How do l identify shill bidding

paulofessex

I was the only bidder for an item for approx a week, the current bid was £9.99 my max price was £25 No further bids had been placed all week until within the last few minutes of the auction ending. The only bidder is a new bidder, has only bid on that one item 4 times stopping at £24.00 I cannot see when this bidder joined The member name appears to be private i.e J**Y(0)

I'm happy with the price l won the item for, so not moaning about that it's just the principal if l have been subject to shill bidding

Does the following info give any indication


30-Day SummaryTotal bids:4Items bid on:1Bid activity (%) with this seller:100% Bid retractions:0Bid retractions (6 months):0

Fishingtime

You often get people bidding at the last moment.
I sold an item last week and it stood at £12 for a week and then in the last hour went up to £33
Of course it could be a friend of the seller but they would not know how much you bid,

hermum

paulofessex wrote: »

I was the only bidder for an item for approx a week, the current bid was £9.99 my max price was £25 No further bids had been placed all week until within the last few minutes of the auction ending. The only bidder is a new bidder, has only bid on that one item 4 times stopping at £24.00 I cannot see when this bidder joined The member name appears to be private i.e J**Y(0)

I'm happy with the price l won the item for, so not moaning about that it's just the principal if l have been subject to shill bidding

Does the following info give any indication


30-Day SummaryTotal bids:4Items bid on:1Bid activity (%) with this seller:100% Bid retractions:0Bid retractions (6 months):0

All that tells you is that this bidder has bid on just 1 item & made 4 bids on it.
It could be someone shill bidding.
It could be someone trying to find out how much your top bid was with nibble bids.
It could be someone who had £24 & whatever the p&p was & no more.
With them only having bid on that one item, there is no way of telling as far as I know.
Ebay now partly block out all id's so that nobody can see who's bid.

Old_Git

I use sniper to stop this sort off bidding .I bid in the last 5 seconds ,If I win then I win if not so be it .

freddysmith

Sometimes you can tell if they retract a bid so they are no longer winning the auction.
eg nibble up then retract one

andygb

hermum wrote: »

All that tells you is that this bidder has bid on just 1 item & made 4 bids on it.
It could be someone shill bidding.
It could be someone trying to find out how much your top bid was with nibble bids.
It could be someone who had £24 & whatever the p&p was & no more.
With them only having bid on that one item, there is no way of telling as far as I know.
Ebay now partly block out all id's so that nobody can see who's bid.

If I am bidding on an item which i would really like, but have a definite maximum price in mind, then I will often go up to within a couple of pounds of my maximum ASAP. I imagine that this can be a bit annoying for other bidders, particularly if the price has suddenly climbed from a few quid to let us say over twenty quid. The truth is, that I haven't the time to sit in front of the PC watching other bidders like a hawk.

hermum

andygb wrote: »

If I am bidding on an item which i would really like, but have a definite maximum price in mind, then I will often go up to within a couple of pounds of my maximum ASAP. I imagine that this can be a bit annoying for other bidders, particularly if the price has suddenly climbed from a few quid to let us say over twenty quid. The truth is, that I haven't the time to sit in front of the PC watching other bidders like a hawk.

I put a snipe bid on anything that I would like & then forget about it until I get the message to say I've either lost or won.

wileycat

Sniping just helps you make sure you don't pay more than you want to.

I sometimes bid with little bids to see how far it goes up, using xx.99p bids and small increments, I just want to know what price is the current level. If I end up winning its never more than I wanted at the end of the day.

Crowqueen

Without other evidence bidding patterns are circumstantial. If this is the only item the person has bid on in 30 days it's going to be 100%.

Most of the time people on the internet want more, not less privacy; however, looking through the seller's feedback might throw up some interesting correspondences, but without more of this you can't show shilling for definite. At the same time eBay took away bidders' names on bid histories they put in spreadsheets showing

I'm not trying to defend it, but be careful of accusations based on only one aspect of the process; it's a crime so you better have strong evidence before you complain or throw accusations. eBay seem to be very random about how they act on shilling - some cases they follow up, some they don't - but they did used to provide a page on shilling that said they don't simply ban over bidding patterns because there could be a reason behind it. What you would need to prove are things like (a) that the two accounts are linked in some way - e.g. one case where there was a ban imposed was where the seller's account had the photo of the same person on their MyWorld profile as the buyer's account, and (b) that the interacting accounts are selling similar things in a similar way.

0 bid retractions also is a good sign as normally shillers have in the past retracted bids. eBay supposedly monitor people with a large number of retractions but they may rely on people reporting for invalid retractions, which obviously a shilling seller won't do. Also look at the amounts they bid as their maximums. Someone who bids e.g. 4.99 might be shilling, since most people bid round numbers or just over. Someone who has put in 5.00 or 5.02 is probably genuine as the extra pennies would be there to break ties and go just over their competition - not fly under their round number bid.

There are some howlers that come to the official forums . One regular was also accused to her face of doing it, posting on accounts that were interacting. There's one poster with a brilliant Me page on how to deal with shilling. Unfortunately eBay are spotty with enforcing the rules but to their credit I've seen occasions where they have acted on overwhelming evidence - I guess it's dependent on who you ask though as a lot of people have other experiences. It's certainly a lottery as to what they do, so don't jump the gun and report without good evidence - you may be scrutinised as to the number of reports you make to protect against malicious reporting.

Haffiana

I have wondered if the reason that eBay don't appear to act on the few cases of absolutely-no-question-about-it shilling that I have reported in the last couple of years is because they are swamped with reports from people who think that a/ many bid increments, b/ simply being out-bid, and c/ second chance offers are all firm evidence. Etc. Now going back in time, before two years ago, shillers would be unregistered within a couple of days of reporting.

soolin

Haffiana wrote: »

I have wondered if the reason that eBay don't appear to act on the few cases of absolutely-no-question-about-it shilling that I have reported in the last couple of years is because they are swamped with reports from people who think that a/ many bid increments, b/ simply being out-bid, and c/ second chance offers are all firm evidence. Etc. Now going back in time, before two years ago, shillers would be unregistered within a couple of days of reporting.

Nothing much similar with this situation, but I thought it worth mentioning my own experience.

About 9 weeks or so I posted on here to say that I had been accused of shill bidding with a rather vicicious email from the under bidder. I listed something on my private account on a free listing day, she bid within 2 hours of the listing going up, and was out bid in the final hour. basically she said that was so obviously a shill that she was reporting me to ebay and hoped i would get suspended.

Obviously i heard nothing else but it was worrying, all because she seemed to think it unusual for an item to be listed for 10 days and only get a final bid in the last hour