Bid Shilling Message

[antiquestrainstoys]

We recently received a bid shilling email and are a little confused. We actually have received them before too.  We checked our bidders and can't find any user names that we know. They are all strangers. Is this an email that they send out occasionally, or do they actually detect this? I'm wondering if it has to do with the fact there's two accounts connected to the same physical address but under two different names?

For example, I have my own personal ebay account under my own name and username that I sell things on. However, there's another account under my brother-in-laws name (this one I'm using now)  and it uses the same physical shipping address. He is also my landlord and we are in business together. The money from this account goes to his bank, and then we figure how much I make from it. But both accounts use the same physical shipping and receiving address. I'm the one who usually creates the listings and so there's a ton of logging in and out of both accounts and wondering if ebay finds it suspicious? 

Funny enough my sister also received the same message, and she hasn't used her account in months. Probably last fall.

Sorry for any confusion.

[antiquestrainstoys]

They appear in the ebay messages section. Yes no question they are legit ebay.

[antiquestrainstoys]

This really stinks. Auctions almost always sell for something. My personal experience with buy it now is that it takes much longer to sell things. 

[gurlcat]

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@a_c_green wrote:

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@antiquestrainstoys wrote:

Interesting. The reason we did this is because our eBay "office" is located at my address but he owns all the property. That's why there's two names associated with the address. So should he just change his ebay address to his home address?  That might correct the issue?

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I don't think the address is the key here. I have no fewer than three different selling accounts that have all used the same address over the years, despite different account info, name, etc. There must be more overlap in your case that's causing red flags in eBay's eyes. While avoiding auctions would of course eliminate the suspicion of shill bidding, again I've had multiple auctions running through separate accounts here for many years and eBay has not uttered a peep.

I would suggest, though, that if you're using the same computer for more than one active selling account, you should have separate user logins to your machine for each one, and maintain a strict separation that way.

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When I set up my second account, I decided I would only access it on a different browser, just to prevent accidentally mixing them up, like with multiple tabs open, etc.