Shill Bidding

[djmarine661]

How does a person with 10 feedback bid on everything one seller has and win everything but a few items.  Bids until item gets to 19.00 or above and stops.  Ever single item this person has for sale every auction before April 2019 well only went back that far, and no feedback either side from one another.  Wins 100-200 worth a day.

I am talking every auction this person they have 14,105 sales and 690 feedback.  person bidding if you look at anything & everything for sale it is person.   EBAY  says they monitor this so no reason to report shilling.  If this is the case this account is very very obvious.  A friend bid on 25 things with 30 something feedback and they said they couldnt bid on anything else until these 25 ended.  But this person with 10 feedback can bid on 100's of things.   How is that possible.  I really hope some does look into this it wont take long to see the obvious.  This isnt fair to the legitimate bidders. 

[nightwolf001]

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@hagelaue-0 wrote:

I respond to you not only due to your question, but also to the responses received. I have seen this time and time again. Every time someone questions shill bidding there is always multiple responses as to how wrong they are of accusing the seller of shill bidding. I have spend a lot of time looking into this and have determined regardless of what others state that there is a lot of shill bidding happening.  Anyone on here that says other wise must tell me how much a seller makes by shill bidding and how much they lose. I know they make money. I use both desktop and phone for this purpose. All shill bidders try to hide their bidding by masking it with privacy, but if you look at an item on your desktop and then view the item via mobile website "not app" you can unmask the privacy and view the individuals. As of this year shill bidding has increased big time. I see new sellers abound and they are shill biding. Any Buyer that has less than 5 and has consistently bid high on the same seller loses, period! I never buy from that seller. This works for me and I always look for this before I ever make a bid. Protect yourself because nobody else will. 

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Definitely agree with you there.  Every time the topic of shill bidding comes up, I see the same responses.  I too started a thread about a shill bidder years ago, and got the same negative, unhelpful responses.  Shill bidding is obvious when you really look at it.  In my thread, a seller had either another account, or had a friend or relative bidding.  I was watching an item, and noticed that this item would be won by the shill account at least 3 times and the seller would relist the item.  No, shill bidders do NOT want to win auctions, but often times they do because they want to get as high a price as possible, but end up winning the auction.  So the shill seller will relist the item over and over again in an attempt to get a higher price.  They don't care about the fees they have to pay because they want the high price the item will be sold at, for the unwary bidder who finally outbids their shill account. 

eBay has millions of transactions going on every year, and they can't possibly monitor every auction for suspicious activity. All we can do is report the seller for possible shill activity, and carefully watch the auction, research seller history, and items that were sold.  

[yuzuha]

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@pburn wrote:

The limited information we have available to us could be interpreted a dozen different ways, but here's how I see it:  the seller's items are cheap jewelry pieces from India. My take on it is that l***k could be legitimate bidder who is snapping up items for resale either on eBay or another market. S/he probably has a pre-determined amount above which s/he won't bid, knowing there'll be no profit in it.

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I do the exact same thing on Yahoo!Japan auctions.  There are some sellers who start auctions for item lots at very low prices-- I know that if I can win these auctions for less than a certain amount, there's a considerable profit to be made on them.  Over that amount and it simply isn't worth it.  I've been known to bid on 10+ of that seller's auctions at the same time in hopes of winning a couple of them to resell.

[hagelaue-0]

You said it perfectly!!

[bonjourami]

Thats extremely common on Ebay too, especially for resellers. My friend who sells beads here, but buys from India, has been known to bid twenty, or twenty five times, with the same sellers,but will drop out of bidding when it gets too high.She doesnt bother with leaving feedback, and usually, the sellers dont either.

[7606dennis]

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@hagelaue-0 wrote:

It is hard to find a post regarding shill bidding that does not have doubt and legal terms cast upon it, but this post does seem to be a misunderstanding. It was about shill bidding and questioning so I thought I'd give my two cents of years of monitoring shill bidders. It's real. It happens. Protect yourself. I believe the unmasking is a program bug in the mobile web application. If I use my cellphone, log in on the mobile website "not using the app", I can see all bidders that are masked by privacy. If you have the app installed you will be forced to use it even if you go to the mobile website. SO, I'm on my desktop looking around. I find some great items that I am interested in. I check out the bids. All are Private. I then pick up my phone, log in to the mobile website, go to recently viewed, click the item, click the winning bids "count" and I can see all bidders unmasked. If it comes back with only a number "say... 6 bidders", back out, refresh the page and try again. I found this out a while back. I use this every time before I bid on a new seller. At this point, for me, anyone with a seller count less than 200 that has multiple buyers with less than 5 and has bid on multiple items... I'm out! Does this help?

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I'm a bit confused what you are trying to say.  Shilling is a crime covered by the laws of each individual state.  Those laws vary from state to state.  eBay has its own rules against shilling which do not always match the laws of all states.  For example, in many states the owner of property being sold at auction may bid on their own property under certain conditions.

With regard to the ordinary member exposing shilling, while some may have strong suspicions, eBay doesn't give the ordinary member enough access to other member's data to accurately determine if shilling is being done without a reasonable doubt.

With regard to private auctions where all bidder's identities is only made available to the seller, this is actually of benefit only to the bidders themselves.  It allows them to bid without their fellow bidders knowing precisely who they are bidding against.  Even the camouflaged ID's are often able to be deciphered by those in small niche markets.  Of course, even at a live auction where the bidder is bidding in person, unless you know the person by sight all you have is a bidder number since an auction house takes their clients privacy very seriously.  Besides, the privacy factor applies equally to all bidders.

[hagelaue-0]

Non of the shill bidders are American so how can one enforce an American law in another country? I do not agree with what you are saying. Stating legal terms does not mean shill bidding is not happening and that Seller do not do it. My last purchase from a Chinese seller was 57 items. All purchased the same way that has been discussed in this thread. Out of those 57 items I won, I lost countless items. This blanket style of purchasing is perfectly normal. I see this all the time. Perfectly normal. I expect this. I also procure from Seller that have multiple stores. This is perfectly normal. This is not what I am talking about. What is going on is a different style of bidding and as stated can be seen if you look at all the factors. It's easy. My question to you is "How many items have you purchased from out of this country?". If you are talking about shill bidding in America. I agree with you. But, this is a BIG world... not just America.

[bonjourami]

Do you have an item number on one of these closed listings?

[hagelaue-0]

Not sure what you are looking for? From my last China purchase?

[7606dennis]

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@hagelaue-0 wrote:

Non of the shill bidders are American so how can one enforce an American law in another country? I do not agree with what you are saying. Stating legal terms does not mean shill bidding is not happening and that Seller do not do it. My last purchase from a Chinese seller was 57 items. All purchased the same way that has been discussed in this thread. Out of those 57 items I won, I lost countless items. This blanket style of purchasing is perfectly normal. I see this all the time. Perfectly normal. I expect this. I also procure from Seller that have multiple stores. This is perfectly normal. This is not what I am talking about. What is going on is a different style of bidding and as stated can be seen if you look at all the factors. It's easy. My question to you is "How many items have you purchased from out of this country?". If you are talking about shill bidding in America. I agree with you. But, this is a BIG world... not just America.

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You are posting on the US site boards so it is natural to reply based on the laws of states in the US.  Of course, other countries have their own laws covering such activities as shilling.  Being that shilling is a crime in the US I don't believe that it is wise to accuse someone of doing it in a published forum such as this.

I'm not saying that shilling does not exist.  What I am saying is that eBay does not permit ordinary members access to data that would be necessary to prove that the crime has been committed.  Without it, I believe that the best one could do would be to have strong suspicions.

I'm not quite sure what you mean by "This blanket style of purchasing is perfectly normal."  Can you explain your meaning by that term?  Bidding on items and purchasing from different sellers is quite normal, but I don't see its relationship to shill bidding.

I have purchased and engaged in selling activities in numerous countries, including many in Europe, Asia, Australia and New Zealand.  However, as previously mentioned, being that this is an eBay.com (primarily US) board I use US laws as basis for most of my comments regarding legal issues such as shilling.

Of course, you are perfectly correct in your assumption that it is virtually impossible to enforce US law on international sellers.  About all that could be done is prohibit them from selling in the US which is far outside the scope of eBay's power.

[bonjourami]

"so I thought I'd give my two cents of years of monitoring shill bidders".

One of the shillers that you have been monitoring for years..

[davicurti18]

I HAVE FOUND A SELLER WHO IS DOING THIS ALL THE TIME as you describe and made multiple complaints about them but NOTING IS DONE WHEN YOU CONTACT E-BAY ABOUT SUCH SCAM.

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@djmarine661 wrote:

How does a person with 10 feedback bid on everything one seller has and win everything but a few items.  Bids until item gets to 19.00 or above and stops.  Ever single item this person has for sale every auction before April 2019 well only went back that far, and no feedback either side from one another.  Wins 100-200 worth a day.

I am talking every auction this person they have 14,105 sales and 690 feedback.  person bidding if you look at anything & everything for sale it is person.   EBAY  says they monitor this so no reason to report shilling.  If this is the case this account is very very obvious.  A friend bid on 25 things with 30 something feedback and they said they couldnt bid on anything else until these 25 ended.  But this person with 10 feedback can bid on 100's of things.   How is that possible.  I really hope some does look into this it wont take long to see the obvious.  This isnt fair to the legitimate bidders. 

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KIND OF HARD TO DO THIS AND BE PLACING 204 BIDS WITH THE SAME SELLER(30 in one bidder account  listing)WITHN ALMOST ONE HOUR, THEY RETRACT ON YOU AND YOU BUY THE ITEM AS WELL AS YOU ARE AUTOMATICALLY OUTBID.  ALL ILLEGAL OPERATIONS AND MANIPULATIONS GOING ON;  OTHERS SETTING UP TO SELL DON'T INDICATE A 'RESERVE' BUT WILL TAKE ONLY WHAT A HIGHER PREVIOUS BIDDING FOR THE ITEM HAS ALLOWED ANYONE TO 'MAKE AN OFFER' FOR WILL BE ACCEPTED. EXPENSIVE (i.e$154.00) ITEMS ARE BEING ALL SOLD TO THE SAME BIDDER FOR EXAMPLE  $10.50...ALL BOUGHT AND SOLD WITHIN THE SAME SELLER'S OPERATIONAL SCAM. NO LEGITIMATE BIDDING IS DONE, OR IF SO, NO ONE HAS A CHANCE AT THE SITE TO BID AND ACTUALLY COMPETE IN ANY LEGITIMATE BIDDING FOR THEIR ITEMS. BUYERS THEN ARE 'PRIVATE' , WIN ALL THE TIME, BUT NEVER HAVING A LISTING SHOWING THEY EVER BUY ANYTHING. 

[rixstuff]

A buyer - particularly a collector - wants what they want but only at their price.  They buy them from whoever has them and often they are sold by the same people over and over. My mom used to buy me tons of Pokémon from the same 10 or so sellers but she was determined to not pay more than a certain amount for them.  You always have the option to outbid them since you seem to have figured out their max.

[davicurti18]

I'm a Counseling Psychologist and court certified Psychological Forensic Examiner having worked for years with the local DA's office...e-Bay lets scam sellers to continue to operate with impunity. We all get a kick out of reporting to them, get a good laugh with support in discussions, but the band plays on. This has to stop!!! Dave. 

[davicurti18]

THIS IS SO BAD THAT WHEN YOU BACK OFF FROM FURTHER BIDDING...THEY SET UP A RETRACTION AND YOU BUY THINGS YOU DID NOT INTEND TO PURCHASE.....QUITE A RACKET, HUH!! A "buyer" purchases hundreds of things with a single bid on n item, like 30 in an hour for the same seller, but they are not listed as ever purchasing w/ success.....but place like 204 bids with the same seller, just once @ item. A protection racket???  Others cross list with another listing site, knock out the item when you win it and withdraw the offer of the item....sending you to their other listing to bid/buy it at triple the price. All reported to e-Bay but they will taken action against such sellers. It's becoming a waste of time to even report this kind of activity, talk to yourself, the wall, or the wind. Dave.  

[davicurti18]

NEXT THING YOU KNOW THEY ALL HAVE US ARGUING S E M A N T I C S !!!!!

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@reallynicestamps wrote:

@7606dennis 

You are right to a great extent, but eBay uses Auctions to brand itself as something different from most online sites whether they are AZ or WalMart or "Joe and Maureen's Bait and Muffins" which are almost all fixed price these days.

A better word might be "differentiate". 

But yes, it sometimes takes a close reading of an original post to work out if the listing was Auction (with bidders, Buy It Now options, and a Reserve) or Fixed Price (with buyers and Best Offers ).

To say nothing of the posts where it is unclear if the poster is the buyer or the seller , because they use the terms interchangeably.

Proofreading is not that hard.

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