hi everyone and happy new year to all can a seller bid on there own item they are selling

[*tippy*toes* · Accepted solution]

Absolutely NOT. Nor can any of your friends or family. It's called shill bidding and not only is it a violation of eBay policy (which could see your account shut down for good), it is FRAUD. As you would know, fraud is illegal and can land you in court.

If you suspect another seller of bidding on their own items, then they should be immediately reported to eBay. If they are an Australian seller, you can also report them to ACORN, which is the online fraud squad.

[imastawka]

OR

It might just look like shill bidding.

Many buyers/bidders don't know what they're looking at half the time

[*tippy*toes*]

True. I won an auction from a seller a buy a bit from the other night. I had bid on a few items, but was outbid by the same buyer each time, except for the one that I won. When I clicked on their ID they had some ridiculous amount of bids on a ridiculous amount of items and 100% with that seller. When I looked back at the sellers previous sales, this buyer was only going back 2 weeks.

Then I remembered that another seller I regularly buy from, they have mostly BIN's, but generally run 15-20 auctions a week. It's not unheard of me winning all or most of them, so to someone else, it could look like I am upping their prices. Especially if I haven't bought anything for awhile and she is the only one I'm buying from.

[2015auhoebe]

thank you very much 

[collect247]

You can report all you want but nothing will be done,have reported plenty of sus shill bidders and ebay found no evidence that it was shill bidding.

Money talks!

[springyzone]

You're not supposed to.

That doesn't mean it can't be done.

It is possible to get a friend or relative to bid. You may even be able to do it yourself if you had another account, I don't know.

But you might outsmart yourself because your friend might end up with the winning bid. Then look what happens. You pay fees on the transaction, you still haven't really sold the item. I guess the only thing you could do is give each other great feedback-but wouldn't you rather have the money off a real bidder?

[saarzi]

Vendor bids are not illegal.... but they are not permitted on Ebay. Just in case thats what you meant.

Second to that, bidding to push up your item etc. in the way mentioned above is also not permitted (and is illegal).

[chameleon54]

The answer is yes it is possible to do and does occur from time to time, but it breaches ebays policies and is unethical.

An experienced shill bidder can run a genuine bidder up to their maximum bid if they know how the process works, with little chance of ending up buying the item. There are also ways around ending up paying commision etc. if the shill bidder does get caught with the item.

Ebayers who buy items on ebay and re-sell them have been known to push opposition businesses doing the same to their maximum price, but still leave them to buy the item. This uses the same technices as shill bidding and leaves a similar bidding pattern to shill bidding. Serious collectors can also do the same thing to regular opposition collectors.  None of this involves the seller of the goods in any way, but could see them accused of shill bidding.

If you suspect shill bidding may be occuring, simply wait until the last 20 seconds or less of the auction and then place your maximum bid. You can use sniping programmes to do this for you if you wont be near the computer at the auction end time. This completely stops any chance of a seller bidding against you on their own items.

While shill bidding does occur, it is not all that common.