Shill bidding or just being paranoid?

emerald_starcat

Hi

I recently bid on 10 small bundles of baby clothes. I ended up being outbid on all of them and didn't win any.
Today I log in to ebay and see I have second chance offers on 8 of the items I bid on. I think the other two I was outbid by 2 other bidders so only received second chance offers on 8 of them.

Do you think the bidder had a friend or another account to push the auction up higher? All the auctions started at 99p and there was about 6 items in each bundle of nearly new baby clothes.

I also noticed that the auctions were private so unable to see anything about the other bidders.

citykid5

sounds like shill bidding to me...ck

Buggles

Yes that definately sounds like shill bidding to me. If I were you, I would not take up the second chance offer! Serves them right.

Also, they should have asked you first if you'd be interested in the SCO and not just send them you, as I've done that before and the person wasn't interested as they bid on something else, so I lost out.

soolin

Buggles wrote: »

Yes that definately sounds like shill bidding to me. If I were you, I would not take up the second chance offer! Serves them right.

Also, they should have asked you first if you'd be interested in the SCO and not just send them you, as I've done that before and the person wasn't interested as they bid on something else, so I lost out.

It is actually against ebay rules to contact bidders to ask about SCOs. The correct procedure is to send the official SCO as has happened in this case.

I don't know why anyone would lose out by sending an SCO anyway? I use it a lot where i have more than one item, all the underbidders get SCOs and I can often clear a bunch of stock without paying to list them again. I think the fact that so many people misunderstand how SCOs work is why so many are not taken up.

emby

I sold an item last Thursday and literally 1 minute after the auction ended I received a message from the buyer saying they 'had bid in error', so we mutually agreed a cancellation and I offered a second chance to the next highest bidder. Not everyone is shill bidding in situations like this.

Buggles

I thought you could only offer on SCO? So if the next bidder didn't want it, you couldn't offer to the next one down?

soolin

Buggles wrote: »

I thought you could only offer on SCO? So if the next bidder didn't want it, you couldn't offer to the next one down?

Nope you can offer as many as you have items. So if you have lots of the same item you can offer to all underbidders. If you just have one item and original buyer pulls out then you can offer to any of the underbidders, but one at a time so you don't sell it more than once.

You can only do it officially though, you shouldn't contact the underbidders first as that could be construed as trying to dela otuside of ebay.

greeneye

http://shop.ebay.co.uk/ebayadvsearch/_W0QQ_sofindtypeZ3?_adv=1&tokenstring=unfIGwUAAAA%3D

You need to be logged into ebay with the username you bid with, then search on your own username (tick include completed listings) and you can see who won all auctions you have placed a bid on (i.e not just one's you've actually won). You can then search on the username of the auction winners to see what else they have been bidding on (but only auctions they have won).

kbh4031

greeneye wrote: »

http://shop.ebay.co.uk/ebayadvsearch/_W0QQ_sofindtypeZ3?_adv=1&tokenstring=unfIGwUAAAA%3D

You need to be logged into ebay with the username you bid with, then search on your own username (tick include completed listings) and you can see who won all auctions you have placed a bid on (i.e not just one's you've actually won). You can then search on the username of the auction winners to see what else they have been bidding on (but only auctions they have won).

Thanks didnt know about this....very useful

emerald_starcat

i just tried that but because they were private auctions they don't show. Suppose if you were doing shill bidding then you would set up a private auction to cover yourself.
I didn't accept those second chance offers - didn't realise they had ended when I went to accept them - maybe it wasn't meant to be!

ladylouise62

It's extremely annoying to think that they may be shill-bidding, but the key questions are - do you want it, is that a good price and are you likely to get as good again?..... there's no point cutting off your nose to spite your face. I suppose you could always say 'yes' but for a smaller price?