posted on April 18, 2010 08:55:59 PM new
I have reported a seller for shill bidding several times including one about a year ago after I had issues with the seller shorting a lot significantly. I just found the link I had saved to the shill bidder and have started watching it again. Ebay doesn't seem to take any action on this seller. What do you think? Is this seller shilling his own auctions?
Seller id: montana-postcards
Bidder id: hth824
Items:
200442621361 - won by possible shill bidder - portions of this lot surfaced again in lot 200457805105. Using the first picture with the little girl in the blue dress, look at the upper right corner of the postcard there is damage that can be seen again in lot 200457805105 as the fifth picture in the upper left side. Many of the postcards are duplicated between the two lots.
190384817119 - won by possible shill bidder.
190388875908 - shielded price early on till others bidders showed up.
200456502617 - shielded price early on till others showed up and bid higher.
This bidder id has interest in stamps, postcards and ephemera. These are all crossover collecting categories, but having a bidder that only bids on this one sellers auction is more than coincidence. Bidding history by the seller can be seen by clicking on the bidder id on the auction's bid history section. It currently shows 3 bids all with this seller.
[ edited by txbg on Apr 18, 2010 08:59 PM ]
posted on April 19, 2010 06:56:14 AM new
I don't think it's shill bidding but maybe I am too trusting. I have clients that just bid on my items. It looks like the bidder you are watching likes to lowball lots - perhaps he is familiar with this seller's lots and knows he won't get junk so he watches and bids when he can get something cheap. I sell individual postcards for more than that seller is getting for a lot of 75! Perhaps another dealer is the buyer? Getting 75 cards in vg+ condition for less than $.50 each sounds like a good deal to me! Maybe I will start watching him too!
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posted on April 19, 2010 07:33:00 AM new
It is very difficult to know for sure when someone is shill bidding. The are legitimate reasons someone only bids on certain seller's auctions and bids a low amount. They bought something in the past, they are hoping to "steal" the item if the seller starts the item at a very low price (under $1), they can pick the item up and have have done that in the past, etc.
I think one of the more telling symptoms of funky bidding is bid retractions. You test the water, put in a bid and then retract it once you have found out the info you needed. Still hard to prove that there is monkey business going on.
posted on April 19, 2010 08:28:05 AM new
It is hard to prove shill bidding if a seller asked his friend to bid on his item using a different PC,unless Ebay software can prove the two are related.
Say if seller cookie is found on that guy's pc.
*
There is no 'Global savings glut',only wild horses and loose bankers.
posted on April 19, 2010 08:30:10 AM new
I don't see anything that suggest shill bidding. The seller has thousands of feedback and to have one person bid on 3 different items seems quite normal.
The first example has an auction ended February 27 and the 2nd one in April.
The bidder didn't participate in both listings, so I am not sure where you conclude this is shill bidding on this one. Though the photo you reference is the same (it is quite obvious), it could very well be a duplicate or perhaps the buyer didn't pay for it the first time around.
One thing to consider is that if the seller is a local dealer, he may promote his listings locally with his customers who then bid on eBay.
I had a bidder buy a lamp from me about a year ago. He paid $300 for the lamp and requested local pick up. He didn't know we had a store locally. He has become one of our best customers. Over the holidays he spent over $3000 in our store. He has us on his watch list for eBay.
Just as I want to cross promote our store from eBay sales, I also don't mind cross promoting eBay listings from our store. Just some food for thought.
[ edited by shagmidmod on Apr 19, 2010 08:32 AM ]
posted on April 19, 2010 08:38:49 AM new
i'll also add... no feedback was left for item #200442621361 that this bidder won. i don't think the transaction was ever completed between the two, which would explain why the same post card showed up in both listings.
have you considered asking the seller about the postcard? if you find the same card in two listings, I would ask them if it is the same card b/c you just happen to notice the same flaws in his two listings.
posted on April 19, 2010 08:47:21 AM new
Here are the additional reasons I believe it's shill bidding:
The bidders previous feedback was mainly for paintings and from varied sellers then was not active after the Aug 22, 2006 feedback. Previous purchases were two or three items a year. The bidding started again in May of 2009 on the lot that I returned. The lot was started at .99 compared to it's previous start price and won by the suspected shill bidder for significantly lower than the previous price--even lower than wholesale. Currently this bidder has bid upon at least 4 of this sellers items (based on when I found and started looking at the link again), and has won 2 in the last month. The bidder has no bid on anything else. Two items were stamp related, one postcards and one a John Deere item listed in ephemera.
Lot 200442621361 has the damaged Graduation postcard in it and again in lot 200457805105. In each of the postcard lots with that Graduation postcard with the
blue dress, the corner creasing/damage and staining of the postcard in three of
the corners is exactly the same. There is no way the card is a duplicate and have exactly the same damage to all the corners and the staining in the exact same spots on two postcards. If the buyer had returned the lot, why remix the lot instead of just offering to the underbidder, or relisting as it was. The lot I returned was relisted exactly the same.
The bidder has bid upon lots for postcards, first day covers and ephemera which
all happen to be the categories that this seller sells in. All of the bidders
bids were on this sellers items. I am a repeat buyer and purchase many lots from
the same sellers. Many of my purchases are bought for resale so I look for low
starts too but never have found only one seller with items of interest to me in
one category. For this buyer to finding only one seller in three different
categories that offers bargain lots is slim to none.
posted on April 19, 2010 12:28:34 PM new
what i meant was that he had a duplicate postcard and used the same photo for it. sorry i wasn't clear about that. i have listed hundreds of photos or negatives at once and mixed up photos by accident. it does happen.
the bidder won an item a few months back, no feedback left. item reappears in another listing a few months later. bidder didn't bid on it. bidder bids on a few other things from same seller, wins one and feedback is exchanged.
i am looking at this from a broad perspective:
1) is it possible this is shilling? yes.
2) is it possible the bidder knows this dealer from local sources and knows they can pick it up locally? yes.
3) is it possible to prove one or the other? no.
if you want to keep an eye on it, then spend your time doing so.
what i can see at this point is a good seller with good feedback that has an infrequent repeat customer. it is hard to say what this bidder collects just from their short transaction history on eBay. they could also collect sports cars, old phones, etc.
i'm curious that when you look at the bidder's 30 day bid history it shows 3 bids on items from seller #1, however when you do an advanced search for the bidder name it shows only one item... the john deer thing he won.
posted on April 19, 2010 03:40:40 PM new
I've reported a continual shill-bidding seller 4 or 5 times over the course of several months, but ebay hasn't done anything as far as I can tell.
Why does ebay have the policy if they don't enforce it?
posted on April 19, 2010 04:21:12 PM new
eBay is riddled with scammers.
Check out auction #270543231149. I reported them over a month ago for fee avoidance.
99 cent shoes with $214 shipping. They should have been suspended... but they are still selling. What they do is list items regular price and if you read his info, he wants people to send him offers. Then he will create an auction for one bidder to pay 99 cents for the item + a ton for shipping. On one expired listing he even admitted he was avoiding listing fees within a listing description or question for seller.
eBay didn't do anything, he is still selling. how do other sellers compete against people who are cutting costs by $10-25 per item? does ebay care? no. they know it is going on even when you point it out to them.
posted on April 19, 2010 05:02:08 PM new
I have a friend that has a 3.5 in shipping on DSR's. ebay said she would not be able to list after 4/15 but she still has a 3.5 and is still listing.
So why do we try so hard if ebay doesn't really care???
posted on April 19, 2010 11:20:05 PM new
My vote is: Shill. The fact that the seller resells the same items supposedly won by the bidder, then sells to the bidder again suggests the bidder did not default on the sale- the sale was bogus.
posted on April 20, 2010 06:25:49 AM new
Consider the plight of some sellers who have been erroneously found guilty of shilling and suspended by Ebay when these innocent people were actually selling to friends and associates, relatives and repeat customers.
Maybe Ebay's current caution and reluctance to address the issue in some cases is good policy since it's clearly a difficult policy to enforce fairly.
posted on April 20, 2010 07:28:24 PM new
Shill bidding on auctions pre-dates eBay and is common-place in non-reputable auction houses. I've seen my share - it's the lowest form of auction-abuse IMHO. A memorable post on an ebay forum was in the Christian genre from a seller who had both her and her son's account NARU'd for shilling. She claimed she was only testing her eBay listings, but it was evident she was shilling. She was uniformly chastised by other sellers. The 1st thing I learned when selling on eBay was to not bid on my sister's auctions. In 5 years, I've had 1 friend ask that I bid on an auction her company was listing, I refused, as did the 6 other friends she asked.
Edited to add: can you provide an example of seller erroneously suspended for shilling? EBay is far too lax in allowing shilling until it becomes outrageous.
[ edited by pixiamom on Apr 20, 2010 07:32 PM ]
posted on April 21, 2010 06:15:34 AM new
Ebay cannot go by hunch,observation or intuition to decide if a seller is shill bidding,they used to call you and ask for so and so and if so and so lives with you and is also a loyal frequent and faithful bidder of your items,then they figure you are shill bidding.
Then they rely on software to track the cookies on your PC,they even build a cookie monster database so if you erase cookies regularly,they still have records on their end.
These days sellers are just happy to get bids and if they shill bid to push the bid amount higher,they may lose their real bidders.
There is no need to raise the bid,another one identical or similar will soon surface,why bother to get into a bidding war?
*
There is no 'Global savings glut',only wild horses and loose bankers.
posted on April 21, 2010 06:38:53 AM new
If ebay wanted to perform shill bidder investigations, they have more tools available based on the changes made over the last couple of years. It doesn't have to be cookies and IP tacking only. Limited payment options: checkout and paypal history can be used to validate a bidder payment. If there is no evidence of a credit card payment, they can request a copy of the check or money order from the bidder and a copy of the deposit history from the seller. If there is a payment, what is the source of the payment can be reviewed. Is it the same credit card, checking, name on the account? The history of how a seller handles non-payment can be used. If all of the non-payers are filed except for one buyer that shows no payment, conclusions can be drawn that would be pretty accurate.
posted on April 21, 2010 07:44:01 AM new
Pixiamom Edited to add: "can you provide an example of seller erroneously suspended for shilling? EBay is far too lax in allowing shilling until it becomes outrageous."
Pixiamom, I believe that it's "outrageous" to believe that Ebay has never erred in their identification of shill bidders and the possibility that you may think so is surprising.
Or is it your belief that it's OK to wage a wreckless campaign against shill bidding and by doing so risk knocking innocent people out of business?
BTW, Take the case presented in this thread, for example. Are you the only respondent who "voted shill"? Most chose caution.
posted on April 21, 2010 08:16:54 AM new
And furthermore, I don't think that it's appropriate to identify an Ebay member and suggest that he may be a shill.
After reviewing his feedback I would buy from him without reservation.
posted on April 21, 2010 08:50:16 AM new
I may be the only one who feels this way - but I've never been particularly bothered by shill bidding. Don't misunderstand, I believe it's unethical and would never do it to one of my own auctions. If I feel I have to get a particular amount from an item, the starting price will reflect that price.
But when I'm buying, I have a top dollar amount that I'm willing to pay and it doesn't matter who is bidding against me. I've been to real life auctions where I was pretty sure that the auctioneer was pulling bids "out of thin air" but that didn't change how much I was willing to pay for any given item. To me - when I'm buying - this just falls under the category of don't sweat the small stuff.
posted on April 21, 2010 08:56:30 AM new
If I am shill bidding on my own auctions and Ebay asked for proof of payment,all I need to do is to go and get a money order and give it to myself or fax Ebay a receipt saying I received cash from my alter ego.
Ebay management is a bunch of pathetic confusing fools,on one end they want top rated sellers who are selling quality items,charge reasonable shipping,include insurance,eat all the losses and bow for a few pennies profit and at the same time,they let anyone/everyone launch 99 cents auctions.
I dont understand EBAY,most of their rules have to do with their own business philosophy and practice.
*
There is no 'Global savings glut',only wild horses and loose bankers.
posted on April 21, 2010 07:57:46 PM new
Helen, you may feel it is "outrageous" to believe that an eBay seller was falsely accused of shill bidding, but you are blowing hot air, failing to produce a single incidence of it. Ebay's record of Naruing shill bidders falls way short of stopping the practice. Every complaint I've seen on the eBay boards showed clear shilling. The best defense I found was that the conduct was unknown to be prohibited. Ignorance is not an excusable defense.
posted on April 22, 2010 06:06:41 AM new
Pixiamom, shill bidding is a practice that cannot and will not be eliminated from an auction community as large as Ebay without negatively affecting the accounts of innocent sellers.
Shill bidding is a problem that goes with the territory and relatively benign compared to more troublesome practices such as deliberate misrepresentation of products, rude communication with buyers and shpping overcharges.
As Cherishedclutter so wisely advised, "Don't sweat the small stuff".
