Invaluable.com James D Julia Internet

 This an internet auction host that hosts auctions from supposedly different auction houses. I have bought several things, some went smoothly some not. Usually from different vendors. I have found that like the previous complainant the if I used a max bid the numbers were pushed up. Using a max on the opening bid usually starts as the starting price. I placed a max bid based on my research. The next day sure enough my max bid was reached and. Surprisingly I did not win. I checked with one of my previous good vendor and he confirmed some of the games some of the houses play. So beware when dealing with auctions, there are shills and tricks used to up the bids. It is not a honest environment. So I asked another auction house, that I have had dealings with, and his response was and I quote "Unfortunately, we see a lot of this with other auction houses where they have "floor bidders" bid up items either to push prices past a reserve price or just to get a higher winning bid. Many times these "floor bidders" aren't even real bidders, they are the auctioneer putting in shill bids. There is nothing really to do in those situations. Since we run timed auctions, we don't have floor bidders so I am not sure about the rules when a floor bidder and an online bidder have the same price. I guess it is up to the auctioneer at that point to decide who wins and they I guess chose the floor bid because the reserve price wasn't met. Hope this helps."