Shill bidding from multiple accounts!

[master-design-direct]

Hi guys,

just wonder are we allowed to name the sellers who've been conducting shill bidding here?

I know it for sure because eBay has replied me with confirmation of their shill bidding, but from what I can see it seems no actions were taken on their accounts, they have been doing shill bidding and they are still doing it.

[*sparklz*]

No you are not allowed to name and shame here.
If ebay has confirmed it then there is nothing more you can do.
Once they take action on the account/s they will warned and or be allowed to list with Buy Now's ONLY.

[lyndal1838]

It is unlikely that ebay will confirm that anyone is shill bidding and they certainly will not tell you what action they have taken.

[austmann76]

Hello, joexqj. Extract from my post Bid Retractions And Fixed Term Listings.

"I think that Ebay is mostly a good place and a good idea as it gives individual persons the opportunity to list items that they no longer need and to be able to make a few dollars on their unwanted items instead of ending up as landfill or crushed up into a little metal rectangle by the scrap yard and wasted.

I however do not agree with some of Ebay's rules that being bid retractions and listings. Fair enough if I was at City Motor Auction Group in Brisbane ( which is an automotive auction house ) and bidded on an item no bid retraction should be available because you have time to inspect the vehicle and look all around it and check all paperwork. It is an in house, on the spot, auction that you can see what you are bidding on in front of you. With Ebay however 40% or more of the time there is no way you can view an item and it is bid at your own risk.

Because of this I think bid retractions should be allowed and I will be trying to get support on this issue from other members.

I think another problem Ebay faces is items sold outside of Ebay and then the item does not get removed by the seller which makes a big confusion, or items that are listed being pulled off in the last day or hour because the seller does not like the price he/she are going to get for the item, or other Ebay members accounts being used to boost the price of an item."

Im over it already. I have only been on Ebay not long and have ran into these wingnuts already. Something needs to be done , a policy change or something like a demerit system that if you continue to get bad feedback and win bids and not pay the demerits get so low that your account suspends.

[davewil1964]

This has nothing to do with shill bidding, austmann. The savvy shiller makes sure they don't win an auction and that they don't need to retract bids.

Besides if you bid your maximum at the last possible moment, there aren't any bids for the shiller to work with. Nibble bidding is what allows it.

[futondog]

Use a "sniper service" if shill bidding annoys you.

It avoids "nibble" bidding which is only for amateurs.

[austmann76]

Yes you are right in a way davewil1964 but my post does state peope using other accouts to up the bid of an item ect. The author of this post might be interested in my post as well cause it is kind of on the same wavelength.

[master-design-direct]

I know it's weird eBay would tell you the result of their investigation, but I've filed the reports so many times and one time I think I just got lucky, their own words:

'Please do not worry Q, I have already taken on ***'s account since they have violated our Shill Bidding Policy.'

That's how I know I was right.

Besides, I think what the seller's doing is way beyond shill bidding. They are not doing it the regular way, it's more like a sell or no sell strategy. Basically here's how it works:

Every time they put on like 50 auctions all starting at $0.01, most of them are furnitures such as antique style wingback chair in a pair, bookcases, bedframe and tables etc. Something most sellers wouldn't sell at auctions starting at $0.01 Anyway, the listings usually last for 7 or 10 days, then by the end of the auctions, say 1 day or maybe 10 hours before they end, the seller uses 2 other accounts to boost up the prices. The reason why 2 other accounts is, most of the auctions stay at low prices even when they are close to the end, there's no way the prices would be bid up to the targeted prices. So the seller uses the 1st account to set a base-line price, and 2nd account to outbid the 1st account by a small increment, in this way the seller's closest targeted prices are viewable for other bidders. So if other genuine buyers want the item, they will have to outbid the 2nd account, and as I mentioned earlier the 2nd account intentionally outbid the 1st account by a small increment, so basically it only takes one bid from a genuine buyer to outbid the 2nd account. That's why the items will either be sold at the seller's targeted price or sold to the seller her/himself.

I hope I've explained it clearly. It took me a while to figure out how they do it. The seller is smart enough to set the listings as private listings, so no one is supposed to see the IDs of other 2 accounts. But thanks to an old eBay app on my iphone and ipad, I can always see the partial IDs of the winner. And guess what, 90% were won by the same member with 0 feedback. Why 0 feedback after winning so many items? I think we all know why!

If anyone has an ipad and is interested in seeing what I see, this is how you find the seller, in fact it's sellers. There're 4 accounts doing the selling now, they all belong to the same owner. In eBay search, type in antique wingback chair, choose auctions only from the search result. I understand I'm not allowed to name the sellers, so hopefully I won't be in trouble by saying this: the ones you should pay attention to are currently with 134 feedbacks, 64 feedbacks, 0 feedback and 0 feedback. Yes, two new accounts with 0 feedback are selling as well. And so far, the other 2 accounts they use to conduct shill bidding are 7***p with 2 feedbacks and e***g with 0 feedback.