User obviously shill bidding yet after constant reporting, keeps getting away with it.

[nukopen]

The above account regularly shill bids on their own items with a 1 feedback account (6***6), when the items are won by their 6***6 (1) account, they simply relist the next day or shortly after.

The shill account has only ever bid on their main account.

This user has been reported by myself and at least one other account, yet ebay just lets it slide.

If rudimentary tracking from non-ebay employees can track this detail, how on earth can eBay bots not even pick this up?

[tazzieterror]

It's against policy to name members in posts like this. By all means link to items you think are suspicious, but don't accuse sellers by name.

[*tippy*toes*]

1. You can't name and shame on the forums. It's against policy and the mods will remove any reference to another member.

2. EBay don't care about shill bidding

3. It's hardly shill bidding if the shill account keeps winning the auctions. It kind of defeats the purpose really.

[tazzieterror]

tippy, there are a number of completed auctions where the 6***6 account has kept pushing the price higher but another user has ended up winning and so paid more than they otherwise would have.

And even if they do win on their own auctions, it creates a false "sales" history, pushing up the perceived value of the item.

[repentatleisure1952 · Accepted solution]

I abhor shill bidding.

Had a look before the OP was gutted...which was always going to happen

The bid history does not look good.

However I have to disagree that " but another user has ended up winning and so paid more than they otherwise would have."

The winner chose to bid as they did & shills are only successful if others keep reactive bidding.

[springyzone]

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@repentatleisure1952 wrote:

I abhor shill bidding.

Had a look before the OP was gutted...which was always going to happen

The bid history does not look good.

However I have to disagree that " but another user has ended up winning and so paid more than they otherwise would have."

The winner chose to bid as they did & shills are only successful if others keep reactive bidding.

---

I agree with you that the bidder chose to re bid, but I also think with shill bidding, when there might only be one interested party, that that person ends up paying more at auction than they may otherwise have had to go up to.

That's the whole purpose of shill bidding and why in real estate, vendor bids have to be declared as such.

I also agree with you that shill bidding only works if the genuinely interested buyer then re bids back & forth but I think the problem is, a lot of fairly newish buyers have fallen into that trap-probably more so back in the days when auctions were the norm on ebay. What it has led to is the situation where many experienced bidders will only bid in the last few hours.

I am fairly cynical and suspect ebay doesn't do an awful lot about shill bidding till they are really prressed because after all, a sale is a sale and more commission.

[tazzieterror]

...and if shills didn't keep inflating the price, there would be nothing to react to.

The winning bidder only paid as much as they did because the price was falsely increased several times.

You can't defend that.

[repentatleisure1952]

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@tazzieterror wrote:
...and if shills didn't keep inflating the price, there would be nothing to react to.

The winning bidder only paid as much as they did because the price was falsely increased several times.

You can't defend that.

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I'm most certainly not defending it.

However I still say that bidders only pay what they bid...shill or no shill.

I certainly would like to see those who collude to shill banned...it appears that eBay's mileage may vary...might have something to do with FVF.