Seller Bidding On Own Items

essexhoney

Last night my OH listed an item similar to what he had seen going on ebay for a good price. It wasnt until after he had listed it he showed me the other similar listing i looked at the bid history and noticed the same name appearing many times, which did seem a bit odd so looked into there feedback n opened their last 10 sold items and viewed the bidding history all items were completly different and again the same name came up on the bidding history everytime even though they had never won an item.

It appears to me that they are using another account to bid on their own items to bump up the price it sells for

Would this affect my partners listing in anyway, and are there rules on ebay to stop people from doing this?

Any help would be much appreciated

LULUBELLE_2

Yes, if true, it's against ebay rules and is known as 'shill' bidding. There is a 'shill detector' HERE, where you put the item number in and it tells you any other items that have a common bid ID, but it seems to be offline at the moment. Do you want to post the item number and we'll have a look?

If you're right, you can report it to Ebay.

essexhoney

not sure how to find the item number havent been using ebay for that long lol
but the link to it is http://cgi.ebay.co.uk/MUST-SEE-16-ALBUMS-FROM-THE-FATHER-OF-TRANCE-DJ-TIESTO_W0QQitemZ4859893050QQcategoryZ43613QQrdZ1QQcmdZViewItem
it appears that their own account has the highest bid at the moment

cookiemonster25

looks a bit fishy to me

essexhoney

thats what i thought but wasnt sure what to do about it, i actually emailed the seller through my account and asked for more information about the cds and it turns out they are copies as well which i didnt think was allowed neither

LULUBELLE_2

Hmmm, I assume that we're looking at 'pinko_winko' - in which case that ID has bid on things being sold by other sellers, so not sure about it.

http://cgi6.ebay.co.uk/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?ViewBidItems&userid=pinko_winko&completed=1&all=1&rows=25&sort=3

essexhoney

im even more confused now lol
by looking at pinko_winko's feedback they havent bought an item since july 05 and only bought 3 things all from the same person who is no longer a registered user.
and all the items they have bidded on they have never won and there as only been 1 bid throughout the auctions yet with rachy_19's items there has been numerous bids throughout the whole auction.
also all the others apart from rachy_19's auctions have been for the same thing just a different seller.
where as it doesnt seem to matter what rachy_19 is selling they are bidding on it.

ok im just confusing myself now lol am i making something out of nothing?