Shill bidding

trukdiver

AMILLIONDOLLARS wrote: »

I bid on a item last week, and kept being outbid, so I put in my final and last bid at the price I was willing to pay for it which which was just under £60 + £10 postage, yet again I was outbid and infact I lost the item by £1. Fair enough! The following day I got a second chance offer to purchase the item at my final bid price. As I strongly suspected that I was a victim of shilling and decided not to take up the offer. This week the very same item was relisted and won at £36 + £10, should have put a bid in:D

AMD

I made a mistake when entering a value in the sniper and accidently bid way too much for an item. I ended up winning the auction but the next highest bid was £79.99. I wondered who entered a value like that? Most people bid "round numbers" or a few pence over.

I explained I'd made an error bidding but the seller wasn't very understanding. The following day, they suddenly agreed to cancel. I had a look and saw that the third highest bidder had bought it. This made me suspect the £79.99 was a shill bid but I couldn't be sure. Maybe the £79.99 bidder though I was shilling!

Pembroke

Not shill bidding as far as I can see. The stats show that the buyer named m***o( 1 ) had bid once each on 3 items sold by the same seller. However there are no bid retractions. If it was shill bidding you'd expect to see 3 bids, on 3 separate items and 3 bid retractions.

As a for instance if I bid on an item that I'm only willing to pay £50 for but another buyer has already put in a max bid of £100 am I a shill bidder because I make one bid at £50 get outbid then don't bid again ?

trukdiver

Pembroke wrote: »

Not shill bidding as far as I can see. The stats show that the buyer named m***o( 1 ) had bid once each on 3 items sold by the same seller. However there are no bid retractions. If it was shill bidding you'd expect to see 3 bids, on 3 separate items and 3 bid retractions.

As a for instance if I bid on an item that I'm only willing to pay £50 for but another buyer has already put in a max bid of £100 am I a shill bidder because I make one bid at £50 get outbid then don't bid again ?

Why would you expect to see bid retractions?

Pembroke

trukdiver wrote: »

Why would you expect to see bid retractions?

I would expect a good shill bidder to bid on the item, which would lead the other bidders on, then at the last minute they would withdraw their highest bid leaving the next lowest bidder with the item.

Say for instance in my example I was the shill bidder. If I bid £50 and didn't win I would then go on bidding until I outbid the £100 bidder, they might then out bid me and I would outbid them until the last minute. I would then withdraw and leave them paying over the odds for the item.

JPS29

I'd be very careful over putting actual names on an internet forum. Ebay Ids are there to keep peopel anonymous. Might be better to obscure/remove the names?

wacko911

To avoid this type of bidding activity, just put your highest bid in at the very end of the auction. If you are not about when the action is due to end, use some bid snipping program running on your computer.

trukdiver

Pembroke wrote: »

I would expect a good shill bidder to bid on the item, which would lead the other bidders on, then at the last minute they would withdraw their highest bid leaving the next lowest bidder with the item.

Say for instance in my example I was the shill bidder. If I bid £50 and didn't win I would then go on bidding until I outbid the £100 bidder, they might then out bid me and I would outbid them until the last minute. I would then withdraw and leave them paying over the odds for the item.

If you have a number of bids below the winning bid and withdraw your highest bid, isn't that going to be a bit obvious?

Pembroke

trukdiver wrote: »

If you have a number of bids below the winning bid and withdraw your highest bid, isn't that going to be a bit obvious?

Well wouldn't a normal bidder have a sequence of bids and that's the behaviour a Shiller would be trying to emulate.

A bad shiller might just put in a one off high bid of say £1000 on a £10 item then withdraw at the last minute.

I have to add here that I've never tried Shill bidding, never will either as I start all my items at the price I want for the item (I'm a business seller so can't benefit from starting items at 99p). So I'm not speaking from any sort of experience in the subject, just thinking about how I would go about it.

soolin

Pembroke wrote: »

Well wouldn't a normal bidder have a sequence of bids and that's the behaviour a Shiller would be trying to emulate.

A bad shiller might just put in a one off high bid of say £1000 on a £10 item then withdraw at the last minute.

I have to add here that I've never tried Shill bidding, never will either as I start all my items at the price I want for the item (I'm a business seller so can't benefit from starting items at 99p). So I'm not speaking from any sort of experience in the subject, just thinking about how I would go about it.

If a shill bidder withdraws their bid then the retraction of a single bid can be seen and the end price reverts to the highest unique bid that the real winner placed.

Usually a shill bidder leaves their bid in place and just hopes they gauge the end price well enough to ensure they are outbid. Although it is great to see the daft ones that continually keep winning their own items!

Adams1

Pembroke wrote: »

Not shill bidding as far as I can see. The stats show that the buyer named m***o( 1 ) had bid once each on 3 items sold by the same seller. However there are no bid retractions. If it was shill bidding you'd expect to see 3 bids, on 3 separate items and 3 bid retractions.

As a for instance if I bid on an item that I'm only willing to pay £50 for but another buyer has already put in a max bid of £100 am I a shill bidder because I make one bid at £50 get outbid then don't bid again ?

Another thing is, in order to leave feedback (correct me if I'm wrong) you need to pay yourself for the item and pay listing/final value fees, or not, and still end up paying those fees.

So shill bidding without a retraction is stupid, from this alone, I could only imagine that they where genuine.