How is shill bidding allowed to go unchecked?

[sanderspt27]

Reading through tons of comments it does not seem that ebay really cares to correct it but check these stats out:

Bid history over 30-days:

685 bids, 637 items

100% of bid activity with same seller

[house*of*paws]

Hi @sanderspt27 

eBay doesn't have enough staff to check out 1.7 billion listings on it's sites unfortunately.  But you may be able to get its attention by reporting the seller's listing(s).  [eBay claims to be able to detect similarities in the accounts of a buyer and seller.]  There is a 'Report this item' in every listing.  Please let us know whether you get any results.

[12345jamesstamps]

The higher the bid...guess who makes more money?  

I have seen it where a friend might bid on all his friend's items on auctions to just get it high.

Those I usually don't bid on. The history page of bidders and their retractions...plus...and this is important...the feedbacks of sellers and bidders that one gives to another....

[sanderspt27]

I submitted a report to ebay and will see what, if anything occurs.  When looking at everyone of the auctions for a golf club from the seller that does not have a reserve, the same bidder has placed the same bid on all of them respective of their type.  

[soh.maryl]

Playing devil's advocate here:  But if a friend and I had an arrangement where he would bid on every one of my listings, isn't it true that there would be no way to connect us?

Plus listing fixed  price, IPR would tend to resolve this issue, wouldn't it?  

[dirk12955]

I'm wondering if the over active bidder is winning anything?

What about bid retractions?     If he's shilling, I would expect to see retractions in order to

avoid winning.   

[reallynicestamps]

Did the "shill" buyer WIN all of those auctions?

If so it is possible that they just really really like the seller.

Or that the seller and the shill don't realize that there are still fees and other costs when a bidder does not pay.

Or the bidder has been retracting all those bids so he doesn't win and that those retractions show on the bidder's FB page.

You can Report the seller to eBay for investigation.

[mudshark61369]

@sanderspt27,

"When looking at everyone of the auctions for a golf club from the seller that does not have a reserve, the same bidder has placed the same bid on all of them respective of their type". 

When writing about things you suspect are happening on these boards, it is best to give us all of the information you have in your first post. All you posted was info about the number of bids placed on the number of items the seller had by the bidder. What would help us to give you a good answer is:

1)   Did the bidder have any bid retractions on their history? As asked by reallynicestamps. 

2)  Has the bidder's feedback number gone up?

3)  When did the bidder bid on the auctions, was it shortly after each item was listed or did they bid against others bids?  That info can be found by opening the item's bid history to see what time the bids came in.  If they bid very early or only after e few bids came in, they could just be an extremely hopeful reseller trying to get win the items so they can turn them around for a large profit margin.

4)  Is the seller located in the U.S. or in another country?

5)  Did the no reserve auctions start at an impossibly low price like .01 or .99¢  Most  ebay auctions do not have a reserve price, because there is a fee for setting reserve prices.  Experienced sellers will start an auction at below a trending prices, but for the least amount they are willing to take, if there is only one bid. The exception would be if a seller absolutely knows the item will sell for at or more than the trending price even if they start it at a very low price. (which ebay actually suggests)  Though usually not for under a dollar.

6)  Are the items selling for close to or over trending prices?

[lacemaker3]

---

@dirk12955 wrote:

I'm wondering if the over active bidder is winning anything?

What about bid retractions?     If he's shilling, I would expect to see retractions in order to

avoid winning.   

---

Some shill bidders do intentionally win the auctions they shill-bid on.

They are setting it up so the seller can send a second chance offer to the second highest bidder, and sell it for that buyer's maximum bid amount, rather than a lesser amount.

Also, if the shill-bidder does win the auction, that helps to disguise the fact that they are shilling.

[dirk12955]

Never occurred to me.    Second chance offers are still a thing?   I stopped 

running auctions many years ago.

If there's a short-cut or any way to game the system,   Somebody will figure it out.  

[reallynicestamps]

That scenario seems like a lot of work not to make a sale.

The underbidder may or may not have found The Thing elsewhere.

The underbidder may counter-offer now that the high bidder is out of the picture.

But if there is one thing I have learned it is that crooks are often stupid.

A corollary to the Dunning-Kruger Effect, I suppose.

[sanderspt27]

1.  No bid retractions

2.  No

3.  I see your point on this one.  All bids are nearly identical at 48 hours before the listings end and also with the same dollar amount.

4.  US seller.  Shady seller based on GolfWRX forums.  The seller also goes by a separate user name as well, yet same company.  Feedback is different from the bidder that I suspect as the 'friend' of the seller.

5.  Starting is $15.  Previously completed auctions where this person have not bit finish around 45, as low as starting bid.  Auctions where this person does bid are in the 65-80 range.  

6.  Difficult to gauge based on the item and range can be all over the place.  

Bidder update: 737 bids in 30 days.  100% of bids with the seller.  That is 25 bids per day.  Not the slightest bid smelly?

[mudshark61369]

@sanderspt27,

"4. US seller. Shady seller based on GolfWRX forums. The seller also goes by a separate user name as well, yet same company.

What is posted on off ebay forums does not matter to ebay.  What does the seller's feedback profile say, is their percentage below 98.6%?  Did you check their profile before bidding on their item(s)?  When I started selling on ebay it was from my shop, and the username I used was not the same as the name of the shop, lots of sellers do that, so that is not an indication of any wrong doing or nefarious intent.

"Feedback is different from the bidder that I suspect as the 'friend' of the seller".

If the suspected bidder's feedback number is not increasing and they are bidding in the last 48 hours, and being outbid, that still is not "proof" of any wrong doing.

"Not the slightest bid smelly"?

Yes it definitely smells fishy.  However, ebay really only has one way to try and ferret out shills, and that is to track contact between their ISP address to the Seller's outside of ebay transactional messages.  If they can't connect those dots, they can't take action against the seller without absolute proof of collusion.

  If they did take action like kicking them off the site or restricting the number of items they can sell, based only on a bad smell, the resulting law suit that could be filed, would cost ebay dearly, since they would in essence be accusing the seller of committing a crime without incontrovertible proof.

[eburtonlab]

In general, users that spend a lot of time worrying about shill bidding are likely the same users that bid early, nibble bid, or bid reactively and get into bidding wars. In other words, users that employ bidding strategies that can be most effectively exploited by shill bids. Bidding strategies that shill bidding is most effectively employed against.

Users that do not spend much if any time thinking about shill bidding: snipers that decide in advance how much an item is worth to them and that place a single bid for that amount at the end of the auction.

Shill bidding is wrong, and sellers should not be using shill bids to drive up their prices, or to set a "fee-less" hidden reserve amount below which the item cannot be obtained. If an unscrupulous seller is willing to jeopardize the seller's account to submit blatant shill bids for hundreds of auctions, most likely if that seller was somehow prevented from submitting a shill bid and an auction ended below the seller's desired minimum amount, such an unscrupulous seller would in all likelihood cancel the transaction rather than let the item go for less than that desired amount that the seller is willing to jeopardize the account to shill bid at.

In that case, the shill bid is not really driving up prices so much as allowing the seller to create the false impression that the item might be obtained for less than the "shill reserve" amount, when in fact, the shill amount is the actual starting price for that auction -- the minimum price that the buyer can bid and still win, in effect.

[pat-ralp]

I collect sportscards and the reason why ebay doesn't do anything about shill bidding is because if the seller with various accounts (or has friends/fam with accounts) can shill bid the price up as much as possible is because 'the higher the price' means 'higher the fees' , which leads to more money for ebay. believe me.