Likewise, my son recently bid on a piece of electronic equipment and, when he lost the auction, decided to search further. Sure enough, he found the same item from an online merchant at less than he had bid. And his wasn't the winning bid. Some poor sucker paid even more for it. Charging more for an item than other vendors charge isn't usually illegal.
Businesses do it all the time.
Yet, there are plenty of online auction schemes that go beyond just taking advantage of people's naivete. They involve fraud. May. And that's only a start. The newspaper reported that the center expects to get as many as 1,000 complaints each day once it is fully automated. The number doesn't surprise me.