Ebay won't go after shill bidding

[turboboy!]

I have been an Ebay buyer (and sometimes a seller)  for 18 years.  Recently I was following an auction from a newish seller who had a low number of feedback and noticed that two buyers with low or no feedback had bid excusively on the sellers' auctions, driving up the final sales price. I called Ebay- and the Ebay employee, after checking out the issue for 15 minutes over the phone, agreed that shill bidding was taking place.  Yet two month later, I see that the shill bidders and the seller are on ebay, and the eventual buyers have left positive feedback, apparently unaware of the fraud that has taken play (Ebay has not alerted them).   On a side note, there has been a growing lack of transparency on Ebay in recent years over what the actual selling price has been, and it is incresingly difficult to see who is buying what (unlike an actual live auction).  Now that over 30 days has bassed, of course the shill bidders now show 0% activity over the last 30 days with the seler.  Does this mean that Ebay is going to let it drop, despite the fact that it was brought to their attention?  Whay couldn't Ebay detect the fraud on their own?

[mudshark61369]

@turboboy!,

Had you provided a screen shot of the auctions we might be better able to tell if what you claim is shill bidding really is. There will always be new buyers who do not know the best bidding practices, they keep nibbling away but rarely win auctions because they react to others bids rather than place automatic bids.  If those bidders were able to place more than 5 bids each, then they might be shills.  However, if they stopped short of that it is because they ran into ebay's new member open transaction limits.  Each bid is considered an open transaction.

  Low and (0) feedback bidders often have a 100% bid history with a seller, since they either do not bid on auctions often, or because they just started. Items purchased using buy it now do not show up on their bid history.  If they had many bid retractions as well, then there's a posibility they are shills.  That can also be because ebay does not enforce their bid retraction policies, and let members get away with inappropriate bid retracting.  We often see questions from new members on these boards, wanting to know how to retract bids, for reasons that do not qualify for a legal retraction. 

What the rep told you may not have been true. Unfortunately, ebay's reps are known for telling people what they want to hear just to get them off the phone. They often give them bad advice that costs them money as well.  If the seller was from another country, there may be no way to tell if a a new member is a shill or not. Some countries do not allow ebay to track IP addresses, which is their main way of being able to identify shills.

You can avoid having shills bid up an auction by only bidding once at the very end of an auction for the most you are willing to pay.  Then the shills won't have time to react, or retract. 

[ed8108]

I suspect you were told what you wanted to hear to simply get you off the phone.

If you call again, bet that you will probably learn your report is being taken very seriously.

[mudshark61369]

@ed8108

"If you call again, bet that you will probably learn your report is being taken very seriously ".

Yes, and they'll probably tell the OP that a report will be given to the head of the shill bidding dept. to be investigated, while in the back ground another rep will be saying "hindi isa pang nag iisip na pinalasing sila dahil walang bid buyer ng feedback" and laughing.

[fossil_diver]

@turboboy!

When shill bidding is done correctly it is impossible to prove. It may look suspicious but if the shill account cant be linked to the selling account then it cant be proved.

Bid as late as possible. Bid only once and bid your true max. 

[mecaveman16]

Bottom line a lot of responses you are going to receive here are a bunch of hoopla and excuses like the classic bull#$$% of new bidders being dumb and overzealous its obsered , most of these people on Ebay who engage in Shill Bidding have several Brand New Accounts they rotate over and over to bid on their items aswell as more accounts they will create in the futute . So when you say Newbies being to excited and uninformed on how to bid ? in my opionion this is not an acceptable answer when most Shill Bidding occurs with BRAND NEW ACCOUNTS . If you want to look more into a seller simply click the advanced tap on the upper right corner of Ebay and select completed listing and then type in sellers ID to pull up all the past auctions and see if you notice a trend like same bidders or no feedbak being left from either seller or buyer , there are a lot of Shills  on here claiming Shill Bidding is rare and that Ebay goes out of their way to prevent it which is truly funny . We are in Prime Time Shill bidding zone right now with the SDCC going on and all the exclusives being listed over and over . In my opinion for all you who claim Shill Bidding doesnt exzist trying watching a ThreeA Toys auction .

[mecaveman16]

how does bidding once solve the problem ? bidding your max ? so basically you are saying if you dont want to pay the amount dont bid right ? so let the Shill Bidder continue because you cant prove it ....... exactly why Shill Bidding continues to be more and more flagrant . Try IC3.GOV 

[femmefan1946]

Bid once and bid your max means you cannot be pushed higher.

If you are reacting to the bids of others it is easy to get auction fever and go over what you wanted to spend.

And if you are unhappy with the final price you pay, perhaps you were bidding higher than your real maximum.

More to the point, a shill bidder never wants to win.
He wants YOU to win.

The signs mentioned above are useful, but the most important ones are Retracted Bids that are not rebid.

If you bid late , in the last few minutes of an auction, the shills won't really have a chance to bid, see your high(er) bid and retract.

More to the point, 85% of eBay transactions are Fixed Price and many, if not most Auctions include a Buy It Now price*.

If either of those fit your budget, why wait around for seven days to learn you lost out?

*which disappears with the first bid.

[mecaveman16]

how does that adress the Shill Bidding ? so if you see an auction that possibly has shill bidding occuring what you are saying is just bid your max and that's all you can do ? or bid at last second to prevent the shill bidder from bidding agsain ? does this not still encourage the shill bidding ? so the shill bidder now thinks this is ok and continues to blatantly do it again and again on further auctions which now encourages every other shill bidder to follow suit . Why do we have this community if we are not going to help each other address the real issue and that that nobody is really doing anything at all except blaming the NEWBIE........

[plymouthsales4165]

If eBay believed you about the shill bidding they will start by sending a "don't do that " message to the buyer and the seller. How do I know? I got such a notice and had to call eBay and explain that what they thought was shill bidding was a buyer who purchased a huge volume from us and the transactions where all completed and actual sales.  I even provided copies of the Paypal transactions as proof.

You mentioned live auctions, shill bidding and shadow bidding are so rampent at live auctions that I have started using my phone to film the auctions that I am at and have people stating that they were not bidding on items where the auctioneer was atributing  bids to them.

[femmefan1946]

It doesn't stop shilling.

It does prevent you from bidding more than you intended.

You want to pay no more than $25 including shipping. Shipping is given as $5 to your location.

You bid $20.

You cannot be shilled higher than that $20.

If someone pays more, all that happens is that you lost the auction.

If someone bids almost as much, you won at your highest bid.

How are you hurt?

You were willing to pay $20+shipping. You are paying $20 plus shipping.

Shilling does lead to a lack of confidence in the auction process.

It may also lead to nibble bidders paying more than they intended when they get auction fever.

And of course those smartypants who put in the nuclear bids are going to get quite a shock.

The shill is spotted because he retracts bids, not because he wins.

It's too bad that eBay started masking bidder names, to stop fake Second Chance Offers. That makes spotting the shills much harder and led to a loss of confidence.

And is on reason why Auctions are now such a small part of eBay's business with most sellers choosing to add  a Buy It Now to their auctions.

[jrinam]

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@femmefan1946 wrote:

It doesn't stop shilling.

It does prevent you from bidding more than you intended.

You want to pay no more than $25 including shipping. Shipping is given as $5 to your location.

You bid $20.

You cannot be shilled higher than that $20.

If someone pays more, all that happens is that you lost the auction.

If someone bids almost as much, you won at your highest bid.

How are you hurt?

You were willing to pay $20+shipping. You are paying $20 plus shipping. 

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while he was willing to pay $20, it could of been had for less. excluding the shill, second highest might of been enough to max out his bid or might of been much less. it really makes the auto bid obsolete and turns it into an offer. a max of $20 bucks will be $20 bucks so why bother with the 'up to' part?

[thatsallfolks]

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@femmefan1946 wrote:

If someone bids almost as much, you won at your highest bid.

How are you hurt?

You were willing to pay $20+shipping. You are paying $20 plus shipping.

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Seriously? I'd be willing to pay $20+shipping in a FAIR auction, i.e. if the person who drove up my bid actually wanted to buy the item. Claiming that I'm not hurt if someone artificially drives up the price is absolutely ridiculous. It's a crime for a reason.

[mudshark61369]

@thatsallfolks,

"I'd be willing to pay $20+shipping in a FAIR auction, i.e. if the person who drove up my bid actually wanted to buy the item. ".

Therein is the rub, proving the other bidder was acting as a shill. Having low or (0) feedback and having a 100% 30 day BID history with a seller, even with many bid retractions is not proof of a person being a shill.   Some people rarely bid on auctions so they have a 100% percentage if they do bid on a seller's item. New members start to bid then run into the open transaction limits.  Uninformed newish members do not know bidding to expose a max bid, is a policy violation, as is a bid retraction if they find in item selling for less.

As a seller I've reported 3 members in the last year for inappropriate bid retractions on my auctions. They all nibbled against another's max bid, then after exposing the bid retracted claiming having bid the wrong amount.   Each had several retractions, one over 60 in the last 12 months.  Because ebay will not enforce their own policy, those members cause many to believe sellers are using shills more often than is the case.

"Claiming that I'm not hurt if someone artificially drives up the price is absolutely ridiculous. It's a crime for a reason".

Yes members are hurt, if a shill artificially drives up the price of an auction. However, since I bid in the last seconds of auctions, I've already checked the bid history, and I know what the current price is before I place a bid.  If I am willing to place a snipe bid at the increment showing that is a choice I have made, after reviewing the info.

So far no one has said shill bidding does not happen. It does, and is most common on auctions based in asia or china where ebay can't track IP addresses. It can happen in countries where ebay does have access to that info, but it is a much harder thing to do since it involves more than just starting an ID from a different IP address.

[thatsallfolks]

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@mudshark61369 wrote:

@thatsallfolks,

"Claiming that I'm not hurt if someone artificially drives up the price is absolutely ridiculous. It's a crime for a reason".

Yes members are hurt, if a shill artificially drives up the price of an auction. However, since I bid in the last seconds of auctions, I've already checked the bid history, and I know what the current price is before I place a bid.  If I am willing to place a snipe bid at the increment showing that is a choice I have made, after reviewing the info.

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I don't see how your "however" changes the fact that I paid a higher price than I LEGALLY should have. Also, you seem to be unaware that:

• you're reviewing incomplete info when you snipe (i.e. you can't see the leader's max
• some sellers do "reserve shilling"

When I bid, I've made a choice to participate in a FAIR, LEGAL auction. Nothing less.