posted on September 9, 2001 07:54:31 PM new
My husband is very knowledgable about a certain type of widget. He sees a widget on ebay he's interested and emails the seller with two very specific questions pertaining to the condition of the widget. Based on those answers he bids and wins the auction. When item arrives it is NOT in the condition stated by seller in his email. My husband emails him about the problem and the seller gives him a snotty answer about how he gets 3000 emails a day and has 1000's of widget auctions running and doesn't have time to oull each widget of the shelf and check on the condition. He told my husband to return the widget which he will and we're waiting to see if he refunds postage also since he misrepresented the item.
Anyway, I started looking at this sellers other auctions because of all this. Usually it looks like he has 200 to 300 widget auctions running at any one time not 1000's. But what really got me curious is how many repeat buyers he had on very expensive widgets. These are auctions that he does NOT use a reserve on. I checked the bidding history of three of his repeat buyers. One bidder has won 75 auctions ALL belonging to this seller. He has not bid on or won any other auctions by any other seller. With 75 winning bids he oddly only has a +2 feedback rating. The other two bidders I checked on had similar bid histories.
So is this guy shill bidding his auctions and when something isn't going to go as high as he would like, since he doesn't use reserves, does he just make sure he bids high enough with one of the shill id's to win it??? I always thought shill bidding was just to drive the price up, and he does have instances of these suspicious id's driving the bid up. But it also looks like he uses the id's to actually win auctions too. Could he be doing this?
posted on September 9, 2001 08:11:18 PM new
Well whatever the case he is an idiot because by driving up the price and having himself win the auction means he has to pay higher final value fees to eBay.
Also if you really want to be snoopy email the second highest bidders of those shilled auctions. Usually shilling sellers make a mistake and don't actually want to win thier on auction. So after will email the second highest bidder to see if they want it.
posted on September 9, 2001 08:18:58 PM new
At one time on eBay its perfectly acceptable to place one bid on your own item and yes it was often times to win it back when the item didn't meet the expected price.
This way no one gets hurt and eBay still gets their fee.
posted on September 9, 2001 08:19:26 PM new
Hello Jonniex1234
Please edit your signature line to remove the promotional wording "like designer goods?"
The Community Guidelines permit a link to your home page (you can even hyperlink using UBB if you choose) in your signature line, but promotional wording is not permitted.
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