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bidding
how do you report a seller that lists an item for auction and then goes and bids on the item in the last couple of minutes to jack the price up. I have had the same seller do this to me on three different items and then when I don't bite and keep raising my bid, the auction expires and he then relist the same item again
7 comments
house*of*paws
Mentor2 years agoHi @captn52810
It wouldn’t make sense to wait until the final 2 minutes of the auction to place a shill bid. It doesn’t give other bidders enough time to bid over it.
I hope you actually do have the PROOF you say you do, since you’re accusing someone of committing a felony.
captn52810
OP2 years agoit's someone associated with the seller because when they aren't outbid and the auction ends, the seller relist the same item again. I can prove it to ebay
eburtonlab
Mentor2 years agoit's someone associated with the seller because when they aren't outbid and the auction ends, the seller relist the same item again.
That may lead you to suspect shilling, but it does not actually constitute any sort of "proof". The buyer may have been ineligible to pay for other reasons -- such as the buyer's location -- or the buyer may have asked the seller to cancel for another valid reason.
If you are convinced the seller is engaged in shilling, you can report your suspicions to eBay using the "Report item" link found in every eBay listing.
Then find another seller to do business with.
There are ways to get around shill bidding by bidding strategically, but if you are actually certain the seller is willing to use shill bidders the seller may also be willing to do other unscrupulous things and it is probably best to avoid the seller entirely.
lady_madonna
Mentor2 years ago@captn52810
You have no proof that the other bidder is associated with the seller.
woodland_gnome
·2 years agoWhat you are suspecting is called SHILLING:
It is illegal.
It is against the rules.
It is impossible to do so with the selling ID, and eBay also blocks bids from other accounts that it has tagged as being associated with the seller account (including some accounts that have been wrongly tagged as such, at least according to those who have posted here after having been so blocked).
eBay also investigates reports of shill bidding (there is a Report item link on each listing, and "Seller is using other accounts to inflate item price" is in the menu it leads to) to some extent and has other software in place to try to find shill bidders and does take action against them, though this is shrouded in secrecy so we have no idea how successful it is.
But it still happens, more often than it should and less often than it is suspected by some (most posters coming here suspicious of a particular auction turn out to be misunderstanding how bidding works, how bid history is displayed, how other legitimate people might bid, or especially how many transactions fall through with no shilling involved). Trying to decide how to bid based on clues that may or may not be accurate is an exercise in futility: if you set your level of suspicion required to act (not bid) high, you'll get false negatives and you open yourself up to being shilled by that seller; if low, you'll get a lot of false positives, and miss out on some good deals, in the middle and you'll get a mixture of false positives and false negatives so it's still unreliable.
The best way to protect yourself against shilling is to wait until the last minute to place your true maximum bid, which you have calculated (ideally hours or days before; I recommend using a "snipe service" to place the bid--there are reliable and secure free ones) without regard to the prior bidding on the item. If you don't let prior shill bids affect YOUR bid amount, and you don't give the shiller time to probe YOUR bid to base HIS bid on the amount of yours, the price you pay if you win will be based on a legitimate underbid or on the seller's true minimum within an increment or so.
lady_madonna
Mentor2 years ago@captn52810
Sellers cannot bid on their own auctions.
You have no way of knowing who the other bidder is.
captn52810
OP2 years agothis has happened on three different items in the last 24 hours by the same bidder and when the auction ends, the seller relist the item