How eBay Sellers Fix Auctions

Boj writes "The Times online is carrying stories on fraud carried out on eBay using shill bidding. Citing eBay's changes to security as aiding the shill bidders and this fraud: "Last November eBay changed its rules to conceal bidders' identity — making it even more difficult for customers to see whether sellers are bidding on their own lots.""

Comments

Yep... seen it a couple of times.

[MSFanBoi2]

Then what the seller does is send you a "second chance" email if you are the last bidder saying that the original bidder didn't pay or what not and lets you pay what they were offering for the item. The Second Chance is now an offical Ebay thing... which of course is being abused by the Shrills...

Re:Circumvention

[clickety6]

Because you can look at the user feedback and see if there is a lot of cross-feed-backing going on between the involved parties and also you can see if these are low-feedback users raising the bid.

I had this happening to me once. I'd put in a bid and then somebody would raise it and raise it again until just topping my bid, then withdraw the highest bid. Complained to EBay but they did nothing. In the end, I waited a while after the shill's last bid, then put in a bid of my own. The shill really quickly raised it again a few times then withdrew his last bid that topped mine. At which point, I withdrew my last bid and left the shill in the winning position with a few seconds to go and a bid that was too old to withdraw. So he ended up paying EBay for the privilege of selling the item to himself ;-)

Re:Ebay - Where there is a sucker born every minut

[miskatonic alumnus]

Personally, I avoid eBay like a plague. it's got sucker written all over it.

Well, that may be. But they stay in business for a reason. If I have something to sell, I can reach a larger market than I can locally. And when I'm looking for some uber rare item that it would take years and thousands of dollars in gasoline to find by scouring every used record store, book store, person's home, etc., ebay comes in very handy.

I've only been burned a couple of times (out of several hundred transactions) and then only for low value items.

My own personal strategies for a succesful transaction include:

1) Never bid on camcorders, computers, automobiles, or any other high dollar item.

2) Always do an extensive check of the seller's feedback.

3) Don't bid early or get involved in bidding wars. Snipe instead.

Here's why shilling hurts you

[dfnr2]

I see a lot of posts claiming not to understand the problem with shill bidding. I'll give you a scenario. The key here is that INFORMATION is MONEY.

Imagine your wife's grandma's heirloom china set is worth $400 on the market, but priceless to her. You have recently dropped one plate, and it's irreplaceable. The plate is worth $80 on the market. 6 months later, you see the plate on Ebay, drawing insipid bidding, reflecting relatively low demand, stuck at $40. Your web design business has been doing well, and you can afford $200 to get back in grace with your wife. You therefore bid $200, raising the current bid to $42. On the final day, you see a series of bids in , all by the same person, raising the price to $160. This is the point at which the shiller did not dare to raise the bid for fear of outbidding you.

Effectively, he got free information about how much you are willing to bid. Information is money. It's like when you're bargaining on a used care--you start with your offer. You don't tell the salesman how much money you brought, and then start bargaining.

In the example above, you pay less than the item is worth TO YOU, but more than market, because the shiller was able to tease that info out of you.

Re:Ebay - Where there is a sucker born every minut

[orcus]

but it's still an asshole move most often capitalized upon by people with less active lives that have time resources to snipe in whenever their auction of interest happens to be ending.

Here:

http://www.jbidwatcher.com/

Now you too can snipe w/out having to sacrifice your active lifestyle.
Just configure it with the auction number to snipe - the amount you want to snipe - and go on with life.