How to detect shill bidding

bris

I've reported a few blatant shill bidders to ebay in the past and they have never done anything about it, still shilling a couple of months later.

It's not as easy to spot now, a deliberate tactic by ebay as it brings in sales and bigger profits. Don't be fooled by them telling the community they have software to detect it, they have no intention of stamping it out.

porto_bello

The1832ReformAct wrote: »

I thought that Ebay had checks in place for shill bidding such as checking the IPs for all bids versus the IP of the seller?

This is what eBay's standard response used to be: the official line was that it was "impossible" to shill bid, because eBay's "software" was in place to spot it, so eBay were on top of it...
Result: No action

However, more recently, the response has been to thank the informer, explain that eBay relies on eBay members to advise where shill bidding occurs and promise to take action...
Result: No action

[So either the 'software' didn't work or more likely didn't exist!]

I've found some really blatant examples, conducted by business sellers, which I passed along to Trading Standards, but it takes some time and effort to lay out and explain, blow by blow, how the shill bidding ID have been identified, the bidding history and the correlation.

To answer Duncan's point, my reason for posting this thread is essentially to explain how shill bidding is achieved and how it is ignored by eBay (who have a financial interest in ignoring it), so everybody relying on eBay to stop shill bidding is placing bids in the belief of a safety net that does not exist.

If this prompts buyers to have a closer look at who they're bidding against (particularly the 'price nudgers') and use last minute bids or sniper bids to help defeat methodical/incremental shill bidding, then the thread will have served its purpose.;)

Strapped

Or buy from lurverly sellers who use BIN with best offer :-) No need to wait for the auction to finish, worry about shill bidding or sellers who don't complete the sale if the price is too low (sadly there are lots who do this) - just negotiate directly with the seller, what's the worst that could happen?

(*waits for someone to mention seller blocking you if you make a silly offer*)

tunnel

Strapped wrote: »

Or buy from lurverly sellers who use BIN with best offer :-) No need to wait for the auction to finish, worry about shill bidding or sellers who don't complete the sale if the price is too low (sadly there are lots who do this) - just negotiate directly with the seller, what's the worst that could happen?

(*waits for someone to mention seller blocking you if you make a silly offer*)

Anybody doing that would be a fool to themselves. I've lost count of the amount of "offers" on items with no best offer option on it that I've turned down, only for that person to win the auction at a much higher price

bartelbe

The people who say shill bidding is a victimless crime are wrong. Sites like ebay work on trust, buyers will only buy if they think the bidding process is fair and they won't get screwed if they win the item (item not described, delivered and so on).

Shill bidding puts buyers off. Nobody wants to pay over the odds, or be done over by a seller. In the long run it lowers prices, because the only viable bidding option becomes snipping. Many potential bidders aren't tech savy enough to snipe so give up. Others who would have bid on a particular item don't bother setting up a snipe. So bidders are lost.

Sellers also lose the potential of items finding their natural value through bidding. Shill is a short term gain for a dishonest seller, that hurts all sellers in the long run.

TrickyWicky

duncan-biscuits wrote: »

ebay know it goes on and do zilch.

They never will either. What many of you are forgetting is that for them it makes business sense to unofficially let it continue. The higher the ending price the more money they make from the auction so they're more than happy for the prices to be shill'd up.

When the shill bidding thing became a publicity issue instead of dealing with it, ebay just protected the bidders usernames with a bunch of asterisks. That should have set alarm bells ringing ages ago - it certainly did with me as a buyer.

Ebay have basically given shill bidders a free licence to carry on doing what they do best - con buyers and make more money for ebay and paypal. Don't forget, someone has a space mission to pay for

The only way to bid without shill bidding is to bid in the last few seconds. Thats how I win all my stuff. I won't deal with bidding wars as its a pointless waste of my time. If there are other bidders on the item then I often don't even bother but if it has no bids I will often bid in the last few seconds just to prevent any shill bidding.