doesn't necessarily mean they intend to actually pay for it. I'm almost certain the seller won't be paid by whoever wins the auction at that price and it will be relisted soon. These type of artificial bids are fairly common on eBay these days.

There are a lot of 5S's on eBay selling for more than 710. Sometimes people list high and find people willing to pay it and sometimes nobody pays it. Don't forget the 5S sells for a lot more in different parts of the world than the US. In Italy a 16gb 5S from Apple is almost $800.. and other European countries are even more expensive.

That is suspicious, especially since the seller is only shipping to the U.S., although it could be for a third-party intermiedary. Could be the buyer has a stolen PayPal account. That happened to me once when I was selling -- buyer offered way over the reasonable price but wanted it shipped to an address different than on the account once the auction completed. They try to tempt you by paying so much more... in my case eBay ended-up canceling the transaction.

The bidders could also be from outside the USA where their prices are very high.

I've seen those and they're just fake bids. When I listed my 5s a few weeks ago, there was a listing where a couple of bidders with 0 feedback bid a used unlocked 5s up to $900 on a seller with 0 feedback. I felt bad for the seller, but he was probably inexperienced and didn't use any of the ebay exclusion options to screen out potential bad buyers (although they will not block just joined bidders with no feedback) or cancelled their bids at the last minute which he could have done.