Locked
Discussion interactions are currently paused.
What and why are there "Private Bidders"?
Lately I'm seeing an increase in Private Bidders which to me may mean someone using another account or a friend(s) who are increasing bids and then declining to buy and item goes back up. Why are there Private Bidders when E Bay never gives complete name of bidder anyway???
15 comments
kh-cathy
·2 years agoHi everyone,
Due to the age of this thread, it has been closed to further replies. Please feel free to start a new thread if you wish to continue to discuss this topic.
Thank you for understanding.
von-yesselstyn-restorations-1
·2 years agoPrivate bidding is pure garbage... Get bid up by a person with no Bid History.
It's well known that someone's "Friend" can and do just bid up an item. I have had it happen to me and an acquaintance of mine had it happen to him. So for the first time he retracted his bid and the other person that had bid him up supposedly "won" the auction. 36 hours later the item was relisted. When the "seller" was asked why, he said the other bidder didn't pay. Low and behold the item got bid up with someone with the EXACT same bid history with the exception of the last bid. Funny though, highest bid got retracted again, then low and behold, relisted after that almost no history bidder didn't pay again.
Nothing but a scam, it happens with listing that don't have private bidding as well but not as much.
I have never been bid up so much as when there is a private listing and I stop bidding as soon as I see the scam working as intended. This stuff is all well known and Ebay can't do anything about it.
ibuyoldstuf
·3 years agoPet Peeve of mine !!!
Can't wait too see the flies that launch off of this Ssssss Topic!
itscalledapostingid
·3 years agoEbay is pretty good at identifying and preventing shill bidders. There was a guy on here just last week crying because he got caught.
albertabrightalberta
·3 years agoAlthough bidder/buyer IDs are anonymized, if you know what to look for, shill bidding can be determined and I always look for it, especially if the category is one for which there's no valid reason to hide buyer IDs.
Private listings are also another way to hide a history of having sold counterfeit (or otherwise disallowed) items since they won't show in completed listings after 60 days.
I'm always skeptical of private listings since it's a way to hide a variety of sins.
ibuyoldstuf
·3 years agoExactly Correct,, "if you know what to look for" should not be a consideration when establishing any sort of trust or credibility anywhere, especially where dollars are exchanged!
ðŸ‘
airsheep
·3 years agoThis. Chinese tchatchke sellers also often have a confederate place a bid after the first or second one that is approximately what they want for the item ("bid shielding"). If no one bids above the minimum they want, they cancel the sale and relist. If someone bids over their minimum, they sell it to the poor schlub who has paid probably several times what the item is worth.
nobody*s_perfect
·3 years agoWhat you have described is shill bidding, not bid shielding. Bid shielding is when potential buyers collaborate to keep the price down. Typically this involves two bidders placing very high bids, then one bidder retracts their bid at the last possible moment, so the auction ends at one bid increment above the third-highest bid.
This happens a lot less since eBay set up the rule that during the final 12 hours of an auction, bids can only be retracted within one hour of being placed. But there are still shenanigans involving bids placed during those final 12 hours.
airsheep
·3 years agoI stand corrected 🙂 "Shill bidding" seems to be quite misunderstood!
mudshark61369
·3 years ago@luvit1951,
In what types categories or types of items are you finding "Private listing; bidders identities protected" auctions?
While ebay has scrambled members IDs, in some niche categories of rare and or expensive items another bidder may be recognized by their feedback number or by checking their bid history and feedback received by seller's.
Some sellers do not understand how Private listings and especially Private auctions are perceived by many people, and list all of their items, Auctions and Buy It Now, that way. Usually but not always, they are new or inexperienced sellers.
Sellers of health, personal hygene or adult items... may list items that way to make people more comfortable buying them. Just like TV ads where they say products will arrive in unmarked boxes.
Then the are the ones who do use shills, but most are from Asia who list misrepresented items with very low starting prices. If one checks the lower feedback number bidder's bid histories, that may have a high percentage of bids with the seller and a high number of retractions. If the seller's sold auctions are checked out one may find they cancel high bidders, last bid so the 2nd place one wins.
Whether the seller is honest or not, the best away to avoid being run up by a shill, or even active nibble bidders, is to wait until an auction is about to end, and if the current bid is within your price range, bid that amount inside the last minute. It gives the shills less time to react, and the scam sellers little time to cancel a shills bid if it was more than yours.
woodland_gnome
·3 years agoThere is no such thing as a "Private Bidder." There are Private LISTINGS and there are users with Private Feedback (for which the bidder details you can see when you click the ID alias in a Bid History are exactly the same as those with public feedback, which you wouldn't be able to see anyway).
There are legitimate and illegitimate reasons for a seller to choose the Private Listing option. (You should be aware that YOUR bid on that item is/would be attributed to the same "Private listing--bidders' identities protected"--note the plural; you see your own ID in the bid list only because YOU are the one logged in under that ID). Private listings protect the winner's/buyer's (they apply in fixed price listings also) ID to a greater extent than in ordinary listings (a***b type alias; though the legitimate differences are getting fewer and fewer as eBay is getting more and more opaque with ordinary listings it is still possible, with some effort, to match a feedback left from a buyer's profile with its appearance on the seller's profile to find the item information). Legitimate reasons include the sale of items where the buyer would most likely want his/her identity kept private (adult materials, medical supplies, spygear, etc.) and that the likely buyers of the item are a small tight community (small and tight enough to know each others' ID aliases) where one might be reluctant to bid against another. You guessed at the main illegitimate reason (the term is "shilling").
My rule of thumb is that if the majority of sellers of the item or very similar ones use Private Listings (especially if they use it for their fixed price sales) then the reason is probably legitimate. If not, I go with one of the majority of sellers who don't use it. Or I might discount my bid so that there isn't enough room to run it up past where I would be very happy paying. (It could be that the seller has a legitimate, or at least non-illegitimate, reason for choosing PL, that the others don't, in which case I might get a bargain if my higher paying competition is scared off.) AND the best way to avoid having the price you pay if you win be higher than it should be because of shilling is to wait until the last minute to bid your TRUE maximum without regard to what others have bid or don't appear to have bid; if you don't let YOUR bid be affected by shill bids and you don't give the potential shiller time to probe YOUR bid, the price you pay will be based on a legitimate valuation independent of your valuation: either the maximum bid of the next highest legitimate bidder or the true minimum selling price of the seller, within an increment or so.
Note: if there isn't already a bid by someone else on the item, the only way to tell it is a PL is to look WAAAAAAAY down on the item's Listing Page (past the point where you'd think there would be any information about this particular listing) for something like this:
"This is a private listing and your identity will not be disclosed to anyone except the seller."
campanaelia
·3 years agoI see "Private bidder" right here...
https://www.ebay.com/bfl/viewbids/394432677923
woodland_gnome
·3 years agoNo you don't. You see "users with Private Feedback (for which the bidder details you can see when you click the ID alias in a Bid History are exactly the same as those with public feedback, which you wouldn't be able to see anyway)" exactly as I said in the second sentence of my post. That does not say "Private Bidders". If you had described what you actually saw rather than your interpretation of it I wouldn't have gone on to describe the other option in detail.
Someone who is not selling can make his/her Feedback Profile "(private)" hiding some (but not all) information (in particular the list of feedback ratings and comments). That is not something a shiller would be inclined to do so it does nothing to hide the bidding pattern of that bidder (and instead simply draws attention to it). AGAIN, you can't access the actual Feedback Profile of any of the other bidders so making it private hides little to nothing of relevance.
mudshark61369
·3 years ago@campanaelia,
What the OP wrote about is sellers having auctions where it says on the bid history: Bidders identities Protected, meaning you do not see any info about the bidder.
In your screen shot, did you note the placement of (Private)? It is right where the member's feedback number should be. That means the bidder has made their feedback private. Just because you cannot see their feedback number does not mean that you cannot click on their 2***e ID to see the person's bid history. Also if you click on the Show automatic bids button on the bid history you will see all of the bids placed.
Some bidders make their feedback private, because they think others can see their whole ID, when only they and the seller can. Some may do that because they also re-sell what they buy on the same ID. They cannot have any active listings while their feedback is Private though. Then there are those make their feedback private to hide a history of leaving non-positive feedback.
Judging by the way that member bid, I'd say they are an inexperienced nibble bidder, who only bids one increment at a time, against others who are pretty much doing the same thing. A shill probably would have kept bidding on that item a little more. Even with 9 bids they still only had a 12% history bidding with the seller.
ibuyoldstuf
·3 years agoWow!
That was a long way around the Barn to explain away why anyone needs to hide on a platform where reputations, credibility and a level playing field is promoted as being just as valuable (if not more so) than any monies exchanged !
🤔