How To Spot Shill Bidding On Ebay

Posted by Dan Thompson on: 2006-05-19 21:29:56

Self SEO > Ebay Tips and Tricks

If you are a user of eBay then the chances are, that you have already come across the term â€œshill biddingâ€. Shill bidding, is bidding that is used to artificially inflate the price of a certain item. Shill bidding usually takes place when the seller of an item wishes to increase the price, or generate interest in the item. The seller would usually get a friend or family member to bid on the item in question so that it looks like the item is more popular than it actually is, sometimes the seller may also use a second eBay account to increase the price of the item.

Shill bidding is prohibited by eBay and rightfully so. In my time I have been the victim of a shill bidding eBay scam. I was bidding on a digital camera and was surprised to see the price increase dramatically every time I made a bid, each bid that I made was followed by a new bid from an eBay user without any feedback. I thought this was very strange so I contacted eBay, they confirmed to me that the seller was using a second account to increase the price of the item, in the hopes that I would keep bidding and be made to pay a higher price. The listing was pulled by eBay and the seller had both of their accounts suspended. I was lucky but unfortunately many others are not so fortunate.

Shill bidding is a huge problem on eBay and you may have already been a victim of this scam without even realising it! Hopefully after reading this guide you will be able to spot if a shill bidder is bidding on one of your auctions.

The first step to take if you feel you have been a victim of shill bidding is to look at the â€œBidders Listâ€ for the item that you are bidding on. Usually an account that is used for shill bidding will have very little, if any feedback. The account could even have been created within the last 30 days with the sole intention of shill bidding for the seller, you can see if the member is new as they will have a small orange icon next to their user ID.

You should also do some research into the sellers other sales. Look at the sellers other sales via their feedback profile and see if the shill bidder was bidding on those items as well. If the shill bidder was bidding then the chances are that the seller is using a second account, or the account of a friend to shill bid.

Finally, another favoured method to spot a shill bidder is to look at how much the bids are increasing by. Usually a shill bidder will only place a â€œNibblerâ€ bid, this is a bid that is only slightly higher than your bid but then puts the impetuous on you to bid on the item again. The shill bidder will keep on bidding until you stop, they will then retract their final bid leaving you to pay for the item at a higher price than you should have paid!

If you believe that you have been a victim of a shill bidding scam or think that an eBay member may be shill bidding then you need to contact eBay. You can contact eBay using the contain form on their site, if eBay finds that the user has indeed been shill bidding then the all of the accounts associated with the shill bidder will be suspended.

Dan Thompson is a successful eBay Power seller and has recently opened a new website that allows members of the public to report eBay scams. The website also contains a popular open forum where you can ask Dan any questions that you may have - www.auction-arses.com

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User comments:

PhilipCohen - Posted on: 2008-04-13 04:47:00

eBay introduces absolute anonymity for (shill) bidders

Revised 13 April 2008

A comment principally on the whole-of-auction absolute anonymity of bidders recently introduced to Australia (and more recently to the U.K.) by eBay, including responses to the various, sometimes nonsensical, statements being offered by eBay in support of this decisionâ€”with apologies to all the shill bidders out there.

For those of you with a very short attention span I will summarise my comments on my principal concern, the issue of â€œshillâ€ bidding:

It is said that â€œJustice must not only be done; it must also be seen to be done.â€

It follows therefore that â€œeBay must not only be free of shill bidders; users must also be able to see for themselves that it is free from shill bidders.â€

Putting aside for the moment eBayâ€™s existing â€œshill-biddersâ€™ hideâ€ facility, â€œUser ID kept private,â€ if eBay thinks that making all bidding aliases absolutely anonymous (ie, â€œBidder nâ€) will not make shill bidding easier or that experienced eBay users will now trust eBay, of its own volition, to rid eBay of the shill bidding that will undoubtedly now run rampant, then eBay management is living on a different planet to that on which I reside, and I have no doubt that such anonymity will ultimately have a detrimental effect on eBayâ€™s business.

Actually, they are on a different planet: they have already stated elsewhere that â€œâ€¦ we do not immediately remove a member from our site if shill bidding is detectedâ€ because eBay believes â€œâ€¦ that people are basically good and sometimes people need an opportunity to be educated instead of removedâ€ (ie, eBay needs to protect its income stream). The problem with this policy is that it appears that the only shill bidding eBay is ever going to recognise is that which is so blatant and habitual that such sellers do not deserve and should not get further chances! And, what then about the extra consideration these shill-bidding cheats have taken from unsuspecting buyers who have bought in good faith (and trusted eBay)?

Clearly, eBay does not have any automated processes for the detection of shill bidding (we all can direct eBay to obvious instances of such activity); eBay apparently relies solely on the reporting of such suspected activity by usersâ€”yet eBay has just removed the userâ€™s capacity to more easily notice such activity ... Dah!

Further, I would not be surprised if eBay could not be held to be complicit in any shill bidding that can be proven as eBay, for what would appear to me to be a petty if not a disingenuous reason has chosen to lessened the capacity (to practically zero) for buyers themselves to be on the alert for and thereby attempt to protect themselves from such despicable activity.

If the various governmental â€œOffices of Fair Tradingâ€ had any backbone they should have the power to make eBay undo this absolute anonymity nonsense as the simple fact is even a half-wit knows that the change from a user-specific bidder alias to a totally anonymous bidder alias serves no purpose other than as a blatant hide for shill biddingâ€”in which eBay appears happy to be complicit.

For those of you with a longer attention span, the full detail of this and some other eBay matters at:
http://www.auctionbytes.com/forum/phpBB/viewtopic.php?p=6497776#6497776

philipcohen - Posted on: 2009-06-01 00:54:35

For anyone interested, a case study of a classic, blatant shill bidder on eBay, and a comment on eBay’s attitude thereto see http://www.auctionbytes.com/forum/phpBB/viewtopic.php?t=24033

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