shill bidding?

[bobbygotit420]

does this look like a shill bidder?

[simba6]

No not at all. They are just a busy buyer.   Might have some business to resell such items is my guess.

[divwido]

Shill bidding is JUST BIDDING.  OUTBIDDING YOU BECAUSE THEY WANT IT MORE AND ARE WILLING TO PAY MORE.   there is nothing suspicious about that.

[kathiec]

You very, very seldom see a shill with no bid retractions. The point is for the shill to bid multiple times to reveal the second-place high bid, then retract their highest bid. Shills don't want to win. This bidder also seems to have placed only one bid on most of the auctions they bid on. That's also unusual for a shill; they usually bid many times to flush out the high bid.

[buyselljack2016]

Lots of bidding with the same seller.

Are they winning the auctions?

Maybe they like what the seller sells.

[mudshark61369]

@bobbygotit420,

All of the replies so far are right. Here's some more info to consider.

Most shills have lower feedback numbers. They tend to bid more than once on an item, rather than risk winning by placing a higher automatic bid early on. Shills that do that often have bid retractions, so they do not win. 

It looks like the bidder places early automatic bids, on low starting price auctions,  hoping to win items at a low price, possibly to resell.  Most of the items they really want, they bid on more than once and bid with less time left in the auctions.

In looking at the bid history of a couple of items you have won, the way you bid a couple of increments at a time, looks more like a shill at work than the bidder's history you posted. Bidding early and often allows possible shills to work, and you are helping to run the price up.

If you bid once as late in the auction as you can, and bid the most you are willing to pay + a few odd cents, you can prevent shills from running up the prices.  Read all of  the info in the link below. Especially,  the Tips for winning, and Bid sniping articles.  

https://www.ebay.com/help/buying/bidding/bidding?id=4003

[bobbygotit420]

ok maybe shill is wrong term. what do you call it when someone bids just to drive up the price?

[bobbygotit420]

so what do you gather from this bidder?

[bobbygotit420]

[house*of*paws]

Hi @bobbygotit420 

Not likely.  Shill bidders don't use accounts with 1546 feedbacks to commit crimes or violate policies.  

[bobbygotit420]

isn't the point of shill bidding only to raise the price and to not actually win?  

[kathiec]

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@bobbygotit420 wrote:

isn't the point of shill bidding only to raise the price and to not actually win?  

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True, but neither of the profiles you've posted show any signs of being a shill. None. As for this last one, it's even farther removed from being a shill than the first. No bidder with more than 43,000 feedback points is a shill. And it looks like they only made at most a couple of bids on whatever item you pulled this from, since it shows percent of bids with that seller as 0%. 

I would gently suggest that you might want to actually learn the telltale signs of a shill before you come on a public forum accusing someone of committing a Federal crime.

[house*of*paws]

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@kathiec wrote:

You very, very seldom see a shill with no bid retractions. The point is for the shill to bid multiple times to reveal the second-place high bid, then retract their highest bid. Shills don't want to win. This bidder also seems to have placed only one bid on most of the auctions they bid on. That's also unusual for a shill; they usually bid many times to flush out the high bid.

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I agree.  That, and other signs, suggest against shill bidding.

That said, I once encountered a shill bidder who operated as a 'Free Reserve'.  They placed a single proxy bid on most of a seller's auctions ... which kept the winning bid from ending  below a certain amount.

I had become suspicious after receiving an SCO on a unique item less than 2 minutes after the auction ended.  ID's were a lot less masked back then ... and I could track the 'collaboration' on the two feedback profiles ... seller's and shill's, which went back for years.  [The seller typically left the shill-member feedback, but the shill never reciprocated ... despite many transactions.]

Anyway @bobbygotit420 ... while shill bidding does occur ... it's very rare, and I don't think this is one of those times.

[house*of*paws]

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@bobbygotit420 wrote:

ok maybe shill is wrong term. what do you call it when someone bids just to drive up the price?

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@bobbygotit420 

That could be a 'shill bidder' ... or a sport bidder ... or a newbie having fun.  [I wouldn't know without looking at a bunch of a seller's auctions to see if there's a pattern.] 

I don't think THIS one's a shill bidder because of their Feedback Score ... way too high to risk exposure.

Remember that the Bid Percentage is just for 30 days.  The bidder could be working on a project and needing a lot of items that this seller has on auction ... going cheap.  

[mudshark61369]

  "so what do you gather from this bidder?"

That they do a lot of biding on different seller's items.   If they had Bidder's histories back before 2008, My bid history would have looked a lot like the 2nd history, but most of the items I bid on would have been with one seller. 

The screen shot below is from part of  Pg. 10 of my feedback profile as a buyer set to 200 items per page the pages on either side of it will have similar numbers from that one seller who only auctioned items.  You'll see many feedback from several other sellers whose auctions I regularly bid on.