SHILL BIDDING SHOULD BE ILLEGAL! PLEASE HELP!

[kaos2015]

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.

[lalala-au]

Amazing Effort from everyone! It will be interesting see what happens. I hope this horrible person doesn't get away ripping people off anymore.

I truely believe humanity writes our headlines in the news, that humanity can change society standards and even though we live in a country that has the luxury of so many authorities to control inhumanity, sometimes we can all get lazy or too busy or selfish and forget about our fellow human being. We all need from time to time to step up and take action even when it may not involve us personally, no matter how big or small the problem is or how big or small that action maybe.

[weez_1963]

Great detective work chooks.....Just did my bit & reported all 5 of the alleged Sydney scammers auction listings, sorry I didn't see the op earlier & got the chance to report all Melbourne scammers as well. Looks as though all the hard work you & others have done re: this post have left them with no alternative other than BIN & hopefully they won't be doing that either soon.  Surely if everybody following this post reports these Sydney listings ebay may do something. Not holding my breath though!

[imastawka]

Well done, chooks            

Spoiler

Been anything on TV yet?

Keep up the good work, el chooko          

[go-tazz]

eBay have taken action.

They can let their last 19 auction listings run their course,(without their shill bidders)

Then they can only have BIN items for the next month,(generally at a reduced amount).

After the month they can list auctions again but eBay are supposed to keep an eye on those.

As they have already experimented with private auction I'd say that's the way they'll go for future auctions,

[imastawka]

Ebay have taken action?   When?

She has listed another 12 auctions today.  Still with USPS I see

Are you meaning this seller   #181477152071

[pennyforum14]

Tazz, how do you know all this?  Normally Ebay don't release details of action taken because of privacy laws, even to the person reporting.  They have a very detailed stock response they send to reporters outining this policy, which on occasions when I've seen it quoted in threads, is usually taken to mean they won't actually do anything, lol.

[i-love-my-sheep]

She hasn't had bids for days on any of her auctions. I wonder if most of her bidders were from her now closed Facebook page. My messages were there for quite a few hours, so would have been seen by someone no doubt, especially given she had a LOT of likers on the page. A certain percentage of those people would have had notifications turned on, meaning they would have been notified of a new message when I posted mine. I didn't get a chance to get a screen shot of her 'about' message with her offer to sell her eBay items off eBay, she shut her page down too quick.

I got the standard reply for my report on dodgy seller number 2, who now only has BIN listings. The reply was worded differently to the original one I sent about dodgy seller number 1, but it was essentially the same meaning.

I'm not sure how anyone would know if eBay has taken action, they never reveal the results of their investigations.

[imastawka]

And that is an awful lot of info posted tazz.

ebay don't tell anybody anything

[go-tazz]

I've being reporting shill bidders and their dodgy sellers for years and one of the the replies quoted what action

could be taken against the seller.,(by keeping and eye on some of those sellers you could see what action

was taken).

They are what I stated above,(current auctions are allowed to finish and then they can only sell BIN items for a

month).

Then they can go back to doing auctions but they'll be "watched".

With their current listings you'll see that their last auction has 2 days and 17 hours to go,(which must have

been listed before the sanction).

Their listings from then on are BIN's and start with 5 days and 7 hours to go.

[imastawka]

So,  she has listed 30 auctions on 29/7   and

another 27 auctions today.

Sanctions?        Don't make me laugh.

The only thing that has changed is the shill bidding has stopped.

So, it seems it's ok to shill bid - there are no sanctions?!!!???