Shill Bidding, is it wrong?

sequence

Normally I don't care about shill bidders, I bid what I think it's worth if I don't win. But this seller has annoyed me because he has set his (extremely obvious) shill bid sooo far above the market value.. The item is worth about £10 at most and this shill bid is at £40. Somebody is clearly playing games already as no-one in their right mind would pay this price. Anyway my hypothetical question is would it be wrong to use my two buying and selling account to bid against each other to a really silly amount just to annoy the seller ? (I would never do this)

By the way this Shill has 100% activity with this seller and has bid on 20 items from this seller ranging from womens underwear to mens clothing to electric items and a car :rotfl:Suppose he could have just bought a new house and wants all new stuff including car and clothing!

As I said I don't normally care about shills but this one has really annoyed me for some reason :rolleyes:

aqueoushumour01

do us all a favour and report them

GoofyGAT

It's always annoying, but I stopped caring as I only bid up to the amount I can afford, or think something is worth. Fortunately, those two things are under my control - the rest that goes on isn't.

However, as aqueoushumour01 recommends, you can & should report Shill bidding if you think it's happening. I've reported it on 3 occasions (in 7 years mind). Couple turned out to be truly happening, as certain things took place on the sellers' accounts 1-2 days later that could indicate this. A screenshot (all privacy maintained) of one of the recent items I reported that seemed to do the trick:



Notice the Zero-feedback buyer with 54 100% bids with the same seller! I later found out the bidder's username too, & s/he was 8-9 months old. In my report comments I added: 'Would be interesting to view the entire bid history of this particular member' , G

sequence

Reported it last night, mow the seller has gone and all his items:T Quick from Ebay!

soolin

Good grief that is quick!

frivolous_fay

sequence wrote: »

Anyway my hypothetical question is would it be wrong to use my two buying and selling account to bid against each other to a really silly amount just to annoy the seller ? (I would never do this)

Yeah it would be wrong - it's called auction wrecking.
It would also be stupid

mightymole

thank god ebay were quick in dealing with this

in my opinion shill bidding it is wrong and runs it for the honest ordinary ebay buyers and sellers