[philAAPL]

I have got to say this is the slimiest company going regarding 'auctions' on it's site (www.egghead.com).

First, I place a high bid on a product (there are two other bidders - both sequentially lower than my bid). I find out the next day that my bid has been dumped - not by a higher but one at the SAME price (one of the earlier bidders I had trumped). Egghead spins this as 'because the bidder wanted all three available units' - no, he should have been able to get the two remaining at that bid.

Fine. I wait until five minutes before the auction is POSTED to CLOSE (12:30 pdt) and place a higher bid again. Deadline comes and goes. I am one of the three winning bids. I check back for five minutes to make sure this is kosher. Everything seems cool.

Twenty minutes later I'm closing browser windows and am set to close the auction one and decide to refresh one last time - SUDDENLY they have changed the auction close time (AFTER the auction had closed) to 12:47 pdt and someone from who knows where has put in the winning bid at 12:36 pdt.

If this isn't fraud, I don't know what is.

Phil

[barry_black]

Actually, its annoying but it isn't fruad. Basically a lot of those auction store fonts have a clause in the agreement that allows them to extend the auction if people are still bidding in the last few minutes of the auction. I forget how it works, but basially if you bid with 2 min left, the action doesn't end on time but is extened by at least 5 min. Then if someone bids in that 5 min, the auction gets extened again. It takes 5 min of no bids for the auction to stop. Its crappy for the consumer, but makes them more money.