topic Re: shill bidding in Buying

shill bidding

56bsadave — Thu, 06 Dec 2012 19:53:45 GMT

is shill bidding is it illegal

Re: shill bidding

foxette-in-sox — Thu, 06 Dec 2012 19:54:37 GMT

Its against ebay policy.

Re: shill bidding

56bsadave — Thu, 06 Dec 2012 21:01:37 GMT

and yet so rampant, is ebay turning a blind eye, for the sake of $$$$ in listing and other fees.

not to mention the one's how list (private listing - bidders' identities protected) which makes it impossible for the public to keep check on them ?

Re: shill bidding

leader-of-the-band — Thu, 06 Dec 2012 21:15:23 GMT

my wife has some of those private listings, but they are Buy-Nows. Sellers use that format for a variety of reasons. Some include selling items that are personal (health care products) or sensitive (sexy underwear) or valuable/collectable (coins or banknotes).

Don't think that it is done for the express purpose of shill bidding. The thing you should look at on those private auctions is the time of bidding as this can be a way of looking for suspect bidding.

Bottom line is, report the seller to eBay if you think shilling is taking place. They will look at the eBay ID and ISP used for the selling and bidding and take action if it turns out to be shill bidding.

I think you would be surprised how many posters come here to complain about shill bidding that turns out not to be shill bidding after all. The private listing format just lends itself to suspicion, but is a valid listing format.

Re: shill bidding

polocross58 — Fri, 07 Dec 2012 01:52:12 GMT

Well, I've let half a dozen items go their merry way in the past couple of weeks, because it's been my opinion (based on 10 plus years of ebaying under 10 years of IDs) that the seller and/or his buddies have been shill bidding

Out of all the many, many items for sale on ebay, those on my Watchlist would comprise maybe .00000001%. I don't believe only the items I'm interested in are victim to shill bids. Therefore, on percentages alone, yes, I suspect shill-bidders ARE 'rampant' on ebay. And no, I do not believe ebay gives a toss

It's ebay which loses, of course. But greed blinds

Sellers don't want to pay the fee for listing the item at a realistic start price. So ebay loses there

The shill-bidding seller believes he's a real smart cookie by listing for 99 cents, after which, like the genius he/she obviously believes him/her self to be, the seller then attempts to shill-bid the item UP to (and, they hope, even higher) than what would have been a realistic start-price

And the same 'genius' shill-bidding seller believes buyers are total fools and won't wake up to it

Pretty sad, huh? They hover over their screen, waiting for unsuspecting bidders to place a bid, in order they (shill-bidder) can 'outbid' all genuine bids. Wow, what an original scheme. No one will work it out. And gee, who knows, they might manage to shill bid that item up into the millions -- then they can quit work, buy a penthouse in Surfers and place an order for a red Ferrari --- right ?

Wrong. The big world is not a total fool and sees through their idiot plan, resulting in the shill bidder receiving far less, in many cases, than if they'd simply listed the item at a realistic start-price to begin with

But will shill bidders learn ? Probably not. Because many of them are crooks by nature. 'Getting away with stuff' is what turns them on - in the same way many steal from shops or from work. They LIKE being underhanded. It's the demon-gene which drives them, it was born in them. So in addition to refusing to play their twisted little games, I decline to buy their stuff because it's tainted with their sickness and I don't want it anywhere near me

Re: shill bidding

thecatspjs — Fri, 07 Dec 2012 02:22:11 GMT

I list several auctions at a time at 99c starts to clear stock and generate interest in my other listings - NO shill bidding involved !

I am comfortable that I am likely to be out of pocket on the final price for an individual item - but the additional exposure on ebay that I gain from these listings ( supported by views, watchers & traffic patterns) is well worth it.

Most of my 99c auctions only achieve a low price between 99c and $10 - being significantly lower than the price I would achieve if listing as a buy-it-now. There are also those that achieve fantastic, unexpected final sale prices 🙂 particularly those with two bidders going head to head to win or others who have placed a high bid to begin with and are nibble bid up by others.

Whatever the final price achieved there is significant value there for my business to continue to run these 99c listings - so for me "the realistic start price" that you refer to is actually 99c 😄

Re: shill bidding

lyndal1838 — Fri, 07 Dec 2012 02:24:12 GMT

You are probably letting good buys get away if you really believe there is so much shill bidding going on.

Just place your highest bid in the last few minutes/seconds of the auction and the shillers will not have time to push the bidding up.

Re: shill bidding

*sparklz* — Fri, 07 Dec 2012 06:06:42 GMT

A seller had bid on every single one of his own listings with his buying ID and his wifes ID making him pay a huge amount in fees by winning his own auctions.

He even left and received FB for them with in minutes of winning his own items.

After being reported he was banned from listing for 2 weeks.

Re: shill bidding

kopenhagen5 — Fri, 07 Dec 2012 06:11:08 GMT

Not that ebay doesn't give two hoots, it's logistics.

They simply can't use the man hours to check before reported.

I know random checks are done.

Re: shill bidding

***super_nova*** — Fri, 07 Dec 2012 07:06:06 GMT

Not that ebay doesn't give two hoots, it's logistics.

They simply can't use the man hours to check before reported.

I know random checks are done.

I believe there are bots looking for suspicious connections between computers; but if somebody shill bids from totally unconnected computer from somebody else's house, it is not possible to detect or prove. But buyers, mostly, are not stupid and will stop bidding if the item is going over what it is worth. And if somebody gets caught, they do get de-registered.

i think lot of shill bidding would be stopped if eBay offered reserve price for more expensive items. Maybe reserve could be set for minimum of $100. Sellers believe they will attract more bidders if they start low, but cannot afford to give stock away bellow cost, so they do their own reserve price by having somebody place a bid. But of-course, there are many people who want to get items for nothing or at least fraction of the real value. If one person gets a great bargain that means somebody else's loss.

I also start some sale items at 99c just to bring attention to my other items. And I do list them as "private" as I do not want people to be able to see for ever if it sold for well bellow my normal price. I do not want people to say : " why should I pay $275 when she sold one similar for 1/2 that". Although, most of the time the 99c items go for price pretty much around the normal mark. And no I do not shill bid, I normally start at price I am happy with.

Re: shill bidding

*new2vintage — Fri, 07 Dec 2012 07:23:50 GMT

" is ebay turning a blind eye "

What the problem is Dave is that ebay don't use software that detects shill bidding, prohibited items or anything else that violates a policy and rely on members to report suspect listings etc.

Re: shill bidding

cherishnlisi2012 — Sat, 15 Dec 2012 09:44:01 GMT

Hi, Help please.

I'm bidding against a Private Bidder who's Identity is protected and shows up as a private bidder, How do you do this?

Re: shill bidding

lyndal1838 — Sat, 15 Dec 2012 10:29:41 GMT

The seller has set the auction to Private....you cannot do anything about it. Only you and the seller can see your ID...everyone else sees it as Private.

Re: shill bidding

thesoulyearns — Sat, 15 Dec 2012 11:40:32 GMT

Hi, Help please.

I'm bidding against a Private Bidder who's Identity is protected and shows up as a private bidder, How do you do this?

Are you referring to a bidder who has "(private)" to the right of their username?

Only buyers (e.g. if you just buy and don't sell) can set their feedback to private. That means if someone knows your username and wants to look at your feedback, they won't be able to see any of your feedback in the typical fashion.

Here is a link to make your feedback public or private - hope it works: http://feedback.ebay.com.au/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?FeedbackOption2

Re: shill bidding

reganmatt11 — Sat, 15 Dec 2012 15:48:00 GMT

Hi. dont know if this is a case of "Shill Bidding" or not I'm not even sure what shill bidding is but I have started to notice a lot of bidders in auctions I have been bidding on seem to have a lot of bid retractions and has started to make me a little suspect. The last item I bid on and won there was a bidder in the last 3 or so minutes who seemed to be pushing up the price but stopped bidding in the last 50 seconds or so giving enough time to counter their bid which led me to believe that they weren't serious bidders in the first place. I looked at this particular bidders history after the auction and they had about 165 bid retractions out of 185 bids in the last 6 months, this looks a bit suspect to me not to mention a bit blatant, is this ok with ebay?

And if its not, what can I do about it?

Thanks

Matt

Re: shill bidding

lyndal1838 — Sat, 15 Dec 2012 16:45:22 GMT

You can try reporting it to ebay but it is unlikely that they will do much after the auction has finished.

It is always worth reporting a member with that many bid retractions...it is not on and does ring alarm bells.

Re: shill bidding

go-tazz — Sat, 15 Dec 2012 21:35:14 GMT

If you post the full listing title here,we can check and confirm whether it's shill bidding,(not the item number as that's against eBay policy).

Reports by more then one member will generally make eBay take action against the "seller".

If eBay confirm that it's shill bidding the seller can not list any items with an auction format for a month.

Re: shill bidding

***super_nova*** — Sat, 15 Dec 2012 22:59:15 GMT

Item Title: CRASS REALITY ASYLUM 1ST PRESS CARD SLEEVE RARE PUNK

Yes the bidder has heaps of retractions but only 1/% of bids with this seller. Looks to me more like he is fishing trying to see how far his opponents want to go. If too high he looks for the same item elsewhere. It is a bad practice, very annoying for both the seller and other bidders, but unless people actually report him there is not much that can be done.

Re: shill bidding

reganmatt11 — Sun, 16 Dec 2012 21:08:56 GMT

Hi I'm not quite sure how you did that, but thats the one.

After posting my message here I went back and watched the remaining auctions as they were ending, but this particular bidder didn't show again. shouldn't that amount of retractions be causing alarms with ebay?

Thanks.

Re: shill bidding

go-tazz — Mon, 17 Dec 2012 08:35:45 GMT

That bidder isn't shill bidding.

They bid to find the high price on the item and then retract their bid.

They then bid later to try and trump the high price or don't bid if they believe it's gone to high,(and then move unto the next one),X-(

As there is no way to check whether they have been sanctioned they generally don't get reported.

As you can see below their bid history shows that they are bidding on items from 22 sellers,(and this seller could be anyone of those).

30-Day Summary Total bids: 209 Items bid on:

144 Bid activity

(%) with this seller: 1%

Bid retractions: 11

Bid retractions (6 months): 164

Music > Records 7 Seller 1 3h

Music > Records 1 Seller 2 2h

Music > Records 1 Seller 3 1h

Music > Albums/ LPs 2 Seller 4 <1h

Music > 7'' Singles 2 Seller 4 <1h

Music > Records 4 Seller 5 6h

Musik > Rock & Underground 2 Seller 6 <1h

Musik > Rock & Underground 1 Seller 6 <1h

Music > 7'' Singles 1 Seller 7 <1h

Musik > Rock & Underground 4 Seller 6 <1h

Musik > Rock & Underground 1 Seller 6 <1h

Music > 7'' Singles 1 Seller 8 < 1h

Music > 7'' Singles 2 Seller 9 2h

Musik > Rock & Underground 1 Seller 10 2h

Music > 7'' Singles 1 Seller 11 2h

Music > 7'' Singles 2 Seller 11 <1h

Music > 7'' Singles 1 Seller 12 <1h

Music > 7'' Singles 1 Seller 13 <1h

Music > Albums/ LPs 1 Seller 14 6h

Music > Albums/ LPs 1 Seller 15 8h

Music > 7'' Singles 3 Seller 16 <1h

Music > 7'' Singles 4 Seller 17 1h

Music > 7'' Singles 1 Seller 17 <1h

Music > Records 5 Seller 18 <1h

Music > 7'' Singles 2 Seller 19 7h

Music > 7'' Singles 1 Seller 20 5h

Music > Records 2 Seller 21 <1h

Music > 7'' Singles 1 Seller 22 4h