Shill bidding

richto

scandarahar wrote:

Following item I am interested in on eBay, however am very suspect about bid history in itself and the fact that this repeated bidder features in sellers feedback history and vice versa...


http://cgi.ebay.co.uk/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?ViewItem&category=9844&item=4545528584&rd=1&ssPageName=WDVW


I'd be interested to see what anyone else thinks.

Must be very stupid. A shill bidder with a decent IQ would make sure his bid pushed prices up but didnt win, or to withdraw it just before end of auction if he did. And certainly never leave feedback.

Bear in mind it's in Ebay's interest for the highest possible selling price so I doubt they do too much to detect it.

nessauk

Luis wrote:

Please can someone explain to me what shill bidding is?

Thanks.

In a nutshell, it's when a seller has 2 user ID's (or a friend to help out) to bid on his own auctions to bump up the selling price of something he/she is selling. Therefore the person who does win (ie: an innocent bidder as opposed to the seller) can end up paying over the odds for an item which, had the seller not have been bidding, would have otherwise cost them less.

A good place to check out is the community Q&A forum on eBay. They have quite a few smarta$$ members on there who are always on the prowl catching out the scammers. Can certainly learn a thing or two on there on how to spot the dodgy ones out there (and can be damn entertaining, when the scammer claims to be a victim, and subsequently gets sussed :-))

scandarahar

Altarf wrote:

Well ebay thought it was dodgy as they are now both NARU.

eBay mailed me to say they weren't taking any action as they did not believe anything untoward was going on....