Quote from: coinsquirrel on June 21, 2013, 10:26:21 AM

Quote from: theymos on June 21, 2013, 09:51:31 AM

Quote from: coinsquirrel on June 21, 2013, 09:27:19 AM

forcing StarSoccer to bid BTC63

Did Gar255 put a gun to his head? No one forced the bidders to do anything.

Having an alt that artificially raises the bid price is similar to a secret reserve price in an auction. There's nothing inherently wrong with it except that Garr255 should have warned bidders that he might do it. I rank his actions there as "a bit shady," though he handled the fallout badly (due to inexperience, I suppose).

In any case, alts aren't against forum rules, and scammer tags are typically only given when an explicit agreement is broken. Garr255 never promised not to bid on his own auctions. He never even promised to honor the results of the auctions. Without contracts that say otherwise, auctions are only devices to assist in price negotiations.

Obviously no one physically forced anyone's hand, but Garr certainly invalidated StarSoccer's previous bid, by bidding with his alternate ID. Thus, StarSoccer had no other choice but to increment his own bid, if he wanted to win the auction. Clearly Garr had no intention of winning his own auction, and he knew that if by placing his bid, he was forcing all bidders to bid at a new price point. I wasn't involved here, so I'll chalk this up to semantics, but we should really be asking the bidders themselves if they felt like they were forced into submitting higher bids.

I will full-heatedly dispute that this is in any way similar to a reserve price. Reserves are always set before bidding begins, before interest in the item can be gauged. Additionally, in any respectable auction system, the reserve price can not move, like Garr had the ability to do with his Werner account. He was giving everyone the impression that there was broader market interest in the item. This is what we call creating a bidding frenzy.

If he wanted to win the auction then obviously he was willing to pay BTC63, no? He's still not forcing anybody to pay money they would not be willing to pay. This is equivalent to refusing a price in a bargain, something perfectly reasonable.

I don't see any problem in what Garr did, however I am disappointed he didn't warn people he was doing this. However, that's still not something worthy of a scammer tag.