Confused!!

TwinMummy2be

Hi All,
Sorry if this sounds silly but just wanted your opinions please. I have had my eye on a wedding dress on Ebay and it was due to end this morning. Seller had it for £250 starting bid or £450 buy it now. 5 mins before the end I bid £250 as that was the max I wanted to spend plus courier charges.
Almost as soon as I placed my bid someone else bid on the dress taking it up to £260. I upped my offer to £270 just to see if I would be the highest bidder and I was. Again the other bidder outbid me by £10 right at the last minute so they won the item.
Nothing unusual you may think and neither did I until a few minutes later I received a message from the seller telling me the buyer is a time waster and that they are relisting the dress if I wanted to bid again.
The dress has now been relisted but on a starting bid of £450. I just spoke to my friend about this and they tell me that some people set up duplicate accounts and bid on their own stuff to increase the sale price to the genuine buyers. Am I really stupid to think that people wouldn't do this or that Ebay wouldn't allow this??
Seems to me now that the seller obviously didn't want to sell for that price and is now testing me to see if I am prepared to pay £450 for it (which I am not).
Just a question really, though I would just ask to put my mind at rest as I feel quite annoyed!!
Thanks.

theonlywayisup

Unfortunately your friend is correct. It is done but it is unlawful but Ebay rarely police it.

If you look at the 'other' bidder, you will be able to see a history of his/her bids on that sellers items. If the seller has had other items for sale, then you may see a pattern with this 'other' bidder.

It's called shill bidding.

pulliptears

I think I'd be tempted to reply with 'No thanks, I don't buy from shill bidders'.

I won something once that I realised after the auction had ended had been shilled. I should have won for £20 rather than the £50 they shilled it to. I contacted them and told them that unfortunately I wouldn't be paying for it as I didn't buy from shill bidders. There followed several begging emails asking me not to report them and they were NARU 3 days later

RainbowDrops

TwinMummy2be wrote: »

I received a message from the seller telling me the buyer is a time waster and that they are relisting the dress if I wanted to bid again.

I'd reply back saying that they seem to be the time waister, listing an item at a price that they weren't happy to sell for, then making up an excuse for some dodgy bidding activity.

Dark_Star

Say no but you might consider a second chance offer at your highest bid...:p if they decline then it does smell suspiciously like a shill bidder.

Do you use a snipe tool? (Just snipe is good). Put in your max bid & it bids for you in the last few seconds...:D

montymud

As a snipe tool I reccomend gixen, I use it when something I want will be ending when I'm not at home to bid on it - I love the rush of bidding in the final few seconds but gixen has come in very handy in the past. Also fir wedding dressed my freind just bought hers of lightinthebox and it is really beautiful. It took 3 weeks to arrive though! It said it would only take a few days but we checked the domain and it is in china so we were aware it would take longer, she did complain and they gave her a little bit of a refund. Don't know if anyone else has had any dealings with them but the dress is gorgeus and the seamstress who is altering it said it is made very well.

Crowqueen

pulliptears wrote: »

I think I'd be tempted to reply with 'No thanks, I don't buy from shill bidders'.

I won something once that I realised after the auction had ended had been shilled. I should have won for £20 rather than the £50 they shilled it to. I contacted them and told them that unfortunately I wouldn't be paying for it as I didn't buy from shill bidders. There followed several begging emails asking me not to report them and they were NARU 3 days later

Glad to see eBay do do at least something. The funniest situations on the forums are when the regulars catch poster-shillers at it - and the most hilarious situation was someone come to the forums asking why she had been banned from selling and us able to see that she had the same picture on her feedback page as the buyer who loved her stuff.

The problem is, I think anyway, that people don't realise it's wrong - they probably know it's a bit underhand, but they think it's a great wheeze that no-one else has ever thought of before, not entirely dishonest. It will take a lot of education for eBay to change this notion (some otherwise extremely reputable people have suggested it to me with my auctions), but looking at what successful campaigns have been run in the past, and given that eBay has the most to gain in terms of positive PR from stopping the practice, I think it should be eBay that foot the bill for this.

Look what happened with drink-driving becoming totally unacceptable. The same could be done with shilling if eBay put their minds to it.

TwinMummy2be

Thanks for your replies everyone, I really can't believe people do this and get away with it!! Certainly won't be buying this dress now, got plenty of time to find another one from someone who is honest!
Thanks again.

happybiker

Crowqueen wrote: »

The problem is, I think anyway, that people don't realise it's wrong - they probably know it's a bit underhand, but they think it's a great wheeze that no-one else has ever thought of before, not entirely dishonest.

It is actually a criminal act in the UK and contravenes the Misleading Marketing Regulations 2008 and the Consumer Protection from Unfair Trading Regulations 2008. Shill bidding may also contravene the Fraud act of 2006

The first person convicted under these acts was a man called Paul Barret from Durham and he was fined £3000+ costs and given 250 hours community service

'A bit underhand' and 'Not entirely dishonest' , Sorry, its ILLEGAL. Full stop.

People suffering from the actions of a shill bidder should report them to Trading standards in the area the shill bidder lives.

Zoology_Dragon

Funnily enough this did actually happen to me when I sold my wedding dress. The high bidder messaged to say sorry but they wouldn't be able to complete the sale (I suspect they were bidding on several dresses and went with the cheapest) so I sent a second chance offer to the next high bidder not long after the auction ended. They accused me of shilling so I relisted, blocked them and sold to someone else for a higher price. They sent me several begging emails asking why they were blocked and suggesting very low prices I could sell to them for! I don't actually know if they really thought I was shilling or if they thought they could scare me into selling for a low price.

Not suggesting that there wasn't shilling going on in the situation described in the OP, I just wanted to point out that sometimes these things are genuine.

Haffiana

Yes, it seems that many posters on this board and elsewhere imagine that a second-chance offer is definite proof of shilling and other hanky panky. It isn't. It is there for a seller to be able to sell an item if the winning bidder pulls out, or if there is a second item. A really good shill bidder will never win the item they are shilling.