SHILL BIDDING SHOULD BE ILLEGAL! PLEASE HELP!

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.

Message 1 of 130
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SHILL BIDDING SHOULD BE ILLEGAL! PLEASE HELP!

I'm having no difficulty whatsoever logging in to her auctions, and I've discovered something extremely interesting. If you check the feedback left by seller mentioned by mightynavyblue in post #14, have a look at the name of the "seller" she left feedback for on 06-Nov-13 01:40 and that's our third shill bidder. Even the user name is a dead giveaway as it's the same as the names of the paintings she's selling on her primary ID.

In addition, in breach of eBay rules and regulations, she has sold and bought items from her other ID and has even rather stupidly left feedback on 8 different occasions as evidence of the fact. That's not what I'd call particularly bright. So we now know who belongs to the g***i (48) & a***0 (7) user IDs, with the only one still unknown at this stage being b***0 (4).

I also believe that a great deal of her feedback has somehow been falsified, because if you have a look at the buyer e***m (4) who left 17 consecutive positives on 25-Dec-13 15:26, how is it possible that he only has a feedback count of 4? It just doesn't make any sense at all. In fact, there are a large number of multiple purchases by the same buyers in her feedback, and I suspect that most of them have somehow been falsified.

Two of the shill bidders IDs appear in full on the very last page of her feedback for others (or the very first, not long after she began trading on this ID, whichever way you prefer to look at it). Those 2 feedbacks were left on 24-Sep-13 15:08 and 06-Nov-13 01:34 if that makes it any easier for you to locate them. It's so blatant that there's no way that eBay won't see what has been extremely obvious to everybody else, so it will be very interesting to see what action they take against her (if any at all).
Message 21 of 130
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SHILL BIDDING SHOULD BE ILLEGAL! PLEASE HELP!

I was under the impression that shill bidding is illegal, if this is the case why would ebay facilitate this? If it is obvious then ebay should know about it and remove the accounts, and if they don't IMO they are just as guilty as the lister from red dwarf.

 

Message 22 of 130
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SHILL BIDDING SHOULD BE ILLEGAL! PLEASE HELP!

Have a look at the neg where the buyer complains about paying too much because one of the bidders retracted their winning bid. No prizes for guessing that it was one of our three shill bidders (a***0 (7)). In fact, both negs are from the same buyer and if you check the bidding on the other negged item, the shill bidders bid that one up too, from $50 to the winning bid of $125 so they have essentially ripped off that poor fellow to the tune of at least $75. 😞
Message 23 of 130
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SHILL BIDDING SHOULD BE ILLEGAL! PLEASE HELP!

Would be nice if we could check up on the cryptic message I left in my last post. That one has 4 feedback, but it seems everyone is having issues with 'page not responding' when trying to search by bidder name.

Message 24 of 130
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SHILL BIDDING SHOULD BE ILLEGAL! PLEASE HELP!

Figured out your cryptic messsage, lol.

 

I found 4 fb guy by using the 'find member' link instead.

 

Has had no feedback since March 12 and none from our seller

 

But that still doesn't give us what he has bid on and won/lost

 

So, really, no help at all, am I?      hahaha

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SHILL BIDDING SHOULD BE ILLEGAL! PLEASE HELP!

I tried to access that page on my phone, using both the regular webpage and the mobile webpage. The regular webpage gave me the same error (both using home network and 4G) and the mobile webpage didn't give the option of searching. There is also no option on the mobile app to do an advanced search (that I could find).

 

Hopefully *someone* can use the search by bidder without getting the error message!!!

Message 26 of 130
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SHILL BIDDING SHOULD BE ILLEGAL! PLEASE HELP!

There is an old post from October last year: WTH!? No more Advanced Search by Bidder. Appartently you can't search by bidder anymore. I even tried searching for myself ha ha! And nothing came up.

 

What I don't understand is how long does it take for Ebay to act, I also bidded on an item a low bid then reported it as soon as I saw the shill bidders came on. I wouldn't of mind paying $5.00 for one of those prints. I looked at my didn't win section and the same item was relisted so I didn't even get a second chance! ha ha!

 

Seriously though how long does it take for Ebay to act on something like this? Anyone know?

Message 27 of 130
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SHILL BIDDING SHOULD BE ILLEGAL! PLEASE HELP!

Up until last week, I had been using the  'advanced search

by bidder',  with no trouble.

 

So the problem is only recent.

Message 28 of 130
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SHILL BIDDING SHOULD BE ILLEGAL! PLEASE HELP!

So, not to get off track here - has anyone reported the seller from the original post to ebay?

Message 29 of 130
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SHILL BIDDING SHOULD BE ILLEGAL! PLEASE HELP!

A few of us have apparently.

 

Does someone know,  if ebay does nothing, what happens then?

Message 30 of 130
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