@lyndal1838 wrote:
Even when shill bidding has been proved the most that I have seen ebay do is cancel the seller's auctions and restrict them to selling BIN items.
Even then, I think the restriction is only for 2 or 3 months. It's nothing long term. You may remember a few years back, there was a lengthy thread about a seller of "Thankga" art works. I think they are Tibetan or Nepalese art works. She was about as obvious as it got when it came to shill bidding and feedback manipulation. A text book example.
I can't remember what her ID is now, but lets say it was ratbag1. She created several other account, ratbag2, ratbag3 and ratbag4 (the names from memory could have been her first and last name with a number at the end, e.g anniesmith, so very obvious it was the same person). Regardless, the IDs were almost identical. It didn't take a genius to work out they were the same person.
Ratbag1 was the main account, but it was obvious 2 3 and 4 needed some feedback, so she would list a couple of items on each account, which she would buy from her main account and then leave feedback for them, to give them glowing feedback as a seller. That was how we learned who her aliases were. It was also back in the days where you could check someone's history on WatchCount.
It wasn't hard to keep track of the shill accounts because every time the account would get a new feedback, the number for the high bidder would go up. These accounts also had countless retractions. It was rare the shill accounts won, unless she wanted to up their feedback a bit.
I lost track of how many times I reported those accounts. I do know there were a number of other members here who reported the accounts as well. After something like 6 months of reporting, suddenly all her listings were BIN and her sales plummeted. In fact, I thnk she went from something like 20 sales a day, to 1 a week. I kept watching the accounts, and it was only 2 or 3 months later that she was listing auctions again and the same cycle picked up where it left off.
So for the OP, does eBay do anything about shill bidding? The answer is, NO. They couldn't care less................unless you or I decided to do it, then they'd come down on us like a ton of bricks and probably suspend us for life for a first offence.
