I have been searching the same Ebay categories for seven years and have gotten to know the way different sellers list their items for sale. We believe The worst thing for buyers to come along in the Ebay auctions is the "User ID Kept Private" feature.  This feature helps the unscrupulous seller jack the price of their auction up three fold by using their secondary names or others to bid for their item.  If you are a new buyer to a particular category, you might not know what price the average item sells for on that auction category. When a Seller uses the "Private" feature, beware. Check other items in that category to compare prices.  If the User ID Kept Private auction is way over the others similar auctions or has many bids BEWARE!  Our advise...Don't Bid on it.....The nice thing about eBay is another similar or identical item will show up again with another seller.  Without naming sellers, We have watched some that always have the same bidders, but those bidders never win the auction.  Another bell should go off that they have jacked-up the price through fake bidding...We are aware of several of these types of sellers and have chosen never to bid on any of their items. So a word to the wise...Know the price ranges in which  items are currently selling,  note how many bidders  have bid on an item that has User ID Kept Private.....I think this is a bad feature that creates more cheating by sellers to cheat honest to goodness buyers.  Buyers do not need to have bidder privacy.  If your in person at a real auction with a number, everyone can see who is bidding...On ebay bidders are from all over the USA and beyond.   I don't think other bidders care who else is bidding. They will never know them or where they live....so keeping the bidding private only helps the sellers. We think it's a feature eBay should remove from all the auctions.