Shill bidding?

Keldin

I am looking at an item that has gone from the start price of £50 to £99 with only one bidder.
Now I always thought that if someone bid with a high limit and a second person came and placed a bid that was lower than the first person's maximum the second bidders name would still show up. All I see when I look at the bid history is one bidders name 9 times. The bidder is also new (account opened 2 days after the item was put on eBay). Is this person trying to push up their item? I would like to bid but don't want to pay more to a dishonest seller.
Sorry but I don't know how to link to the item.

Thanks
Keldin

robnye

Keldin wrote:

I am looking at an item that has gone from the start price of £50 to £99 with only one bidder.
Now I always thought that if someone bid with a high limit and a second person came and placed a bid that was lower than the first person's maximum the second bidders name would still show up. All I see when I look at the bid history is one bidders name 9 times. The bidder is also new (account opened 2 days after the item was put on eBay). Is this person trying to push up their item? I would like to bid but don't want to pay more to a dishonest seller.
Sorry but I don't know how to link to the item.

Thanks
Keldin

i suspect they have tried to increase their max bid, but have in each case bid..... the only way they can remove these bids is either by withdrawing the bid, which is viewable on their feedback page, but i am sure there is a limit as to how many times it can be done, the other way is to contact the seller and ask then to remove the bids..... at the sellers discretion

but the newbie bidder has been a bit silly.......

Keldin

There is a reserve on the item but I did not know you could repeatedly bid to push the price up to the reserve. When I've bid an amount that was below a reserver before it put in th elowest amount and didn't go up to my maximum even though that was below the reserve.
I just found it supspicious since the user was brand new and the seller has only a feedback of 2. Perhaps I am missing some legitimate reason
If I've done this right the link shoudl be below
http://cgi.ebay.co.uk/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?ViewItem&category=20840&item=7129427458&rd=1

Keldin

robnye

sorry i cant see ebay website , due to work blockingall non business websites..... they dont stop this one though....


I thought that if you entered a max bid on an item with a reserve price, even if your max bid was lower than the reserve price, the bid placed is the original bid you entered.

ie you bid £2, with a max of £4, but the reserve is £5, your bid of £2 is the highest bid, I then come along and bid £3 with a max of £3.75,

the highest bid becomes your £4 bid, my first bid is entered as £3.75

yet still the reserve price isnt met.....

soolin

AFAIK as soon as you hit the reserve figure all the previous bids show up in their entirety. So in this case the bidder was bidding small increments to see where the reserve was.

This is unlikely to be shill bidding as until the reserve was met it made no difference.

Soo

angelcake

I agree with soo!! I have made lots of small bids before to find the reserve! also if other people have bid I creep the bid up bit by bit!! doesn't sound like a shill.

How can you see if bids have been taken off?? I wanted to know on a particular item but I didn't think you could???

Party_Animal

Sorry but what's "shill"?

soolin

angelcake wrote:

I agree with soo!! I have made lots of small bids before to find the reserve! also if other people have bid I creep the bid up bit by bit!! doesn't sound like a shill.

How can you see if bids have been taken off?? I wanted to know on a particular item but I didn't think you could???

I think the number of retracted bids shows on the bidding page, just the number though, not the full details.

Soo

soolin

Party_Animal wrote:

Sorry but what's "shill"?

Shill bidding is when a seller uses another account, or gets a connected person to bid on the auction to artificially inflate the price. For instance, I have 2 ids on ebay, if I used one id to bid on an auction set up by id 2 that would be a shill bid.

It is totally against ebay terms and conditions and ebay are very hot on shutting auctions down where they think this has occured.

Soo

Party_Animal

Many thanks Soolin. I use EBay a lot but I'm not familiar with some of the sharp tactics. Thanks again.