Ebay LOVES shill bidders, NOT honest sellers.

[turbonova73]

Subject says it all.  Fraud on here as rampant as in Washington.

Profits first!  Rules are only for those who can't afford to ignore them.

Report CLEAR activity & ebay does NOTHING. I just keep seeing the same items go back up again & again.

Auction didn't go for enough, so he cancels sale as "buyer's request".  Only problem was I won it.

Never had the chance to pay. I messaged him about it...he flossed me & said "not my problem", then blocked me from replying. That's what drew my attention.

I've been on here over 20yrs. You know when you know.

I watch buyers leave negatives & he gets them ALL removed. Abusing multiple policies consistently.

"It's OK, bc it's ebay!" That should be a t-shirt for ebay's shareholders.

Funny how hard it is to get impressions, views & sales because people who do NOT deliver good product or service consistently rank higher in search results. Yet sellers who do these unscrupulous things just keep getting away with it. Ebay loves these people, but I don't see why. Theoretically, ebay makes more from a higher price. BUT that only counts if a sale ACTUALLY happens. How about banning these sellers from listing in auction format??  You want $xxx...list for $xxx.  Everyone else does. Funny thing is, the whole reason this one particular reference usually only lists as auctions is to stay completely under ebay's bot's radar...no payment to refund, like a BIN. Refund money sent = draw attention. Key is cancel before they pay.

No wonder millions of both sides are leaving this platform. Crystal clear what's going on, but NOTHING happens...EVER. I won't get into the extensive buyer fraud ebay helps facilitate. Makes honest people like myself irrelevant & appear unwanted here. I'm not a charity, nor Walmart...just trying to get by. 

I used to spend thousands per month on here...not anymore. Not in a long time. Only reason I even bid anymore is to see what an item sells for. The "watched item ending" notifications stopped a LONG time ago. Well, if I look at it from ebay's shoes...Amazon doesn't do auctions...kill auctions. Makes sense.

[a_c_green]

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@femmefan1946 wrote:

Finally Fashion bids $100.

My bid rises to $101 BUT a sniper swoops in (courtesy of an electronic bidding service) and bids $200.

And the sniper wins at $101.36.

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Pardon a nitpick here, but the sniper will win it at $103.85. Your high bid was $101.35. Above $100, the bid increment rises from $1.00 to $2.50, so their bid will exceed yours by one full increment, for a total of $103.85.

Incidentally, with the time-clock countdown provided in the bid confirmation popup, it's pretty easy to snipe the auction just seconds from the end without need of a bidding service. You will not see me (in my buying account) more than four seconds from the end of the auction. I just slam in my single highest bid, and if I win, great. If I don't, I won't have enough time to go overboard in the heat of the moment and maybe re-bid more than I should.

If I don't win at that point, it just means that someone else with deeper pockets wanted it more than I did, so I'm okay with that. (This is based on being honest with yourself about how much you're going to bid. If you wish you had bid more and won, then you didn't really submit your highest bid, back when you had the chance. 😉)

[mam98031]

No I do not know that.  And I do think there are some misunderstandings about what Shill Bidding is.  Ebay makes ZERO money on these types of transactions and they take it very seriously.  

If you don't mind, would you please explain what your definition of Shill Bidding is.  I ask only so we make sure we both understand it the same way.

[soh.maryl]

I think I'd like to know their definition of "shill bidding" also.  

[mam98031]

I posted it in post # 8.  

But I'd like to have a better understanding of what @couturehomecollection definition is as so we can work together on the concern.

[couturehomecollection]

Hi, 

Thanks for your question and openness to this issue, @mam98031 . As for working together, my opinion is that the best we can hope for is a common definition.  As a concern, the suggestion of widespread fraud by shilling would be troubling for eBay. Realistically, the discussions here are dominated by eagle eye moderators who are heavy on the delete button. The only real solution for buyers would be a legal challenge. If such a case proves that eBay facilitates fraud, the decision could affect not just eBay, but the future of ecommerce in general.

I’d like to begin my definition of shill bidding by informally discussing how I think it happens.  I value quality over quantity in choosing friends, but still have over 1,500 Facebook friends that I would not feel uncomfortable contacting on my Messenger app with a request for assistance.  If I were a eBay seller instead of a dedicated buyer, it would be fairly easy to send a message to a few close friends asking them to bid in my upcoming eBay auction. I would instruct them each to place one bid and explain that I didn’t want them to actually win, but just to help me generate interest in my auction in order to assist me recouping my original investment.  

I think most people realize that on Social Media platforms “likes” equate to power. Similarly, on eBay bids increase economic and financial power.  You don’t have to have an MBA to understand basic market economics.  Shill bidding is a largely untraceable method of influencing the market of auction economics on marketplace platforms in your favor.  Every new auction, I would ask different participants on my 1,500 list. Of course who I asked to bid might actually be a cousin, lover, or close friend that I had shared a beer with as we discussed how megalithic corporations like eBay and Amazon were sticking it to the ordinary consumers. Those acquaintances are actually quite numerous. I might even call them on the phone to help them understand the plan better and to be more persuasive.

 It doesn’t take someone from the Board of Governors at the Fed to understand how imperfect the market system is and the thousands of ways individuals, businesses, politicians, and groups can influence the economy in a myriad of ways.  It happens every minute, each day on eBay and in communities all over the world.  

[turbonova73]

i do understand how automatic bids work, but thanks for thinking in the 21 years i've been on here that i'm clueless.  it further proves my point. i bid on an item, let's say for $50 & it's a 7-day auction. the bids over the next 6 days incrementally push up to my max bid. then i'm outbid. then within a minute or 2 of being outbid, that bid is canceled, so i'm the high bidder again. lets' say it was done by bidder AB with a feedback of 4. seller has 10 other items listed & it's the same deal with the same pattern of bids by the likely same AB bidder. 2 others show bids canceled after outbidding the buyer with xxx feedback. 

the instance i was referring to on this post is being done with 3 accounts. feedback of 2, 5 & 11 (respectively) on items listed 2-3 weeks apart, with no listings in-between. it's quite a coincidence to have 3 bidders with all the same feedback regularly bidding (100% activity) on the same seller's items weeks apart, but never winning. same auctions were bumped up in starting price & most went without bids & unsold. before his late Dec to now hiatus. 

only ebay would know what's really going on, but that info isn't privy to us peasants. 

i can list the experiences i've had, but that's pointless. getting second-chance offers within minutes of losing an auction...i'm sure that's not suspect, either. that happened last month. i put a low bid, figuring i wouldn't win anyway. but if i did, great! they sent a second-chance offer before i even saw it ended (i was long outbid by 2 other ppl). i walked away. 

side note, you misread...not Amazon killing auctions, but ebay wanting them gone...to be like amazon.

bc in life, it's better to copy someone else's success rather than blaze your own trail.

great example...Lowes & HD. i worked at both for years...Lowes was the mistake.

awful company & will NEVER be anything but #2. like how ebay is losing market share. 

[turbonova73]

just a side note...

IF ebay were a fair marketplace, they wouldn't have removed the ability of sellers to leave appropriate feedback for bad buyers. But that would greatly reduce the amount of fraud happening & give sellers a way to protect themselves. I may be overstepping, but i think most know ebay has zero care about protecting sellers.  On ebay, ONLY sellers are the bad guys. Buyers are always perfect.

anonymous id's are to protect ebay's profits (from anyone taking sales off the site) & so nobody can communicate or prove this original topic.  seriously...ebay even lies to wall street.

sales tax & shipping fees are NOT part of their GMV that they include in the numbers.

that's criminal in itself.

truth isn't something available on this platform, just like mainstream media. 

sorry i even posted. i won't again. thanks to those who understood. rant over

[femmefan1946]

you do know that sellers are not removed for being found guilty of shill bidding?

This is basically true.

The "seller" is not removed. They are given the benefit of the doubt, since it is possible (although not very likely) that the "shill" is actually a mischief maker or a competitor.

The account that is closed is that of the shill.

Shill bidding benefits both sellers and eBay financially.

Yes and no.

A successful shill does not win.

They push the real bidder to their maximum, and then either stop bidding (and "lose") or retract their bids.

The real bidder pays their maximum.

Which, it should  be pointed out, they chose. Not the shill, not the seller, not eBay.

Yes, it is higher than it might have been, but it is not higher than the bidder was willing to go.

So eBay gets higher fees than if the shill was not involved.

BUT

Since few bidders seem to understand the basic principles for online bidding, there is an ongoing problem with last second bids and automatic bids.

The naive bidder doesn't understand why they are being instantly outbid by the automatic programmed bid nor how the last bid (often electronically placed days earlier with a service and only added at the last nano-second) can outbid them or push their bid higher so quickly.

Those basic principles are:

BID ONCE

BID YOUR MAXIMUM

BID LATE

 Once so you don't get caught up in auction frenzy.

Your max because you may not have time to increase your bid.

Late so that no one has time to push you to that maximum.

[yuzuha]

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@turbonova73 wrote:

Auction didn't go for enough, so he cancels sale as "buyer's request".  Only problem was I won it.

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That's not shill bidding. That's an inexperienced seller who started their auction too low and then was unhappy when it didn't get the price they wanted.

[luciflore_2]

The best solution is to use Ebay like a marketplace and not like an auction house.  I had to remind myself how lame people are by going through the process.  Just avoid bidding, make offers or buy at the price listed.

[gloryglorygifts]

Now THAT should have been the accepted answer, instead of the person that agreed with the OP....... 

[gloryglorygifts]

"Only reason I even bid anymore is to see what an item sells for.".... isn't that a form of shill bidding? 

[northernlight69]

eBay's policy of permitting users with zero positive feedback and no bidding history to bid on high-value items raises concerns about potential shill bidding. This practice should be reconsidered and regulated more effectively to prevent fraudulent activity

[kh-phdan]

Hello Everyone,

Due to the age of the 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.

Thanks for understanding!