How eBay Sellers Fix Auctions 556
Boj writes "The Times online is carrying stories on fraud carried out on eBay using shill bidding. Citing eBay's changes to security as aiding the shill bidders and this fraud:
"Last November eBay changed its rules to conceal bidders' identity — making it even more difficult for customers to see whether sellers are bidding on their own lots.""
Ebay - Where there is a sucker born every minute. (Score:5, Insightful)
Go to ebay and do a search on 'wholesale list'. You will find people attepting to deceive the buyers, I'll even say that much of this is fraud.
I would bet that among the 'power sellers' (and others) there were organized 'teams' of people that artifically jack up the prices for profit.
Now, if ebay KNEW about these practices and did nothing to stop them, could they be found liable?
I have been a victim of Ebay fraud, complained and heard nothing back. I sucks, but I now expect that from both ebay and paypal.
"Last November eBay changed its rules to conceal bidders' identity making it even more difficult for customers to see whether sellers are bidding on their own lots."
What this also does is it keeps people that wish to help fix the problem from doing so. IE, I see an obvious fraud attempt on EBAY and try to contact the people that are about to be screwed. I can't do it.
Re:Ebay - Where there is a sucker born every minut (Score:5, Insightful)
Personally, I avoid eBay like a plague. it's got sucker written all over it.
Tom
Re:Ebay - Where there is a sucker born every minut (Score:5, Informative)
Well, that may be. But they stay in business for a reason. If I have something to sell, I can reach a larger market than I can locally. And when I'm looking for some uber rare item that it would take years and thousands of dollars in gasoline to find by scouring every used record store, book store, person's home, etc., ebay comes in very handy.
I've only been burned a couple of times (out of several hundred transactions) and then only for low value items.
My own personal strategies for a succesful transaction include:
1) Never bid on camcorders, computers, automobiles, or any other high dollar item.
2) Always do an extensive check of the seller's feedback.
3) Don't bid early or get involved in bidding wars. Snipe instead.
Re:Ebay - Where there is a sucker born every minut (Score:5, Interesting)
For basic transportation it's not necessarily the way to go. Chances are most people have at least as good a selection within driving distance of them at various dealerships in their area. If you want something a little out of the ordinary though it's a good place to find it.
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Re:Ebay - Where there is a sucker born every minut (Score:5, Insightful)
Sure ebay isn't a brick'n'mortar auction house, and it has a different set of rules. So what? In the real world, people don't always pay the asking price --- they are free to haggle in an attempt to bring the price down. Is that also being an asshole? That's the way the market works --- the seller wants to maximize the selling price, and the buyer wants to minimize it. You understand the framework. My advice: If you are a buyer intent on winning, put in a high bid, or snipe it yourself. If you are a seller, set a reserve price. If you don't like the game, don't play.
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Re:Ebay - Where there is a sucker born every minut (Score:5, Informative)
Here:
http://www.jbidwatcher.com/ [jbidwatcher.com]
Now you too can snipe w/out having to sacrifice your active lifestyle.
Just configure it with the auction number to snipe - the amount you want to snipe - and go on with life.
Re:Ebay - Where there is a sucker born every minut (Score:5, Insightful)
Sure it's easy enough to justify the action of sniping, just like paying some kid for his spot in line to get a playstation, but it's still an asshole move most often capitalized upon by people with less active lives that have time resources to snipe in whenever their auction of interest happens to be ending. I'm not sure if it's just laziness on the part of programmers at eBay, but I imagine they could gleam a better profit margin by emulating certain aspects of the time tested traditional auction format where bidding is extended upon attempted sniping.
In an ideal world, sniping should have absolutely no effect on the outcome of an auction. It shouldn't matter whether you put your bid in one second after the auction opens or one second before the auction ends, the winner will always be the highest bidder, sniper or not. Unfortunately, eBay is infested with morons. These morons think that they need to bid the minimum each time, like they do in the auction houses they've seen in old sitcoms. When they see that they've been outbid, they bid another dollar, then another, and another... In the span of thirty seconds, they'll place a dozen bids or more, each just a dollar higher than the last, not stopping until they have the high bid (regardless of what the item is actually worth). Considering that you are supposed to bid the maximum you are willing to pay, this behavior makes no sense; if the price you are willing to pay fluctuates that quickly, you should be too stupid to use a computer (unfortunately, this never seems to be the case...).
This problem is easily avoided by not signaling your intent to bid on the item until it is too late for the morons to place more clueless bids. You aren't cheating anyone, you are just holding the morons to their initial bids. People only have a problem with sniping when they think "I would have been willing to pay that price." They'll keep thinking, "It's just another dollar..." even though the fact is, someone was willing to pay more; the high bid is all that matters. If you can't make up your damn mind, you shouldn't be bidding at all.
Snipers do nothing illegal, immoral, unfair, unkind, rude, or unexpected. They place bids, just like everyone else on eBay. Sometimes they win the item, sometimes they don't (and many times they will pass on bidding on an item entirely because the price in the last few seconds is higher than they are willing to pay). Sniping actually forces a handicap on the bidder; by sniping, the bidder has only one chance to place a bid, and even then only if there are no technical issues that prevent the bid from being placed in time.
As for the idea of extending auctions when late bids are placed, that's just idiotic. In most cases you have 5 or 7 days to place a bid. If you can't figure out what you are willing to pay in a week, what good will another 15 minutes do? All I can see is that you might get swept up in the heat of the moment and bid way too much, raising prices for other bidders and giving the sellers the pleasure of trying to collect money from people who are incapable of making decisions - and driving an increasing number of users to alternatives that don't play stupid games with the auction's end time.
I have a solution for all of you who whine about snipers. It is really simple, 100 percent effective, and completely free. Bid more than you are willing to pay. That's it. If you get outbid, it's no big deal, because you never wanted to pay that much in the first place. If you win at your high bid, you may have spent too much, but you get that joy of winning that you seem so concerned about. Best of all, it requires no changes to anything else, so it couldn't be easier to implement.
Typical. (Score:3, Informative)
No, the problem is they're combining a Vickrey auction with an English auction--then adding an arbitrary stop-watch--and that encourages sniping and rampant shill bidding. People who point this out aren't morons, they just recognize a bad system when they see one.
For bid once, bid max to work, you actually have to be forced into having only
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Yes it is, because neither is wrong. In the latter case, both the buyer and the kid are better off as a result of the exchange, and nobody else is affected. In the former case, if a sniper beats you, then he either bid more than you were willing to pay in which case you wouldn't have gotten the item if he bid normally, or he bid less than you were willing to pay, in which case why didn'
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More to the point (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:Ebay - Where there is a sucker born every minut (Score:5, Informative)
No.
In economics, there is a long established and useful concept called consumer surplus. It is based on the fact that some consumers value an item at much higher than the going rate, but that their number is small enough that it would not be in the seller's interest to sell a smaller quantity at a higher price.
For example, say that I am extremely hungry and have a class in 10 minutes. I might be willing to pay $5 for a slice of pizza at the cafeteria nearest to my classroom, due to reasons of both timing and hunger. However, since the cafeteria can't read people's minds, and because of various local trade laws and issues of practicality, they must charge the same price to everyone. Say that the optimal price based on average demand and the cost of supplying pizza, both in labor and materials, is $1.50. So I buy a slice for $1.50 and I am left with a consumer surplus of $3.50.
This example is to say that people often value an item above the market clearing price (or below it, in which case they don't buy), and that the fraud being committed is fraud, because it artificially inflates the market price with bids of buyers who do not intend to pay, and who are in collusion with the seller.
In our pizza example, if a store employee out of uniform had stood next to me and tried to outbid me on pizza, until my reservation price ($5) was reached, that would be fraud. When someone misrepresents themself in a commercial transaction, it is fraud. All the bidders are transactors in an auction, not just the winner.
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On the point of why this fraud is more profitable than a reserve price, is that you can prompt bidding on an item with limited interest far beyond what the market clearing price would be. If my reservation price is $500, and your reserve is $300, and no other buyers are intereste
Re:Ebay - Where there is a sucker born every minut (Score:2, Insightful)
Yes, everyone run around and complain as much as you want, this isn't going to change.
Whatever, I never trusted auction sites anyway.
Re:Ebay - Where there is a sucker born every minut (Score:5, Insightful)
Just remember Ebay is a flea market. The kind most people wouldn't enter if it existed as a real building. Treat going there as such and you won't get burned.
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Re:Ebay - Where there is a sucker born every minut (Score:4, Funny)
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What CAN they do to stop them though? (Without completely destroying their business)
How is it possible for Ebay to tell the difference between an account that just doesn't bid all that much because they're trying to be cheap vs. an account that is shill bidding?
Re:Ebay - Where there is a sucker born every minut (Score:5, Insightful)
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That's not the only way shill bids happen -- it's just the most obvious. (Well, the second most obvious. The most obvious would be when the same account that's selling the item is bidding on the item -- but I'm guessing eBay's system prohibits that.)
Ultimately, shill bidding is difficult to detect (and even harder to prove) when done properly. But the evidence is that eBay doesn't really care, even when it's pret
Getting ripped off and Fixing are two diff. things (Score:5, Insightful)
The fixing auctions, with shill bidders on the other hand, isn't as bad in my book. Just don't pay more than you want to pay for it. This is the sellers way of saying they don't want to sell it for less. Getting "caught up" in an auction for a common item is just dumb.
Just stick to the fixed price items, or just set your bid once (at the price want to pay for it) for the item you want. If you're bidding multiple times on an item, you're caught up in the game and have a problem.
Re:Getting ripped off and Fixing are two diff. thi (Score:3, Insightful)
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Last I checked, that's what the reserve price is for. Shill bidding is the seller's way of setting a reserve price while hiding that fact from the bidders. It's deceptive at best.
Ebay is an AUCTION SITE, not a retail marketplace. If a seller isn't willing to sell for the market value, he needs to find a different sales format.
Re:Getting ripped off and Fixing are two diff. thi (Score:5, Informative)
Re:Getting ripped off and Fixing are two diff. thi (Score:3, Insightful)
So a seller doesn't use the minimum bid probably because ebay want more of the sale or because he knows he can get more money out of some one who actualy thinks he is in an auction. In the later, he bids up the price makeing it look like there is interest in the item by someone else. This is violating the basics of a contract for sale. I
Re:Getting ripped off and Fixing are two diff. thi (Score:5, Informative)
I took part in an auction a few months ago which seemed to me to be a clear cut case of shilling. I put a low-ball bid in on a video game, got outbid, and came back the next day (after purchasing it elsewhere) to find that the winning bid that outbid mine had been cancelled but that my bid had been extended to its very top value (I think it was at $1 when I first took the top spot and I'd only offered up to $2). So before paying, I inquired with the seller as to why the other bidder's bid had been retracted. I made no statement toward either having bought the item elsewhere or toward ebay's narrow criteria for allowing retractions. I simply asked why it happened, and the reply to me was something like "Well if you don't want to pay, you should have said something sooner" or some similar BS. So then I wrote a message to the shill bidding department asking for advice of how I should proceed since, as far as I could tell, the anomolous bidding had disrupted the integrity of the auction. A few days later, I recieved an email from their loss prevention department stating hat the seller's account had been terminated and that I should not pay for the auction, as well as informing me of a few options for how I could get a refund if I had already paid. My only complaint about the process is that the form letter said I would be informed of the results of their investigation in 24-48 hours, but it was more like 72.
But anyway, there's are two strong motivations for ebay to enforce a strict anti-shilling policy: first, it's illegal in many places. Second, and more importantly, is that setting a reserve price is
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Re:Ebay - Where there is a sucker born every minut (Score:4, Insightful)
I'm bidding on something and I get outbid, let's say the seller himself outbid me. I decide to go somewhere else. The seller is now stuck with the item and he still has to pay eBay their cut. He took a risk; it's a game and he lost. Or the buyer might decide to bid again if he feels that it's still a good deal.
What does it matter who bid before you? It doesn't. You look at the highest bid and then you ask yourself whether you'll pay more than that or not. It doesn't matter if there are 0 or 100 bids on the auction and if all bids are by different people or they're all by the seller. Just look at the highest bid, ask yourself whether you will bid or not, it's so simple.
I don't even see what fraud has to do with a seller bidding on his own auctions and I would hate to try to explain it to the police:
Me: "I think I got ripped off!"
Police officer: "OK, what happened?"
Me: "Well, I bought a shirt for $20 on eBay!"
Police officer: "Ah, and you never received it?"
Me: "Yes, I did!"
Police officer: "Ah, and the shirt turned out to be a knockoff?"
Me: "Nono, it's real, I'm very happy with it!"
Police officer: "So what happened?"
Me: "Well, I saw the shirt, it said $19 and that's cheap, so I bid $20 and won!"
Police officer: "So you saw something you liked, thought it was cheap and bought it. Where's the problem?"
Me: "Well, I suspect that someone else had bid on it before me, possibly even the seller!"
Police officer: "And this is a problem because...?"
And I would have NO idea what to say to that.
I realize it's very hard to catch people doing this if they take their precautions, but I don't even see what they're doing wrong. If someone wants to spend all his time outbidding his customers on his own auctions, thereby making no money and then paying eBay a percentage of every single non-existent sale, then I think we should just let him. I simply don't see what this has to do with fraud.
Re:Ebay - Where there is a sucker born every minut (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:Ebay - Where there is a sucker born every minut (Score:4, Insightful)
I guess you should close down brick & morter storefronts if you see too many 5th graders inside using their parents money as well, right?
Your entire argument is nonsense.
First time I've seen the think-of-the-children argument used against ebay.
Reserve Not Yet Met (Score:5, Interesting)
Ok, so I've used eBay and I know there's a "Reserve Price" option for an auction. You set it when you start the auction and if the bids never crest that benchmark, you are under no obligation to provide product/service for amount tendered.
Now, that said, I will concede that a "Reserve Not Yet Met" sign on an auction will cause me to over look an auction. I feel less like I'm getting a deal if that phrase is staring me down. I will also mention that the more bids on an auction the more desirable it is to me (childish, I know, but hey I'm human).
Now, on the other hand, if I were an seller, I could think of a thousand ways to simulate bids. Configure a friend's computer on the other side of the country to forward my internet traffic, for one. And then the cat and mouse game between eBay and I would begin. And what would happen? eBay would have to spend a lot of time investigating this stuff. A lot of time and resources. Only to do what? Send me a nastygram asking me to use Reserve Prices next time? Place a black star next to my name to let bidders know I've been known to use shill bids? Social stigmas of some other sort?
In the end, who cares? eBay should keep it in their TOS & simply let people know that professional seller often practice this. You're not going to find the same deals on eBay that you'd find at some middle of nowhere country farm house liquidation auction where you have to show up in person and stomach 8 hours of farm tools and the worst BBQ lunch sandwiches you've ever tasted.
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The biggest thing against reserve prices is that it is an option you have to pay for (as a seller). The whole
Re:Reserve Not Yet Met (Score:5, Insightful)
Set your starting price at what you want to make. Instead of trying to lure in buyers with $1 auctions and a $100 reserve or shilling a $1 auction up to over $100, try just starting the auction at $100. Gee, there's a thought.
Re:Reserve Not Yet Met (Score:5, Interesting)
The psychology of eBay is pretty fascinating. I used to buy and sell on there quite a bit, and have a friend who started his own sell-it-on-eBay company, using just the tactics I described above. Sometimes you'll end up selling for less than you wanted, but more often than not you make a killing.
Re:Reserve Not Yet Met (Score:5, Insightful)
In a very real sense, eBay is encouraging shill bidders with their listing fees. They'd be gone overnight if listing fees were the same irrespective of the auction start value. After all, eBay is still getting their ending value fees.
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if you bid 100$ on something that means you are willing to pay up to 100$ for it. if the auction ends at less than 100$ you get it for that amount, exactly as the system is supposed to work. If you dont want to pay 100$ for the item, dont bid 100$.
Simple, easy, and totally within the spirit of an auction.
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In a real auction, I only bid when I am not winning. Once interest beyond mine drops, I get that price, even if it is $100 less than my max price.
But with eBay's proxy bidding, I put in my max price. Again for the above $100. Legitimate interest dropped off at $50. So my rightful price i
Re:Reserve Not Yet Met (Score:4, Informative)
If the rules were simpler and you simply entered a fixed bid, then what you say would apply. However, the rules say you'll only pay a small amount more than the next highest bid. Pumping that up via fake bidding breaks the system.
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duh? (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:duh? (Score:5, Insightful)
That's not to say it would be wrong to implement a straight bidding system where an offer of $100 is an offer of $100. But that's not the system that's being used, so shilling is fraud and tantamount to theft of the difference between the price due to legitimate bid competition and the shilled-up selling price.
Re:Reserve Not Yet Met (Score:5, Insightful)
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BTW - to those of you who pointed out that whole "Why pay $100 for something worth $50?" Again you missed the point, that was an example, an e
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Why does anyone bid on anything? Hell, why have auctions in the first place? Why don't we simply have everyone write down what they want to pay, turn it in, and the highest number wins? That would save everyone time and angst, and all those fast-talking auctioneers can go get jobs reading the fine print at the end of commercials.
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Then, why in the world would you (a) bid $100 for it, and then (b) complain when you didn't get outbid?!?!?!
(a) Because it is worth $100?
(b) Because you are no longer participating in an auction. Instead of paying the lowest price that no one else is willing to pay, you are paying the highest price you are willing to pay. This is fraud.
You either missed my point, or intentionally snipped out the part where the OP was complaining it was only worth 50 bucks. His example stinks, and makes whatever point he's trying to make basically sound like whining.
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No DJH, YOU missed the point of my OP. What Pentagram said was dead on. In that example, I am more than willing to pay $100 for the item. But that is against legit competition. If that competition falls out at $50, then $50 is "fair auction value." If shills come in and jack that up to $75 or $100 with no intention of doing anything but driving up my final paying cost, then that is fraud.
Settle down there sparky, no need to shout. My only point was, either the item is worth 50 bucks to you, or up to 100 bucks to you. If it's not worth up to 100 bucks to you, don't bid up to 100 bucks.
My example is extreme, but it demonstrates the problem with shill bidding.
No, it demonstrates the problem with someone bidding more than they want to pay for an item. I wasn't addressing shills at all, I was specifically addressing complaining about bidding (x) for an item and then paying (x) for it, for whatever reason.
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My question is, how does the buyer KNOW that the person who ran up the price was the seller and not another buyer? If the shill bidder used the actual login name of the seller then the bidder was under no obligation to pay. If it was a different login name then this person may just be complaining about the legitimate auction process.
OK sorry but, at this point, you've pretty much shown here that you're not familiar with what you're talking about. You _can't_ bid on your own auctions on eBay, period. If joe1234 is listing the item, joe1234 can't bid on it. I've tested that, it's an obvious thing for them to check for at bid time, and they do. And, just because personA buys from personB a lot, doesn't mean they're the same person. I've got a few sellers who I've bought from literally dozens of times. I bid on most of their aucti
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Then, why in the world would you (a) bid $100 for it, and then (b) complain when you didn't get outbid?!?!?!
Because he was defrauded out of $45. What part of fraud do you not understand?
(heavy sigh) What is this, National Intentionally Missing The Farking Point Day? I _said_ I'm not defending shill bidders. I've even described in another sub-discussion on this thread a bidding pattern that I personally have with a seller, which someone who is into making assumptions might think was me being his shill. It's perfectly legitimate. Does shilling happen? Of course. Is it bad? Obviously. Do I support or condone it? Of course not. My entire point was, if dude only wanted to pay 50 buc
Ebay's Shill Bidding is even WORSE than that (Score:4, Interesting)
I reported them to Ebay, back when the names showed, along with various evidence that the accounts were tied together. (The previous-name of one of them was real-name type username with the same last name as the real-name type username the other one was using... from the same city.)
I did not get my money back - although it was only $1, and it was still a reasonable deal on the item. And I wasn't willing to refuse to pay because I didn't want to screw up MY feedback, and I didn't have enough transactions to make it unimportant.
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It's plain and simple fraud. And "Reserve Prices" don't have anything to do with it. There is nothing dishonest or fraudulent about selling something with a Reserve Price, because the buyer is notified of it. Shill bidding is not an honest practice in the slightest.
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You are not alone - count me in.
To me, eBay was always a gambling site. There is NO other point in auctioning.
I personally look only at "Buy It Now" marked wares. Rest? Not for me. If I wanted to gamble, I'd rather went to arcade/game center/whatever.
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I honestly don't see the problem here, on eBay, you should bid what you are willing to pay, and no more. I think the people who get "burned" are bidding higher than they should.
Re:Reserve Not Yet Met (Score:5, Insightful)
There are many reasons why it's desirable to list a low-starting bid, no-reserve auction. These are attractive to bidders because they have the potential to be a really good deal. If you want this sort of attraction to your auction, then you have to accept the risk that you'll give away a few good deals if there's not the market you were hoping for. Cheating to eliminate that risk is fraud, plain and simple. Even if no one pays more than they were WILLING to pay, they pay more than they SHOULD have paid, according to the rules of the market.
How to spot shill bidding in EBay! (Score:5, Funny)
Re:Bidding war (Score:2)
Sometimes I spot a nice item I don't have a need for and sometimes toss in a token bid. That's how I got my punch bowl set with 12 glasses and a silver ladle
Circumvention (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Circumvention (Score:5, Informative)
I had this happening to me once. I'd put in a bid and then somebody would raise it and raise it again until just topping my bid, then withdraw the highest bid. Complained to EBay but they did nothing. In the end, I waited a while after the shill's last bid, then put in a bid of my own. The shill really quickly raised it again a few times then withdrew his last bid that topped mine. At which point, I withdrew my last bid and left the shill in the winning position with a few seconds to go and a bid that was too old to withdraw. So he ended up paying EBay for the privilege of selling the item to himself
Re:Circumvention (Score:4, Informative)
So, they just pretend they made a typographical error and the possible suspension is irrelevant, because it's a shill account anyway. It happens all the time.
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Without seeing the identity of the bidder, you have no chance.
The good days of eBay are long gone -- eBay is filled with crap from "sell it now!" type rip-off stores, "wholesale" sellers that aren't really selling wholesale, defective merchandise, and scams... all topped off with horr
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Especially where the seller is creating a lot of bids and item sales.
Re:Circumvention (Score:4, Informative)
Set yourself a maximum you are willing to spend.
Write it down.
Never exceed it in a bidding war.
Shill bidding simply means to me getting it in my price range when they withdraw, or it goes to someone else. If I suspect shill bidding and the last bid is withdrawn frequently on a paticular seller, then I expect the withdraw and withdraw myself, then send the seller a note of my reasons.. Suspected shill competition. Then I no longer bid on that merchant's products.
They still have auctions on ebay? (Score:2)
Fraud on eBay?! (Score:4, Funny)
eBay welcomes the shill. (Score:4, Insightful)
Dense lot (Score:2)
It is also pretty common for sellers to pose as different entities - if you follow enough links for similar sales, you'll pretty quickly find that they al lead back to the same store.
Stating The Obvious (Score:2)
At the last office I was contracting in the whole lot of them would bid on each others auctions to push the price up, they were even having a competition amongst themselves to see who could push the price the most above the actual price of the item and still have someone buy it.
I've only ever sold one item on E-Bay and it's a very tempting course of action, the only reason I didn't bid myself is because the price
Yep... seen it a couple of times. (Score:5, Informative)
Re:Yep... seen it a couple of times. (Score:4, Insightful)
It's fun to write back and say "No Thanks, I found another one at at better price. Care to match the offer at $xx.00?
What stinks the most (Score:2)
if now sellers do shill bidding eBay should simply remove the auctioning possibility and just call themselves eFleamarket or something.
But they're much too happy selling at a high price with shill bidding or even higher when the item is rare.
meh...
The only good thing about eBay is the possibility of finding rare/no-longer in production items. That's probably i still g
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Assuming that you attach meaning to your words, what you've described is impossible.
And that's the reason why Ebay can justify their inaction against shill-bidding: bidders on Ebay never pay more than they consent to. Shills merely exist to prevent bidders from getting a better price.
You know that the bidders are all hoping to rope that rare item in for $1. While I find the concept of shills to be offensive, a
Shill bidding backfires half the time anyway.... (Score:5, Insightful)
Now, you have to make a decision. Will you pay a "fair price" for this radio, or will you duck out, saying "Oh well, I don't want one THAT bad. I was just hoping the seller was going to lose his/her ass on the sale." ? It's still completely up to you. And if you bail out, the seller has a real good chance of not getting a buyer at all, causing him/her to pay the listing and re-listing fees for nothing.
Re:Shill bidding backfires half the time anyway... (Score:5, Insightful)
The problem with shill bids is that there's no similar recourse for the buyer. If the buyer's bid is a contract, then why shouldn't the seller's offer to agree to the honest outcome of the auction also be a contract?
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No admittedly getting a refund is going to be hard work if they dont want to give it - but saying you wish to
Voting with your dollar (Score:4, Insightful)
-If an auction costs more then you want to pay, DON'T BID.
-If a seller looks like they are cheating, DON'T BID.
And ultimately if you feel you have been cheated don't pay, sure you might get a negative feedback but why put up with unfair pricing. If you don't pay people will STOP doing it because they won't sell.
now wait a sec... (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:now wait a sec... (Score:4, Interesting)
You end up winning the auction for exactly $50. Is it because the other guy only wanted to spend $49.50 and you happen to have outbid him? No, it's because the shill bidder put in increasingly higher bids until they outbid you, then canceled the bid saying "oops, I put in the wrong amount". Or they keep the bid, default on the payment, and the seller will use eBay's "Second Chance" bid to allow you to pay for it at your previous bid (which was the $49 or whatever).
If the seller wants to guarantee a minimum price, they should use the reserve price. Or better yet, use the STARTING BID. You're not fooling anyone listing an item at $1 and then setting a reserve for $30, just start it at $30. If it's worth $30, somebody will buy it. In my opinion you should be required the validate by address, credit card, bank account or other form before you are allowed to have an eBay account. That way fraudulent bidders can be held accountable.
Shilling is fraud because... (Score:3, Insightful)
Shilled auctions DEFRAUD the bidder of the difference between those prices. Period.
Oh and btw (not directed at parent poster...) shilling is NOT equivalent to setting a reserve price on an auction. Reserve prices are set before an auction starts and represent the lowest price the seller would be willing to sell for. Not
Malice or stupidity? (Score:2)
Hmm (Score:4, Interesting)
So I bid 10$ on an item that I am willing to pay 10$ for, Some one outbids me and the number goes to $11, I up the bid to $15 and am again outbid 1$ at a time. At this point I walk away. I then get a second chance offer to buy the item for the 17$ high bid. What makes me even more suspicious is when the same item is then relisted and the pattern repeats itself.
In all honesty, it's e-bay, It is not worth getting worked up over! You win some and you loose some. If you think the seller is a ripoff, add them to your favorite sellers list and put a note stating your opinion of them. Then make sure you do not buy from them again. It would be nice if E-Bay offered a way to tag sellers you do not want to do business with and let you ignore there listings.
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
I'm not sure I see the problem here... (Score:2)
1. No one bids more money. I end up paying Ebay to sell it to myself.
2. Someone bids the $6 I want and I sell it to them. Clearly they are still willing to pay $6 for it so I don't think I've 'harmed' them.
Basically, if I bid up my own auction I increase Ebay's profits, harm no one else, and potentially hurt myself. W
It isn't illegal - nor is the cure (Score:2)
The same goes for the cure against shill bidding - bid sniping - which if done with software is against ebay's terms and conditions.
Either way though - pick the amount that you are willing to pay fo the item and bid it. Don't bid more than that.
If everyone did that then the system would work perfectly, alas the problems start when you add humans to the equation.
Now if you'll excuse me I have a mobile phone to ship to a guy in nigeria
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
Shill bidding is illegal at least in UK. In fact, making any artificial distortion to an auction market is illegal. I can make two examples and most will agree while collusion between bidders/sellers *should* be classified as a crime. First example: in a fish market, the fish buyers form an illegal cartel. Only one of them bid for the whole lot of fish at the min price and divide the
yay ebay politics (Score:3, Informative)
its just ridiculous because they're already determined its a valid dispute.. the stupid bastards cancelled all his auctions and suspended the seller's account.. doesn't that give me the right to automatically start this damn dispute so I can get my money back? of course not.. I could of stopped payment on the Money Order, but I rather keep this fight with eBay going.. there's still quite a bit of work they need to do to stop all this fraud.. I've filed formal complaints with I3C and with the USPS for mail fraud..
I guess what is equally as ridiculous is the fact that someone would go through so much time listing auctions for a measley 30 bucks, and having the possibility of getting charged for mail fraud and being under investigation by the IC3..
Simple rules for eBay users: (Score:4, Insightful)
Another rule is never risk more than the amount of money you feel comfortable risking. Determinations for that level of risk vary from person to person, but don't decide how you feel about it until you have read that seller's feedback and looked at the other items this person has bought or sold. If you still get a good feeling about it, then great!
*ALWAYS* look at the forms of payment accepted. People get caught up into uncomfortable payment situations when they don't notice beforehand.
*ALWAYS* know what the shipping costs are. This is a great one to pay attention to. If you think a PS3 for $20 is a great deal, check the shipping cost. It might be well over $500 or something ridiculous like that. Shipping costs are rarely, if ever, refundable.
These may seem like common sense for everyone, but common sense goes out the window when a buyer "really wants something" bad enough. It's that "really want it" disorder that really gets people mixed up into things they shouldn't... this "really want it" disorder is the reason spammers are so successful. Most sane people know they shouldn't buy from people who hide their identities, but when they "really want it" common sense just fades away. It's really like religion and beliefs in gods... they really want it, so logic, reason and common sense just fade away where that issue is concerned.
Why does it matter? (Score:4, Insightful)
a) Look at the item. b) Ignore any minimum bids, reserves, "buy it now" prices, current bid, history, etc; look only at the item itself. c) Decide how much you are willing to pay for it, shipped; d) determine the shipping cost; e) bid your maximum less shipping; f) take no further action whatsoever. Do not change your bid in response to any other ongoing bidding. If you are willing to raise it later, you weren't being honest with yourself when you determined your maximum earlier.
It seems to me that this makes you completely immune to sniping, shill bidding, etc. The only issues that remain are: a) the possibility of frequently being disappointed by not winning the auction; b) the unfairness of being unable to distinguish in advance between honest sellers, with which you may have a chance of getting a bargain if there are few other interested bidders, and dishonest ones, where there are always other interested bidders (i.e. shills).
Shill != Fraud; Piracy != Theft (Score:3, Informative)
If you've actually been a "victim" of a shilled auction, maybe you should focus on becoming a more intelligent buyer, rather than accusing the seller for being creative enough to draw you into a legally binding sale. Nothing illegal has happened here. You lost no more money on the item than you were willing to pay for it. The only thing that did happen is that greed/hoarding instincts or need for instant gratification overruled your judgement for that fraction of a second where you clicked the "submit bid" button before looking for any other sellers offering the same item.
A sucker truly is born every minute... and no place shows it more than eBay.
Any merit behind what people are posting? (Score:4, Informative)
Why? Because I have seen/spoke with people that took part in shill bidding. This will include people that just did it every few auctions and were Gold Powersellers, with well over 1000 positive feedback. Guess what happened to them? Two different things - automatic account termination and/or warnings. I've seen a huge seller (makes $$ for eBay you know) have their account closed, no questions asked. This (AFAIK) was not as a result of a complaint either. We're not talking these retards that bid up the auction and then cancel once they see what the first place bidder's amount was.
Anyway, I would say eBay does a good deal to try and stop this practice. So I'd ask that some people not post unless they know what they're talking about. It seems like a lot of people are talking out of their asses. It can be difficult to catch everything on a site that busy. Why don't you just go solve the problem for them instead of posting useless bullshit here.
Here's why shilling hurts you (Score:5, Informative)
Imagine your wife's grandma's heirloom china set is worth $400 on the market, but priceless to her. You have recently dropped one plate, and it's irreplaceable. The plate is worth $80 on the market. 6 months later, you see the plate on Ebay, drawing insipid bidding, reflecting relatively low demand, stuck at $40. Your web design business has been doing well, and you can afford $200 to get back in grace with your wife. You therefore bid $200, raising the current bid to $42. On the final day, you see a series of bids in , all by the same person, raising the price to $160. This is the point at which the shiller did not dare to raise the bid for fear of outbidding you.
Effectively, he got free information about how much you are willing to bid. Information is money. It's like when you're bargaining on a used care--you start with your offer. You don't tell the salesman how much money you brought, and then start bargaining.
In the example above, you pay less than the item is worth TO YOU, but more than market, because the shiller was able to tease that info out of you.
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
I was going to ask you if you realized, that you can bid $1,000,000, but it doesn't mean you're going to pay that much, but clearly you understand this, since you're responding to the parent (who bid a hypothetical $200 and pa
Stop being a bunch of whiny children (Score:3, Insightful)
Been going on since forever (Score:3, Interesting)
Of course, the scam only works because of the eavesdropper's greed -- they get so carried away by the thrill of listening in on a private phone call and discovering a little secret that they weren't supposed to know about, that they totally forget that it might not even be for real. You can't con an honest person.
Just remember, fools and their money are soon parted. Treat eBay just the same as any other form of gambling, and never spend more than you would be prepared to lose. If the bidding goes above what you wish to pay, walk away. If the seller does win their own item back, they will still have to pay the listing fees, plus PayPal's cut, which can provide some measure of disincentive against shill bidding
Re: (Score:2)
But as the number of scams on ebay rises and ebay does nothing to solve the problem, how will they hold onto their customer base? And with no customers, ebay has no business.
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
Entering a bid minutes before the auction ends *is* sniping.
Re:Who cares, it only affects morons anyway (Score:5, Informative)
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
The problem is that once an item is received, most people rate it instantly and then don't have any obvious way to revise their rating. They have no way to alert other buyers that the seller is suspect. And if they d