@2011.narelle wrote:
If an auction on say a bracelet or some other common,non personal item is in a private auction there may be some shill bidding behind it.I saw one of your sellers has private auctions has this type of item so maybe avoid these.
The thing with a private auction is that every bidder's identity is hidden,so you can't see what % of bids were with the same seller to check if it's shill bidding.
There is nothng wrong with a private auction but when it is on non personal or perhaps very expensive items,there may be something suss with the seller chosing the private format.
Throw up an item number on such an auction if you want people here to look at it & see what they think.
I've been using the private option on my most recent listings just to see how it works from the sellers end, as there may be occassions when I feel it might be to my behefit to use it.
There is very good reason for using the private option that you appear not to have realized, for buyers and sellers alike.
If you are an ebayer that both buys and sells using the same account, and the items you are selling include items you have bought on eBay (either from o/s, or from low start auctions that didn't attract much attention for whatever reason; maybe they were poorly photographed/presented, or finished at an ungodly hour), then it would aid you if you had purchased it via private format (assuming you had left the seller feedback).
The reason being, if you are selling let's say (I hope you don't mind if I nick one of your listings for this) a LEONA EDMISTON-Purple floral off shoulder Summer dress which you had yourself purchased on ebay, but at a lower price than you are asking or hoping for, it is possible for a studious buyer to find that listing/title and see how much you paid for it. True, it's harder theses days to find given feedback received as a buyer no longer shows the item title or a link to the listing. But the listing title, price, & link does appear on the feedback that the buyer leaves for the seller on the sellers feedback page.
So a determined buyer could start clicking on the IDs they find for those you've bought from, and start sifting through their feedback received until they find it. They then may bid lower than they might have otherwise, or else not at all. Ofc if the seller is a high volume seller this would prove a laborious task, but if the seller is only a part-time/occassional seller it would be simple & fast matter to find it. (I imagine there are often great bargains to be had from occassional sellers that may not have a following of buyers, & who may only be wanting to clear a couple of things & so list them at very low starts, or don't realise the start time & thus end time can be important). If the listing was private however, they can look all they want, they'll never find the listing, title, or price (unless it was very recent & still showing on the sellers completed/sold items).
Tbh, if I were a seller that was reselling items I bought on eBay through the same account I wouldn't even want the sellers IDs to be showing on my feedback page, as it potentially give's up my best suppliers to both my potential buyers & to my competitors, & especially exposes my 'honey hole' sellers,... given that others need only click on those sellers IDs and check their current listings &/or sold/completed listings.
For the sellers, using private may help encourage the buyer-resellers to leave feedback, who might not otherwise (for the reasons above).
If you don't think it's that big of a deal, consider this... there is at least one of the other regular posters in this forum (who I believe may be a friend of yours), who buys & resells through the one account, and which if I took maybe 30 minutes to an hour of looking, I could come back and tell you exactly how much she paid for most/all of her items that she currently has listed. If I took longer I could also tell you how much she paid for those she has sold in the past, what she sold them for, and how much she made. Now if I had been a potential aussie buyer/competitor (which I'm neither) I need only have; ran an ordinary search looking for that type of item, found one of her listings, checked her feedback, checked the ID of the seller she buys from the most, and bingo. If I didn't know her, & weren't afraid of buying from o/s, unless I want it asap then there's no way I would buy from her when I can get the same thing for 'cost'.
These are the primary reasons I use seperate accounts for buying and selling, and why I've been experimenting with & considering using private listings in some instances.. for if/when I'm selling something an ebay reseller might be interested in and I don't want to discourage them from leaving feedback.
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