posted on February 3, 2007 10:55:04 AM new
Actually, if you hover over bidder 1 etc on the bid history page, you can see their FB, their length of registration, as well as what categories and what sellers they have bid on during the past 30 days -- not identified by name but by Seller 1 etc. Ie. if a bidder bids on 30 auctions, and they are all from one seller, it will tell you that.
Personally, I really want to know who bidders are so I can figure out bidding patterns ...
posted on February 3, 2007 03:13:36 PM new
Well IMHO hiding the bidders ID's from everyone does nothing to help the buyers and it would seem to protect you from knowing if someone is shill bidding. If you can't go in and look at who is bidding on an item you have no way of spotting the shills which can be spotted with careful study of a sellers past items and lots of repeat bidders on items that are so far apart from being an item that you may have repeat customers on. I think everyone knows what I am trying to say.
I was bidding once on an item and everytime I would bid someone came along almost immediately to outbid me. I wait couple of days bid again and there was no activity at all on it bid and immediately got outbid by another ID with low feedback or none. No activity day or two I bid again just for grins this time and again another outbid by another newbie. By that time I had investigated the seller his items sold in past and the past bidders all on wide variety of items. I found the bidders some in same area as him all bidders on about 75% of his auctions never winners and several were winners but did not have feedback from the seller. Buyer did not feedback them either. It was a real distinct pattern even a dingbat could detect. All the out bidders on the auction I was interested in was bidders on way wide variety of this sellers items and had bid on most of his stuff. Plus the newbie id's that had 2 -5 feedbacks was all for penny items they bought but all the bidders were in a round Robin type area of their bids wins and feedback received like it was a group of sellers and bidders all working together. I reported my suspicions never bid on the item again and the jerk seller and about 5 others were NARU'ed after about a month.
Well I got wordy here but their hiding the bidders puts the buyers at a disadvantage and in long run protects sellers who do have shills working with them. Only way it helps sellers is no one can see the bidders to send them like offers on items they are bidding on. Might stop sellers buyers and scum from sending those offers but it sure keeps us all in dark to nefarious activity going on.
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posted on February 4, 2007 07:52:41 PM new
The general consensus on the forums is that this latest eBay Customer Protection scheme (aka Revenue Boosting Enhancement) is designed to extract the maximum bids from buyers through wholesale obscuration of bidder's IDs. Let's face it - shilling increases eBay's FVF income by artificially boosting auction closing prices. Anyone involved in finance knows that a transparent market allows all participants to make decisions based on all the freely-available information. (This is why the SEC requires quarterly company and fund reports plus updates on major changes.) There are stacks of studies that show that (financial) markets work best when they are transparent and fully open to public scrutiny.
By reducing the transparency of eBay auctions, eBay management are actually undermining confidence in their marketplace. As a result, I'd expect to see a rise in accusations of shill bidding from buyers and losing bidders, and should any winning bidder default on payment - you guessed it - you'll be accused of using shills! Basically it's a "lose, lose" proposition for sellers. Way to go eBay (management team)
I married my wife for her looks, but Not the one she gives me lately! 
