Shill bidding

[oddsandendsoz]

Hi guys,

Just wondering what your thoughts on shill bidding are? Is this actually a reportable thing to eBay and how do they usually respond to this?

[lyndal1838]

It is a serious offence on ebay and they usually respond positively if it really is shill bidding.

However, it is not as prevalent as you may think.   We often have members come to the boards to report it and it is obvious to others that it is not shill bidding.

If ebay cannot find a connection between the seller and the shill account they will not do anything.

[imastawka]

Don't know that they really do much anyway, Lyndal.

After all, it's more money they get in fees.

[oddsandendsoz]

Thanks for the input Lynda. I already had my suspicions that a rival seller has bought a few items from me as the postal address matches the registered business address of my buyer. Not a problem of course as I made profit from the sales and that was that, I guess I researched initially as I was worried the buyer may be trying to sabotage my feedback but that was unfounded and all good.

I did not give it a second thought really except I am selling the same item as this seller and i have one for sale at a price that is now less than his auction listing ending today. When checking the bids I can see that the bidder has a 100% bid rate with this seller over the 30 day period and coincidentally has the same exact feedback score as my buyer. 

[imastawka]

Ebays policy

https://www.ebay.com.au/help/policies/selling-policies/selling-practices-policy/shill-bidding-policy...

[4channel]

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@oddsandendsoz wrote:

Hi guys,

Just wondering what your thoughts on shill bidding are? Is this actually a reportable thing to eBay and how do they usually respond to this?

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Hi oddsandendsoz . Theres two types of this carry on. Some people get their friends to bid in their auctions to bump up the bid price. Some use sock-puppets which are their own alias ID's. The first one, their friends is harder to detect as these are separate IDs that have moderate to long histories. The sock-puppet ones often have low ratings.  Anyway a nasty business.  I think I have been a victim of that a few times.

[tazzieterror]

On a couple of occasions I've reported obvious shill bidding and eBay have done nothing about it. eBay make more money when the price finishes higher anyway, so shill bidding is extra profit from their perspective.

It's still a good idea to report it, but even if they do take action against the seller, they'll refuse to confirm it anyway due to "privacy issues", so you never really get any feedback on whether you were right or not anyway (unless the account suddenly has all its listings removed).

[tazzieterror]

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@oddsandendsoz wrote:

...I did not give it a second thought really except I am selling the same item as this seller and i have one for sale at a price that is now less than his auction listing ending today. When checking the bids I can see that the bidder has a 100% bid rate with this seller over the 30 day period and coincidentally has the same exact feedback score as my buyer. 

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Post the item number here if you don't mind doing so - there are a few amateur sleuths on here who'd take a look and report back on whether they think it's shilling.

[brerrabbit585]

Are the letters in the 'alias' ID found in your buyer's ID? My alias (anonymous ID) contains two letters from my username and it's very rare that this isn't the case.

Look on the bright side - if they're buying your items and then shill bidding when they resell it in order to keep the price up, it makes your items more saleable. If you're willing to sell at a certain price, don't worry about your buyer does with it - that's their responsibility.