Shilling - What do I do?

Altarf

Moglex wrote:

If people would just grow up, stop whining and learn to take responsibility for their own decisions.

Moglex wrote:

Probably because you don't understand it.

Moglex wrote:

People are whining that they've been made (:rolleyes:) to believe that something is worth more than it is by the action of the shiller. The whole point of brand advertising is to make the feeble minded pay more than something is worth by manipulating their sense of value.

Such delightful people on this board.

scheming_gypsy

can't see anything wrong with shill bidding myself. Just means you don't have to pay Ebay for you putting a reserve price on it. Stick something on at 1p, get your mates to bid it up to your 'reserve' price and then let the real auction commence.

MissBehaving

My other half an I have made some purchases for our DIY on Ebay of late. We only place a bid after doing research into what the item would cost on any other website and any other retail shop.
We then enter our maximum bid and do not budge from it. If we get it for less than that great :cheesy: if we don't then we just accept it and search for another item.

I don't agree with shilling and think that it is wrong. I wouldn't do it and I would probably be really peeved if it happened to me, but, at the end of the day, as long as I don't exceed my maximum bid, and feel that I have got myself a bargain... then I am happy!:o

davilown

MissBehaving wrote:

My other half an I have made some purchases for our DIY on Ebay of late. We only place a bid after doing research into what the item would cost on any other website and any other retail shop.
We then enter our maximum bid and do not budge from it. If we get it for less than that great :cheesy: if we don't then we just accept it and search for another item.

I don't agree with shilling and think that it is wrong. I wouldn't do it and I would probably be really peeved if it happened to me, but, at the end of the day, as long as I don't exceed my maximum bid, and feel that I have got myself a bargain... then I am happy!:o

Thankyou thats the part I think people are failing to understand. You know if you buy an item from homebase that it would have been cheaper in argos (same owning company I believe).

Shop around and look before you buy

:beer: monster

libertine_2

bestyman wrote:

Help , Help.
I have been robbed by a fraudulant ebayer who should be locked up .
I paid £61 for an item that was only worth £30.
This low life thief started the auction at 99p but had put a reserve of £60 on the item, because of this I had to bid £61 to win the item. What a scam the item was only worth £30.
I think all things on ebay should be free or at most 99p. Getting a bargain is a basic human right.
Bestyman

Interesting. You're completely off the point, of course, but all your post does is emphasise the expression:

CAVEAT EMPTOR

ie. buyer beware.

The law will NOT allow you to renege a contract just because you got a bad bargain. If it's worth £30 and you paid £60, tough, I'm afraid. And not only legally, but morally too. How is something valued? What if it is out of stock or hard to find? Or you think it will rise in value in the future?

But, in my opinion, and with all respect to Moglex, I don't think we can apply this reasoning to shill bidding. This is because this practice is fraudulent by artificially raising the price. The seller is shill bidding for possible number of reasons:

i) To avoid having a higher starting price, to reduce the listing fee

In which case, TOUGH! We all have to pay these fees, why should you try to obviate the fees?

ii) The seller has not got as much interest in the item as he / she had hoped for, with only one interested buyer, so has pitted another false bidder against the genuine one to raise the price.

And I think this is where the reasoning from caveat emptor may be applied. The law will not allow you to renege from a bad bargain. The seller has made a bad bargain by not starting the price at a high-enough price to reflect its value as he sees it. He should not be allowed to artificially raise it just because of his mistake.

Just my two cents, not a criticism of anybody who's posted in this thread, just what I think.

Moglex

libertine wrote:

Interesting. You're completely off the point

He hasn't missed the point, he's being satirical.

But, in my opinion, and with all respect to Moglex, I don't think we can apply this reasoning to shill bidding. This is because this practice is fraudulent by artificially raising the price. The seller is shill bidding for possible number of reasons:

i) To avoid having a higher starting price, to reduce the listing fee

In which case, TOUGH! We all have to pay these fees, why should you try to obviate the fees?

I'll just reitterate here that I have never said I agree with shilling.

It's against the rules and it deprives ebay of fees.

ii) The seller has not got as much interest in the item as he / she had hoped for, with only one interested buyer, so has pitted another false bidder against the genuine one to raise the price.

And I think this is where the reasoning from caveat emptor may be applied. The law will not allow you to renege from a bad bargain. The seller has made a bad bargain by not starting the price at a high-enough price to reflect its value as he sees it. He should not be allowed to artificially raise it just because of his mistake.

Your point would be good if the seller was not in a position to cancel the auction.

As it is, if he's worried that he may not get enough he has two choices.

1) Cancel the auction and relist.

2) Place a bid of such magnitude that he will not have to sell for less than he wants.

From ebay's POV, (2) is bad news because they will lose fees which is the reason they have a rule against it.

The reason that they don't always do anything is because they look at the seller's history and if they are making more from FVF's than they are losing from initial listing fees they'll turn a blind eye.

The only difference between the two approaches from the buyer's POV is that in (1) they may lose an item on which they have made a bid with which they are perfectly happy if they don't notice the cancelation and relisting and they may believe that someone else wants the item when they really don't.

Other than that they are merely influencing someone who bases their idea of an item's worth on something other than its utility to themselves. This is something the likes of Nike and Coca Cola do all the time.

mishkanorman

The OP came on here to get peoples opinions ( for what some are worth :rolleyes: ) on what to do NEXT. They have found themselves in this situation and with all the hindsight in the world raking over whose fault it is and making out that they are numpty's for letting it happen to them isn't actually helping.

MSE isnt meant as a forum for who can throw up the most legal quotes, out do one another with 'wit' and impart useless pieces of wisdom. Its for advice, support and knowledge ( the fact based kind not the trying to out-do others kind )

Oh, and Moglex, Im sure it was meant to insult me, but dont call me sweetheart you patronise and degrade no one but yourself :rotfl:




mishka

Moglex

mishkanorman wrote:

The OP came on here to get peoples opinions ( for what some are worth :rolleyes: ) on what to do NEXT. They have found themselves in this situation and with all the hindsight in the world raking over whose fault it is and making out that they are numpty's for letting it happen to them isn't actually helping.

MSE isnt meant as a forum for who can throw up the most legal quotes, out do one another with 'wit' and impart useless pieces of wisdom. Its for advice, support and knowledge ( the fact based kind not the trying to out-do others kind )

That little diatribe is actually typical of someone who doesn't like the message so tries to suppress it by claiming it's the wrong place. I notice you only come to this conclusion after you've had your say

If you really thought that, perhaps it would have been better not to have prolonged the discussion?

After all, the OP had actually already got a result when you intervened.

Oh, and Moglex, Im sure it was meant to insult me, but dont call me sweetheart you patronise and degrade no one but yourself

Whatever you say, honeybuns.

(Actually, I fail to see how calling someone sweetheart can insult them. For as long as I can remember women I don't know from Adam, er, Eve, have refered to me as "love", "sweetheart", "darlin'", "lover", etc, and it's never even entered my head that they are trying to be insulting.

I sometimes tag it on the end when I reply to someone, male or female, when they seem a little tetchy, although they are rarely so uptight as to make an issue of it :cool: )

bleugh

why has no-one posted what the item was, not the auction link though

just re-word and juggle the title round

i'd love to see what the actual thing is that is causing all these problems

Moglex

bleugh wrote:

why has no-one posted what the item was, not the auction link though

just re-word and juggle the title round

i'd love to see what the actual thing is that is causing all these problems

It was a dress.

See post #7.