Ebay Re Watch List

[wendilla]

Does the person that is advertising the goods for sale on e bay know how many people are watching in there list?

[EDDIE51]

ebay tells you the number of 'watchers' and the number of views of your item. Only the seller can see how many watchers there are but the no of views is shown on the listing.

[wendilla]

Thank you Eddie so this would give the seller a chance to put a price up further .Am I right? I don't sell on E Bay but I do buy and my son wanted me to bid for an article and he said not to put it in my watch list.

[boxtops]

No wendilla, it doesn't work like that. I've got 5 people watching something that finishes this morning - doesn't mean any of them are going to bid.

If you have bid for the item it will show in your eBay bidding list anyway, there is no need to watch it as well. The seller will be able to see who's bid, but not the total amount of their highest bid (all they can see is the current bid price) - and once an auction has started, the first bid is made, they can't change the selling price after that, it's all then dependent on the highest bidder.

[LochNessMonster]

Yes they can by adding viewing counter to advert for free and buy viewing item in their My ebay page.

[wendilla]

Hi Boxtops yes I undestand what you have said. The bit I wanted to know was Does the seller see that you are watching the article for sale before the bidding starts. Maybe I did not put my question clear enough.

[boxtops]

I see what you mean, LNM - but the answer to wendilla (IMO) is yes, they can see number of watchers (they can see number of views of the page as well) but the number of watchers doesn't make any difference to the sale price.

[LochNessMonster]

Seller will only see last bid placed but not how may people are in a bidding war etc. until item has been sold.

[Smowball]

They can see how many people are watching but not WHO is watching ie they wont know you are specifically.

[wendilla]

Thank you Boxtops and everyone . Answered my question and I understand .

[vulcan]

Strangely I was about to submit a similar question. Yesterday I looked at an item that started at £3-50 with no bids.I decided to make a bid and put £5-00 and then changed my mind and decided to watch it for a few days. Without pressing the Make your bid box I then added it to my watch list. Later I went back to it and although there had still been no bids the starting price was now £4-95. So the question is could the seller see my figure of £5-00 without me submitting it?

[wendilla]

can't answer your question but I am sure someone will come back with an answer.

[Clanad]

No... if you fill in the bid amount box, but don't submit it (it actually takes two actions to complete the submission, there's a following box that asks you to confirm your bid) no one, especailly the seller will be able to see that you've terminated you inclination to bid but didn't follow through.

By the way, this applies to the E-bay system as displayed here in the U.S., but I suspect it's the same, pretty much, worldwide...

As someone has already alluded... once a bid has been made on any item, the price posted by the seller cannot be changed. However, even after a posted bid, you can "early terminate" the sale and then complete the entire process to re-list the item. I don't think E-bay appreciates this kind of manipulation, but then I've never used that function...

[EDDIE51]

Vulcan in your case the seller simply decided to change the price. You can not alter a price once a bid is in but you can before there is a bid.
If you had put your bid in it would say £3.50 and 1 bid. Only you could see that your max bid ( as that is what it would have been) was £5. If you had bid on it the seller could not have changed the price.