EBAY IS USELESS -no trust and certainly NO safety

[ford12ford]

How poor is the trust and safety team with their rules!!! I reported a seller who is using shill bidding to up their bid with many items, then just they cancel the transation and relist them straight away. 3 days ago ebay checked it out, yes confirmed it as could see the other acount was listed to them, after all how hard to proove when a seller with 591 feedback has had 78 retractions, over 80% bidding with the same bidder. WELL EBAY HAS DONE ABSOLUTELY NOTHING, and this was not from customer service, but the trust and safety team I eventually got thru to. I am watching the items and following the seller and see the buyer with back 591 bidding YET AGAIN for the same seller

 Anyone got any better ideas on reporting. I tried to get a supervisor but ebay said I needed trust and safey.

 Sorry I know this is a new message up on the boards one but so frustrating.

[collect247]

But OP has contacted ebay and ebay did tell OP that the 2 IDs are connected 

[performance_parts_clearance_centre]

I'm suspecting it might be a way of running up the seller's feedback total. 

I'm tempted to send the seller a message along the lines of "Hey, just curious as to how the same bidder keeps winning items of yours which mysteriously get relisted, then won again by the same bidder. Only seems to be happening with that one bidder"...

[lyndal1838]

---

@didawaywith wrote:

But OP has contacted ebay and ebay did tell OP that the 2 IDs are connected 

---

Like PJ, I am astounded that ebay has confirmed that the 2 IDs are connected.   Ebay is absolutely paranoid about keeping that sort of information quiet.

In the past the only people who would be told that would be the police or other authorities.

[go-tazz]

They have no items for sale at present and they will probably not list any auctions for a month,(the usual

"punishment" for shill bidding).

They will be informed that after the month eBay will be keeping an eye on their account,(which will genarally

allow them to go back to shill bidding).

As mentioned,they aren't real good at shilling and when you look at some of the bid retractions by the shiller

they are a "bit" high and unreasonable,(items that seem to have a "reasonable" bid price on them have

no reason for a shiller to raise the price).

For a shiller to win the same items 2 or 3 times is as bad as it gets,

Blatant shill bidding is always best reported via Help & Contact as the report links are useless as T & S will

have/make out that they have no idea what to look for,(which is still the case at times with direct reports).

eBay have no interest in shill bidding,fake items,etc as they all allow them to get extra money,(which is their

only concern).

[chameleon54]

---

@*tippy*toes* wrote:

Cyril said..........

I'd written a reply then remembered the OP mentioned they had followed the seller, so thought it better if I went and had a look. I've looked at the last 20 or so sold items and yes, 591 has bid on some, but not all of them. They haven't even bid on half of them. I don't have time to go through all of them, but while it could be shilling, it could also be someone who's trying to buy cheap items to resell, especially as they have won several of the lower priced items and not bid on some of the items that sold for a higher price. Some of the relisted items have been won by 591 a second time, which seems a bit silly.

If 591 had bid on every single listing, then yes, I'd be very suspicious of shilling, but it doesn't really look like it from where I'm sitting. While the bid retractions do look sus, there are a few other winners that also have a high bid retraction rate

---

Maybe 591,s bids have two purposes. The 78 bid retractions could be used for shilling, leaving the underbidder with the item.

The other purpose of 591 could be to act as a reserve price. Start the auctions low and if the items dont make enough, 591 steps in to buy the item, hence the reason for purchasing the same item twice.

While we dont have a complete picture due to the very high number of bid retractions the whole thing looks very smelly.

[*tippy*toes*]

That makes sense. Buy the same item for a low price to stop someone else getting it for a low price. I suppose the higher priced items they've bought that haven't been relisted could have been offered as a second chance. I've changed my tune a bit now, it does stink.

[collect247]

Do you think that the jeans that are worth $1100 that the shiller won for $1.25 were offered as a second chance?

[*tippy*toes*]

---

@didawaywith wrote:

Do you think that the jeans that are worth $1100 that the shiller won for $1.25 were offered as a second chance?

---

Ahhhhh, no. I believe it's as I said in my last post. 591 "bought" them so they wouldn't be sold to someone else for $1.25. That way they could be relisted and hopefully fetch a higher price.......probably by being bumped up again. If they look like selling cheap, 591 will win them again I'd reckon.

[deepcreek45]

Well I have to disagree - I had a problem with a buyer who was purposely trying to win my items in order to leave negative feedback. When I contacted ebay and gave them the 3 different ID's this person was using they CONFIRMED that yes the ID's were linked to the same person. This was online assistance about 12 months ago. Fascinating stuff.

[lyndal1838]

As I said in my post....it is against ebay policy to confirm anything.   If the buyer was to find out that ebay was giving out this information they could contact the authorities as it is a breach of Privacy Laws.

Something tells me that whoever you spoke to does not know the rules.

It is also about the time that members of these boards were being told who reported their posts.  It caused a real fuss on the boards but luckily the head Moderator was told about it quickly and the practice was very quickly stopped,.