how truthful are ebay auctions....

Deals_2

does anyone find that people of the same family/company can be auctioning up the price?

soolin

It's called shill bidding and if you suspect it is happening report the auction to ebay as they do tend to take it seriously.

Soo

Deals_2

apparently happens in auction rooms too!

soolin wrote: »

It's called shill bidding and if you suspect it is happening report the auction to ebay as they do tend to take it seriously.

Soo

rsykes2000

It's called 'Shill bidding' and yes it does happen, unfortunately. Only seen it on a couple of items I was considering bidding on (or had bidded on), not sure if it's mpore prevalent in different categories.

Deals_2

might be interesting to see if this is definitely the case .

rsykes2000 wrote: »

It's called 'Shill bidding' and yes it does happen, unfortunately. Only seen it on a couple of items I was considering bidding on (or had bidded on), not sure if it's mpore prevalent in different categories.

Moglex

You might note that if you follow the recommended procedure for bidding, i.e. to decide who much you are prepared to pay for an item and bit that at the last possible moment, you will not be affected by shilling.

Or at least, no more so than if the seller had put a reserve price on the auction. The only people to lose out would be ebay themselves.

It's only people who like to pretend that an ebay auction is a proper auction that can come unstuck by shill bidders.

kriss_boy

Shill bidding is just like bidding agasint a reserve... so long as you bid sensibily... and dont have any cheaper alternatives then I guess its just the way things go sometimes.

Blacksheep1979

Moglex wrote: »

Or at least, no more so than if the seller had put a reserve price on the auction. The only people to lose out would be ebay themselves.

Ebay wins with shill bidders though - they push up the price meaning more fees.

Moglex

Blacksheep1979 wrote: »

Ebay wins with shill bidders though - they push up the price meaning more fees.

Well, in a sense that is true, but if you take the view that a seller is only prepared to sell something for a certain price, then there are three ways of doing it:

a) Honest ways

1) Set the start price to be the price they are prepared to accept
2) Set a reserve

b) less than honest way

Shill bid

In each case the punter won't get the item for less than the seller is prepared to accept, but if the seller uses the honest tecnique then ebay looses fees.