SHILL BIDDING SHOULD BE ILLEGAL! PLEASE HELP!

[kaos2015]

I want to report a member on behalf of my friend who was been trying to buy an item but the seller seems to be a scammer by driving up the prices with fake accounts. Maybe we are wrong and maybe we are not but-  it looks like a fishy and it smells like a fishy so it almost has to be fishy!

Item number: 181468915740

ITEM NUMBER 181 468 915 740 ( this is only one example- nearly every current listing has 2 bidders driving up prices on the sellers items and going through all the items in the feedback history the 2 bidders are constantly bidding)

They are using fake accounts to drive up the price and that is illegal!!!!! I think it is called shill bidding.

We have checked the sellers items sold, the number of bidders and all the feedback left and it DOES NOT MAKE SENSE!!!!

And the strange thing is these 2 bidders who have bid thousands of times on her items in 30 days cant be found in her feedback yet they are bidding large amounts but never seem to win or leave feedback. That is strange.

SELLER ID godblessmaria

We have gone through all the current listings and a lot of recent listings and it is the SAME BIDDERS ALWAYS DRIVING UP THE PRICES!!!

Currently 1 person bidding is b***0 (4) with 4 feedback.

In the last 30 days it says they have made 2282 bids on 451 items and 90% of the bid activity is with godblessmaria.

That DOES NOT MAKE SENSE that someone has made 2282 bids in ONE MONTH and only has a feedback of 4??????? They have made 2053 bids on godblessmaria listings and has only 4 feedback in one month?

ANOTHER bidder is g***i (48) with 48 feedback. In 30 days they have made 1493 bids on 426 items, 99% of them with godblessmaria. And only have a feedback of 48?????

This is shill bidding and is illegal and they are STEALING from other Ebay bidders by driving the prices up!!!

And they are not bidding small amount but large amounts!!!!!! Sometimes over $200

What we think they are doing is driving up the prices to MASSIVE amounts and then not completing the checkout- they are just paying the 10% fees and then giving second chance offers hence recovering the costs for the FVF transactions they never complete and STILL making sales with 'second chance offers'.

Is there anyway Ebay and Paypal can check that the sales made on Ebay through the possible fake bidders are actually getting completed through Paypal?

How is it that 2 people have made 3775 bids on ONE SELLER in ONE MONTH with a total feedback of only 52 between them???

THAT DOES NOT MAKE SENSE!!!!!!!!!!!!!  Why is this allowed to happen?

My friend wants to bid but it is plain to see that godblessmaria has people driving up prices with THOUSANDS of bids that never win!!!!!!!!

Please tell me what is going on! And please correct us if we are wrong

Thank you.

[curraone]

use the report option to contact ebay - make sure you have item number ready - however, it is against policy to name buyers or sellers in the boards

http://pages.ebay.com.au/help/policies/seller-shill-bidding.html

“If you think someone's breaking the rules, please report it to us. Be sure to provide the item number”

[nevillesdaughter]

This might sound obvious, but don't make any more bids - this item seems to be a print/fake/whatever with no provenance or guarantee of authenticity and they seem to be selling heaps of them.

Leave them with their own high bid (which they'll have to pay fees on) and source artworks from someone reliable. The item is listed as rare but they seem to have sold heaps and have heaps more listed....

Marina.

[cq_tech]

Having just checked a large number of her 1400-odd completed listing, most of which have been relisted numerous times despite having previously been won at auction, there is a very clear pattern of shill bidding going on, and apart from the 2 dummy bidders mentioned in the OP, there is yet another, a***0 (7) and between the 3 of them, they appear to "win" a rather large majority of the seller's auctions yet each time they win one, that very same item is invariably relisted only a couple of days later.

It is without a doubt one of the most blatant shill bidding enterprises I've ever seen on eBay and I can't for the life of me understand why eBay haven't woken up to what has been going on. Either they're totally ignorant, or they're turning a blind eye to the proceedings because regardless of what happens, they still make their FVF and listing fees no matter what.

[cq_tech]

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@nevillesdaughter wrote:

This might sound obvious, but don't make any more bids - this item seems to be a print/fake/whatever with no provenance or guarantee of authenticity and they seem to be selling heaps of them.

Leave them with their own high bid (which they'll have to pay fees on) and source artworks from someone reliable. The item is listed as rare but they seem to have sold heaps and have heaps more listed....

Marina.

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Marina, it's because the same item is being relisted time and time again every time it is being won by one of the 3 shill bidders who are involved in this disgusting enterprise.

[curraone]

it seems stupid - what is the point?     I mean I know what shilling can do - but there are no other bidders except the shillers

[cq_tech]

It is clearly worth the effort, otherwise they wouldn't be doing it.

[kaos2015]

Hi. Thanks for all your replies. Yes I think we will take Marinas advice and not bid on the item even though it is something wanted to buy. It is much too much effort to get a fair crack at the item. 

Someone has just told my friend that there is a time period for claiming unpaid items and that if the fake bidder has won 50 auctions but hasnt paid, the seller can still claim back all her fees that she incurred through the scam. And still be able to keep her selling account and all the second chance offers sales she made.

So my understanding now is that if these fake bidders are working with the seller, the seller can just open 50 unpaid item cases if it falls in the right timeframe and then the dodgy seller will get all her FVF back, the fake bidder accounts will be shut down and then she can just make up other fake accounts and continue to have fake people bidding 3000+ times per month on her items. And on and on it goes. And she can continue to have her fees refunded. It seems her whole business is not based on winning bidders but the second chance offer business.

Well that was what was suggested to us curraone.

What a scam.

I dont care what Ebay say. Even if those fake accounts get shut down Ebay will surely have to know that the seller is part of the scam and that having 2 people bid 3000+ times in 1 month is suspicious.

Well hopefully the seller does open 50 unpaid items to get her fees back and then maybe all of a sudden Ebay might not be smug allowing it to happen if their fees have to be returned to the scam seller. Ha Ha- karma then if Ebay got scammed out of a lot of fees I would think.

Thanks

[kaos2015]

PS yes I agree it is worth the effort cq_tech

Item Number 181442194096

The winner paid $425.

But if the shill bidders wasn't involved then the winning bidder would have got it for just over $11. 

The bids went from $11.50 to $300.

[harley_babes_hoard]

Wow that is definitely shill bidding, each of her items has at least one bid from those suspect accounts. I would love to send her a message telling her she has been busted. What I don't understand is she must be paying a hell of a lot in fees unless she is then cancelling each purchase. Wouldn't this alone ring alarm bells for eBay.