SHILL BIDDING --- It's OK for High-Volume Sellers

[boilermaker1970]

I've reported thousands of items that have SHILL BIDDERS. It takes a while, but EBAY sometimes takes action against SMALL SELLERS. But with the BIG SELLERS, especially those with stores, EBAY ignores SHILL REPORTS.

There is a policy that says EBAY does not allow shill bidding. But the truth is that EBAY does nothing about it if you have high volume sales, or in essence, PAY EBAY TO IGNORE SHILL BIDDING. By not taking action against shill bidding, EBAY has drawn unscrupulous sellers who have spread their lack of ethics to this site.  I have been a Buyer & Seller here since 2004, and am now cautious about buying on EBAY. And this is sad.

p.s. I identify shills as bidders who have hundreds to thousands of bids in a thirty day period, with nearly 100% applied to one seller.

[this*old*attic]

I don’t believe you can identify that; bidders IDs were randomly made anonymous years ago to protect privacy and prevent bid stocking.

im about 99% sure the numbers are generated new for each auction - it wouldn’t be anonymous or random if one’s ID stayed the same.

[bigdeals.etc]

Do I count as high volume? If so, then that's good to know from the OP. Too bad I've stopped auctions for almost a decade now.

[boilermaker1970]

Go to any auction item that has at least one bid and click on "bids" next to the current bid amount. That gives you a list of bidders. ID's are random, but if you click on that ID, you see the bid history details. This includes a list of how many bids this person has with that seller.

[upgradedendmills]

It sounds like a full time job to me. I'm glad that someone is watching out for this. Thanks.

[femmefan1946]

I have a few sellers that I buy from constantly. Mostly Fixed Price, but these are items I use constantly too.

There's even an option to keep track of Favourite Sellers.

When we did Auctions, about half our listings before we semi-retired, we were the Favourite Sellers of many customers. They were notified of our new listings, which must have been annoying since we listed from 25 to 100 unique collectibles each business day.

So any auction we had in their collecting field, would likely have a few of those Favourite Buyers too.

The way to spot a shilled auction is not who is bidding.

Look for retracted bids, since the Seller does not want to win, he wants YOU to win, as close to your maximum bid as possible. Bid retractions show on the bidder's feedback page.

Remember that if the Seller does win, he pays FVF of 10% or more for the privilege of not getting paid.

And of course, your own strategy should be to bid once and bid your maximum.

No one can push or entice you to bid more than what you are willing to pay.

If you are concerned about shilling, put the auction on your Watch List and bid late, using a sniping service if you like to bid in the last nano-second.

Auctions are now less than 15% of eBay transactions and most of those opt for Buy It Now. EBay is even pushing a Best Offer option on Auctions.

So if you see something you want, you can buy it outside the auction process. Or you can make a Best Offer (higher than the current high bid) and end the auction immediately if you are accepted.

Or skip it, and just go to Fixed Price where you can buy immediately with no concerns about shilling.

EBay will close down shill bidders.  And reporting them is good for the site. But one member's report is not likely to be acted on.

The reporter could be a competitor, a vigilante, or a mischief maker.

Or wrong.

If eBay is getting several complaints about the same auctions from several members, more attention is going to be paid.

Although the reason for masking bids was a good one, to prevent phoney Second Chance Offers, the unintended consequence of making shilling a little harder to spot and more importantly, making it easier to believe that shilling was happening, makes me think that it is time to find another way to block the SCO scams and put real IDs back on auctions.

[18704d]

"im about 99% sure the numbers are generated new for each auction - it wouldn’t be anonymous or random if one’s ID stayed the same."

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I'm not sure about that?

I encountered one such seller, myself.

Seller was from Russia (if that matters) selling original small works of art.

I placed bids on 4 or 5 of their auctions.

Every bid I placed was bumped up by the same "random" ID number.

(let's say it was shown as 8***5 )

Clicking on 8***5 shows they place 1200 bids, 100% with that seller.

They also had bid retractions for All of their winning bids.

But that was over a year ago.  I no longer buy from that seller.

fwiw,

Lynn

[greg5000]

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@boilermaker1970 wrote:

I've reported thousands of items that have SHILL BIDDERS. It takes a while, but EBAY sometimes takes action against SMALL SELLERS. But with the BIG SELLERS, especially those with stores, EBAY ignores SHILL REPORTS.

There is a policy that says EBAY does not allow shill bidding. But the truth is that EBAY does nothing about it if you have high volume sales, or in essence, PAY EBAY TO IGNORE SHILL BIDDING. By not taking action against shill bidding, EBAY has drawn unscrupulous sellers who have spread their lack of ethics to this site.  I have been a Buyer & Seller here since 2004, and am now cautious about buying on EBAY. And this is sad.

p.s. I identify shills as bidders who have hundreds to thousands of bids in a thirty day period, with nearly 100% applied to one seller.

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Sounds about right ...

That's another reason I stopped Buying here.

[femmefan1946]

@18704d 

Yup. The retractions are the clue-- or even the proof -- of shilling.

[this*old*attic]

Wow. 

[tdumonde2014]

OP is not referring to bidder's ID as a determining factor, but that they have a high percentage of their bids with the same seller.

[boilermaker1970]

EBAY BUYERS: Do you understand that Shill Bidding drives up prices and makes you to spend more for what you bid on; sometimes, a lot more?  From the lack of interest in this subject, it seems that Buyers don't care, and Ebay isn't serious about enforcing its own rules.

[bonjourami]

maybe because most smart buyers know to bid late, and bid their max once?

[boilermaker1970]

In fifteen years on Ebay, I've done my share of sniping.  But there is no bidding strategy that can counter shills. Sellers list products low to avoid higher listing fees [When shills win, they usually retract their bid so sellers don't have to pay Ebay sales fees either]. Sellers then have shills bid to the minimum they want to sell at, and if you're not aware of this fraudulent behavior, you either have to bid UP or not buy..... I check competing bids on everything before I bid and when I find shills, I avoid those items and those sellers. I now spend in a year what I used to spend in a month; when I wasn't aware of this fraudulent activity.

[gramophone-georg]

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@this*old*attic wrote:

I don’t believe you can identify that; bidders IDs were randomly made anonymous years ago to protect privacy and prevent bid stocking.

im about 99% sure the numbers are generated new for each auction - it wouldn’t be anonymous or random if one’s ID stayed the same.

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In my view, the entire reason eBay went to scrambled bidder IDs was to shut down the evidence of rampant shill bidding, which most certainly must make eBay a FORTUNE in fees.

As usual, they *claimed* it was to protect users- from fake second chance offers- but that could have been easily solved by eliminating  second chance offers.