posted on January 17, 2002 10:03:39 PM
For anyone who sells art or really potentially anything! there is a new catagory called self-representing - which means the artist represents themselves instead of a gallery. Some of the artists are forming these sub groups where a bunch of them get together and state they are self-representing artists with search words that require an off-site membership to be used. I looked at many of the bid historys of these artists who use their groups search letters in their headings and they are all bidding on each others work to drive up the price! A friend of mine went into one of their offsite message boards and these artists said there is nothing ebay can do about it because they really want to buy the other persons art. Is this the new trend in ebay? for sellers of any catagory to form off site groups with other sellers and then sell memberships in order to use the groups search letters on ebay? I think these groups are extorting money out of sellers to buy their search letters. is the the wave of the future on ebay? first this catagory then others? The new off site unions for sellers are basically conning seller into buying a membership so the seller can use the search letters in your auctions! of course if they form a group they can bid on each others stuff and legally and is not shilling according to ebay. This must be stopped. This is plain wrong and is fertile for fraud.<br />
[ edited by artdoggy on Jan 17, 2002 10:07 PM ]
[ edited by artdoggy on Jan 17, 2002 10:11 PM ]
posted on January 18, 2002 12:42:42 AM
<state they are self-representing artists with search words that require an off-site membership to be used. >
Would you please be more specific. I got really confused. Could you give us an example or a link?
Anyway, I don't see how this is possible. You can put any word in your auction. If nothing else, you can say it is NOT an "xyz" (for search purposes). People do this all the time. There are thousands of auctions done like this.
posted on January 18, 2002 08:34:04 AM
me too,i have no idea what she is talking about-offsite membership on search words??
do they have bizaree search words like picasso,dali??
any one can put any word in title and decription of an item on ebay as long as it is not violating brand name like rolex,swarovski etc.
sellers seldom help each other out by bidding on each other 's auction ,it would have to be tight knit group of sellers who do that,like family members or a few who work together ,i would say there are more shell bidding using diff user ids.
can you tell us more like what kind of art work and who are these artists??
self representing artists??are these the cousins of picasso,dali,warhol etc??
I understood exactly what you said about the offsite membership for keywords.
There are other groups like CLUB99 that advertise their auctions in this manner for free. I find it hard to believe anyone would actually pay for this though.
What I don't understand is why eBay would not consider their bidding on each others auctions to be shilling.
technerd
What you are describing is called keyword spamming and is against the rules.
stopwhining
As usual, I have no idea what you are talking about. HUH??
[ edited by BananaSpider on Jan 18, 2002 09:03 AM ]
posted on January 18, 2002 09:32:22 AM
some of us country bums just dont understand about this club membership business,you list an item for sale ,either someone browse,bid or buy??
it is up to ebay to prove and take action on shill bidding
Okay then, I'll continue to use CLUB99 as an example since it's free and I have no affiliation and am not a member.
There is a Club99 Auction Sellers Group. They use the word CLUB99 in the auction title for search purposes. Go to eBay and search CLUB99. You will find all the auctions listings of the members.
Let 'em all bid on their own (within the 'club') stuff, all they will do is end up owning (or not) their own stuff, and still having to pay Listing & FVF's on it!
posted on January 18, 2002 12:18:48 PM
what happens if i decide to mention CLUB99 in my item description,would i get more traffic??
there is no ebay rule which said i cant use the word CLUB99 OR 98 OR 97??
unless these artist are andy warhol,salvador dali,picasso,etc,i wish them lots of luck.if they have to bid on their own auctions,they cant be that good?
posted on January 18, 2002 04:32:03 PM
I know of an old computer collector's club who put newly-acquired items up for auction on eBay. They include a particular code phrase in their auction descriptions because they want to be able to get the auctions in front of their own people every day without ever having to send e-mail. Besides, the other members are, in practice, the most likely buyers. So, each day members simply search eBay for that particular code phrase and, voila -- there are the auctions.
I also know of a spinning guild here locally that does something similar. They simply insert the name of their guild, and their members search for that.
Shill bidding? Dishonest? Unethical? Hardly. It's simply a clever, free way to get a huge corporate entity work for you instead of the reverse (there is precisely zero chance that eBay would add a feature to do this if you asked them). And it happens at zero cost. That's called "good business."
posted on January 18, 2002 04:48:11 PM
I don't care what you call it, to me it *is* shill bidding. The fact that the general eBay public can still bid on their items makes it shill bidding.
If it smells like shill, tastes like shill...it is shill!
posted on January 18, 2002 05:54:21 PM
I looked over there and saw what you mean about the key word. I don't see a problem. The example of "CLUB99" has been used.
I would simply put: (not CLUB99) in my title. Then in my description I would say something like, "I am not bound by the fee structures of CLUB99, in case anyone needs this info."
As far as shilling, that will get them in trouble. Just report it to Ebay. They do'nt like that.
posted on January 18, 2002 07:35:31 PM
Unless I am missing something it is only shill bidding if the parties do not intend to complete the purchase. If I understand what is going on here it is a way for like minded people to find items of interest and would not be shill bidding.
Am I missing something?
posted on January 18, 2002 08:13:14 PM
If it is not shill bidding, don't you think it will be cheaper for such a group to just set up free BBS where you can post for sale ads? Why pay eBay selling fees just to sell amongst yourselves? I will tell you why -- to artificially raise the price of the widgets with the help of club members, and the eBay crowd.
Members of a club "know" each other right? why not sell to each other directly? Why unnecessarily make eBay richer? This means their motive is to raise the selling price. In my book that is shill bidding.
[ edited by springmoon on Jan 18, 2002 08:22 PM ]
posted on January 19, 2002 08:31:16 AM
Members of a club "know" each other -
not if the club is big and spread all over,and there are always new members whom you do not know.this is not like a local community club .
why dont they have their own websites and post these items like classified ads??
well,competitive bidding allow more than one member to go after the same item,classified ad will set a fixed price either too high or too low/
if it produces the result and the members are happy,why not,they dont seem to mind paying ebay fee.
also they are letting ebay maintain the website and removing items not sold.
kind of like having a club meeting in a public area say airport lounge,library,barnes and noble store,mcdonald etc.you get free air conditioning,free parking,chairs and table and lights and bathroom/
does someone ever think of using hotel lounge and bathroom instead of waiting in line at some public latrine .how do they know if you are a hotel guest or visitor of a hotel guest?
