posted on March 18, 2002 11:50:50 AM
Once again the posse have resurfaced in the news.
The article states: that eBay is "developing proprietary software that allows investigators to analyze bidding patterns after the fact for indications of wrongdoing. The company plans to introduce the next generation version of the software by early next year, which will allow such analysis to be conducted while auctions are in progress."
This will eliminate the posse. Must say, though, they ain't damaging good sellers' and bidders' reputation as they was a few years ago.
posted on March 18, 2002 01:11:22 PM
I hope it works better than the software that was around last year. Someone posted a link here, where you could download a free trial program to look for possible shill bidding and patterns in bidding activities. You could enter any seller's ID and within a few moments it would come up with ID's of buyers who were "likely" shillers.
I have one buyer who buys from me almost exclusively...gotta love those buyers. She is not a frequent buyer of anything but if you look at her FB she has only purchased from 4 unique sellers in the past 2 years!!!
She came up as a "likely" shiller on my search of my own ID.
I came up as a "likely" on one of my favorite seller's ID's that I buy a lot from.
If it isn't any better than that, they will have a lot of unhappy people if they start closing auctions and/or suspending users for suspected shilling based on "patterns of buying"!
posted on March 18, 2002 01:26:16 PM
I think everyone knows by now that many of the ebay employees have never bought or sold on a regular basis. This is the source of so many bad decisions from them. They are really ebay amateurs who weild enormous power over the professionals.
They make unfortunate changes to the site and the way it functions without first checking with buyers or sellers. If they do check and get a contrary viewpoint, they seem to simply discard it.
I think it is a good idea to eliminate shillers. But this new program can not allow "collatoral damage." It must never mistakenly accuse real bidders and honest sellers of shilling.
If the technical people devising this software at ebay are like the ones that devised, say, ebay stores, or the new listing form, well, good luck to us all.
Well, all we can do is wait and see. I will try to hope for the best but.....
[ edited by litlux on Mar 18, 2002 01:32 PM ]
