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.

[mam98031]

You have a few things you are complaining about that have ZERO to do with "shill bidding".  Shill bidding is not allowed on Ebay and if you are considering the multiple bids that may happen on an auction in the last few seconds, that is been the normal process since the beginning.  Some buyers sit on a listing that is about to end just to post a bid in the last second if they can time it right.  This is just part of auctions.

If a seller cancels a transaction on you and select the reason Buyer's Request that you did not ask for, report that seller as they are certainly breaking the rule.  Ebay won't let them get away with that for long.

https://www.ebay.com/help/action?topicid=4022

Ebay will remove certain feedback if it breaks policy.  Simply because a seller asks for feedback to be removed, it doesn't get removed.  There has to be a breach of the rules guiding feedback.

If you are looking for Ebay to report to you when they sanction a seller for some reason, they will never do that.  That is private account information and Ebay just should never do that, for a buyer or a seller.  You can see most sanctions that happen to a seller whether it is their get a selling limit imposed, a force vaca, higher fees, loss of something else, etc.  You can't see it, nor should you.

Yes member do leave all the time, both buyers and sellers.  And new members join the site, both buyers and sellers.  

Amazon never did auctions, so they didn't "kill them".  Yahoo use to do it but that part of their business went out of business.  

Auctions on Ebay are a small portion of the listings on the site.  There are only a few categories that auction even work in anymore.  In most categories they don't work well.  In about 2014/2015 auctions died out for me.  I use to run a few hundred a week.  But they just were not working anymore and most went unsold.  For these and many other reasons is why you don't see other sites similar to Ebay taking on auctions.

[couturehomecollection]

Preach. I agree 100%. Plain and simple: eBay grins ear to ear on each and every shill bid so you or I will be silenced for raising awareness about it.  I routinely have my comments and posts removed by moderators for mentioning the deplorable activities or suggesting a report to the  Better Business Bureau which apparently violates eBay guideline around activism. You are absolutely right and thanks so much for having the bravery to speak up. They will actually make more money as a corporation if people are kept ignorant and the discussion boards are less participatory. As a dedicated buyer, I have watched buyer’s rights decline precipitously.  The very important subject of shilling you speak of has made the platform so discouraging for many.  I see complaints arise about it quite frequently on the boards.  The less than honorable eBay corporation and entire system is rigged against those who care.  Apologists and defenders are the dominant voices here now.   Nevertheless, thanks for caring and raising awareness.  I’m so sorry these criminal activities are encouraged and promoted here.  I used to love eBay! 😥🤕🤑

[mystik_n_majik]

"Only reason I even bid anymore is to see what an item sells for."

I cannot believe you admitted to that..

I couldn't get through all this long mumbo Jumbo nonsense. But what you just said? You have no business complaining about anything when what you're doing isn't legit either

I've been selling n buying on eBay for years. This is the first time I even came to this forum. Normally I figure out my own problems or contact ebay, sometimes Google for answers. Now I know why I don't use forums.  

[fashunu4eeuh]

Hi, sorry to hear of your frustrations.

My experience on eBay is different from yours, but i respect your sharing your point of view. Each voice adds something valuable to the discourse, where we can learn from each other (well, most of us, i hope).

What method are you using to report these violations to eBay? It sounds like your complaints aren’t reaching the right people.

The seller who cheated you out of your winning item by lying about the reason he cancelled, that report should carry some major weight. Buyers who report rule-breakers from a first-hand experience are generally given more significance by eBay. 

In that same vein, multiple reports by the same person for the same infraction could actually lessen the impact of the initial report. And if the offending party is also a competitor, those reports might be given the least attention.

[turbonova73]

i tracked the activities of this one particular person bc they did wrong. auction after auction...same thing. buyer's identities are hidden, but if you really pay attention, the "hidden" name & number of feedback track to the same id's. maybe i should clarify. I'm not talking last-second bids. bids run up over days prior until the last day. not 1 bid, not 2...5, 8, 12 bids...  my point is you can report all day long, but ebay does what ebay thinks is best for THEM. neither the buyer or seller matter to the corporation. the frustrations from al these little things add up. point being, ebay is killing the auction format intentionally...as you've experienced. you can't seriously tell me your overall experience on both sides of the fence is as good as it was even 3-4 years ago. it's drastically different & not for the good. my sales dropped 70% immediately after they forced me into mangled payments 3yrs ago & they've never recovered. i do in 3 months what i used to do in 1 month...consistently. i won't get into that, but to the dollar, they play a game.

defend them all you want, but wait until you're on the receiving end of the fraud & it costs you as a seller, like it has me.  ebay says report, but you & everyone else can do that ALL day. it's only when it costs ebay money, they act. i'm new to using this "community" forum. did not know once posted, i could not edit anything, or i would have been more broad in my subject.

[turbonova73]

thanks couturehomecollection & fashunu4eeuh. 

I use the typical links ebay provides to report. waste of time. other people report...doesn't change a thing.

This case, definitely not a competitor. I sell tools & guy stuff, mostly. Have a few things listed for my gf, but I never sell the types of limited or special edition Hot Wheels I buy. 

thru the years, i've gained some regulars & even few I got to know outside of here. It goes back a ways.

One...we used to message each other to make sure we weren't bidding against ourselves on tools lol.

I'm talking where we'd find stuff (specific pieces to complete sets or a kit) we knew each other wanted & snatch up the deal, save up a pile, then ship it for plain cost to each other. Ebay hates that...communication, making friends with similar interests...it's better to stare at a phone & not communicate in the real world. 

One would think that a veteran on here would know what they're talking about & ebay should acknowledge that. Nah. Get "new blood" & let the ppl who help build this platform fade away. It would be a WHOLE different experience if they factored YEARS of consistent great service into search results. But instead they abolished the "power seller" factor in rankings. Now i have a "red star" that just says i have a lot of feedback (good or bad, doesn't matter)...whoopee. They turned performance metrics into a fee scale for themselves.

[mam98031]

The community has rules.  Postings are only removed if the post breaches one or more of the rules.

https://community.ebay.com/t5/About-the-Community/Community-Guidelines/td-p/26164369

I think some misunderstand what Shill Bidding actually is.

Definition of 'shill bidding'

NOUN

(on an online auction) the illegal practice of a seller or a seller’s acquaintances placing bids on his or her goods in order to drive up the price.

*****

The bidding in the last seconds of an auction is not Shill Bidding, it is simply bidding.  I do it all the time when I'm shopping auctions.  I wait until the last few seconds of an auction and then bid.  We do that in the hopes of not driving up the price too much.  Early bidding can just cause the price to go up and up from other bidders.  

[mam98031]

That is Ebay that hides the identity of a bidder, not the seller.  Sellers have nothing to do with that.

Managed Payments have nothing at all to do with your listings or whether they sell or not.  Absolutely nothing.  It is simply a money processing program.  MP gives buyers more option they can pay with than they had when we used PayPal as sellers and buyers can still use PP if they want.  So for a buyer, Managed Payments is an improvement to the payment process.

I'm NOT defending Ebay.  The description of how things work is simply that.  I didn't write the programs nor do I have anything to do with them.  I'm just a user as you are.  Because your experiences are different than mine doesn't mean that either one of us is right, it ONLY means we have different experiences.

When a seller is misbehaving and being reported by other members, it does not benefit Ebay to sit back and do nothing as we could be losing buyers over the issues with the seller.  Losing buyers DOES cost Ebay money.  Don't assume that Ebay doesn't do anything about sellers that get reported for the same thing several times by different buyers, but if you expect Ebay to announce the sanctions they have taken with the seller, that will never happen.  There are many different ways to sanction a seller that will not show publicly.  But that doesn't mean the seller wasn't or isn't sanctioned.

[femmefan1946]

I just keep seeing the same items go back up again & again.

Not shill bidding. A shill does not want to win. They want to push you to your highest bid. Winning costs the seller money and time.

so he cancels sale as "buyer's request".

Not shill bidding.

False reason for ending transaction, but this can be appealed.

EBay earns no fees for ended transactions.

buyers leave negatives & he gets them ALL removed.

Some FB is removed for transgressing the rules, like mentioning Claims and Disputes or using vulgar language.

FB left before a Claim is lost can also be removed.

And some high volume sellers do have perks about feedback, usually that it cannot be left for 7 days after purchase

people who do NOT deliver good product or service consistently rank higher in search results.

Feedback is not used to assess member accounts.

Claims do.

Also ratios.

The seller with 100 postive FB and ten negative has a 90% FB rating.

The seller with 10,000 positive FB and ten negative has 9,990 happy customers, 10 unhappy and a 100% FB rating.

You can avoid most of these problems, and find a wider variety of goods by doing what happens in more than 85% of transactions.

Don't list or bid in Auctions.

In spite of being a dying part of the business, Unpaid Items and low bidding lead to more than 50% of the complaints we see here on the Buyer and the Seller Boards.

[couturehomecollection]

Thanks again for bringing up another important point. I know exactly how you feel  about the five minute limit imposed on editing by Khoros who contracts to manage the forums. I was a dedicated volunteer in the original discussion forums started by eBay under the account “Primroy”.  I dedicated thousands of hours of volunteer work and made the original suggestion to write community guides to educate members about things like fake Chinese and Meissen porcelains.  The forums became problematic for eBay. The sharing of bad experiences and stories on the boards about buyers getting ripped off was making national and international press giving eBay bad press. Executives quickly shifted the whole conception of the boards , an outside contractor was brought in to weaken the boards, and those of us that invested so much  left in disgust.  I only recently returned. The forums should be encouraging dialog and not limiting it.  The five minute time limit is a tool to limit people’s ability to make their points and is very anti-democratic.  One of the best forums I am a member of, The National Association of Watch & Clock CollectorsNAWCC,  has nearly 10,000 members worldwide. The silencing of community voices and the closing off of vital information to make intelligent decisions are common practices of totalitarian regimes across the world.  Ebay is simply a microcosm of the patterns of change happening in society.  It may not by the evil empire, but you and others are on to some very sinister and unfortunate realities of the platform. I thought you might be interested in seeing my own post about Shill bidding.  

[mam98031]

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@femmefan1946 wrote:

1   I just keep seeing the same items go back up again & again.

Not shill bidding. A shill does not want to win. They want to push you to your highest bid. Winning costs the seller money and time.

2  so he cancels sale as "buyer's request".

Not shill bidding.

False reason for ending transaction, but this can be appealed.

EBay earns no fees for ended transactions.

3  buyers leave negatives & he gets them ALL removed.

Some FB is removed for transgressing the rules, like mentioning Claims and Disputes or using vulgar language.

FB left before a Claim is lost can also be removed.

And some high volume sellers do have perks about feedback, usually that it cannot be left for 7 days after purchase

4  people who do NOT deliver good product or service consistently rank higher in search results.

Feedback is not used to assess member accounts.

Claims do.

Also ratios.

The seller with 100 postive FB and ten negative has a 90% FB rating.

The seller with 10,000 positive FB and ten negative has 9,990 happy customers, 10 unhappy and a 100% FB rating.

---

I put numbers beside the different things you addressed in the above post.  I just have some additional comments I'd like to add.

1.  Often times sellers have multiple quantities of stuff so they often will list another one after one sells.  I do it constantly.  The only difference for me is I no longer run auctions.

2.  The seller needs to be reported to Ebay when they do this as they are not adhering to the policy for cancellation and are doing this to avoid getting a defect on their selling account.

https://www.ebay.com/help/action?topicid=4022

3.  It is a perk of TRS that no negative or neutral feedback can be posted until the 8th day after purchase.  So it isn't that these get removed if posted before that time [days 1-7], the buyer simply can't post it.  A message appears on their screen to tell the exactly why too.

[femmefan1946]

I'm not talking last-second bids. bids run up over days prior until the last day. not 1 bid, not 2...5, 8, 12 bids...

I suspect you do not understand Automatic Bidding,

You list an Auction with a starting price of $10.

I want it and bid $101.35.

It opens to me at $10- and I am winning.

Fashion also likes it and bids $20

My early $100 bid sees that and raises my high bid to $21.

Fashion bids $30. My bid rises to $31 even though I am asleep at the time.
Automatically.

And so on until the last second of the  auction, with Fashion chasing and nibbling.

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.

I don't notice for a couple of days because my bidding was being done automatically by eBay.

Fashion wonders if something is strange because $1.36 is not a normal bid increment.

The seller is happy because snipers are usually good payers.

The sniper won the Thing.

EBay got fees on the Thing and the shipping.

[mam98031]

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@femmefan1946 wrote:

I'm not talking last-second bids. bids run up over days prior until the last day. not 1 bid, not 2...5, 8, 12 bids...

I suspect you do not understand Automatic Bidding,

You list an Auction with a starting price of $10.

I want it and bid $101.35.

It opens to me at $10- and I am winning.

Fashion also likes it and bids $20

My early $100 bid sees that and raises my high bid to $21.

Fashion bids $30. My bid rises to $31 even though I am asleep at the time.
Automatically.

And so on until the last second of the  auction, with Fashion chasing and nibbling.

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.

I don't notice for a couple of days because my bidding was being done automatically by eBay.

Fashion wonders if something is strange because $1.36 is not a normal bid increment.

The seller is happy because snipers are usually good payers.

The sniper won the Thing.

EBay got fees on the Thing and the shipping.

---

EXCELLENT post !!!!

[couturehomecollection]

Lol you do know that sellers are not removed for being found guilty of shill bidding?  They are warned. I have seen several instances on the forums where sellers complained of having multiple warnings. Shill bidding benefits both sellers and eBay financially.  Of course, that is why it’s so widespread. It is painful to swallow as buyers, but we do a lot of the time!  If you check the page eBay has for shill bidding, eBay plainly tells you there is no need to even report it to them.  That unusual honesty and the complexity of making a report are pretty good indicators that eBay want to do nothing whatsoever about it.  Have you actually tried the process?  I can assure you it’s labyrinthine!  It makes no financial or logical sense to do anything whatsoever to stop shill bidding.