This is just a quick add-on to my last post. Here is a ring of several ebay members who all live near each other, all bid on one another's items. This one is also super clear as you can browse through the feedbacks for each and see where they continuously leave feedback for one another, only to resell the items that their friends bid on for them.
magpie7367
stacey6336
mnamy
1timnamy
Update May 13th, 2010- a couple more dirtbag shill bidders. These two are related and bid on each other's items. Obviously since it's the same guy. Just see the current or past listings from either one: same background, same wording, items "bought" by one will be sold by the other a few days later, etc... But of course none of this is proof enough for good ole ebay!
judyma66
2010timothywalker97
Update May 31st, 2010- This user is a well known shill bidder in the video game community. In addition to his shill bidding, his hobbies are making fake Mike Tyson's Punch-Out insert letters and selling them as real. Real loser here.
jayr922nes
april101sabine
Monday, March 15, 2010
eBay allows shill bidding as a way to increase their revenue
Let's start this off with a bang. First of all, I'm Doug, co-owner of Pedro Games. There is no one named Pedro within our company, it was just a name that came to my mind when I needed an ebay id several years ago. We were going to change it, but people seem to like it so we left it. At some point we'll have a website under another name, but we'll always hold on to Pedro Games.
So here's the bang part. I want to tell people about an issue I take very seriously because it directly affects my bottom line. I'm talking about shill bidding. Shill bidding is the practice of a seller bidding on his own items in order to drive the price up. We buy a good bit of our products directly from ebay, so this underhanded technique costs me untold thousands every year. For a long time, probably as long as ebay has existed, the site had held a strong stance against this practice. I've known numerous people who have been removed entirely from the site for shill bidding. I've even gotten several of them removed personally by reporting them myself. Well about a year ago, ebay began hiding all bidder's id's. Their explanation for this was to curb scammers contacting bidders after auctions were over, offering to sell them a similar product for less. While this may be part of it, the bigger part as I have seen personally on several occasions is that ebay feels that shill bidders cannot be reported any longer since bidder's id's are obscured.
Why would ebay not want shill bidding reported, even though it remains an official ebay violation? That's easy. Because like I said, shill bidding artificially raises the final price of items for auction on ebay. Ebay profits from shill bidding because they make more money based on that final price. Ebay makes a fortune by turning a blind eye to shill bidding, and with their stock price having taken a dump in recent years, anything helps.
Now how do I know for sure that this is ebay's new stance on this once severe violation? I know because I report each and every obvious case of shill bidding I see. Here's a few examples-
Ebay seller id- bambooexpress- This one's ridiculous it's so obvious. In alot of cases I can figure out the bidders id even though it's been hidden, because the shill bidding seller will leave himself feedback for his other id. This seller has not done so. Regardless, this one's open and shut. Even though the bidder's id is hidden, anyone can still click on the hidden name, and it will take you to a page that shows you how many items the member has bid on, and how many different seller's make up those bids. This bidder- 9***8
has as of this writing bid on 32 items. That's not the obvious part. What's obvious is that EVERY one of those items belongs to the same seller. Now if the seller were selling all similar items, like say video games, then maybe not so unusual, but this seller sells all sorts of things- computers, cameras, video games, cards, etc... and this bidder bids on them all! Another very tell-tale sign of shil bidding is that the items won by that member will be relisted, since of course it's just the buyer bidding on his own stuff. What brought this case to my attention is that I got a second chance offer on an item I was the second highest bidder on. Whenever I get one of these I get very suspicious, as second chance offers are another sign of a shill bidder. So I looked into it to see who beat me, looked at his bid history, and it was clear. The last, and biggest sign of a shill bidder is that the items won by the shill bidder will be relisted soon after he wins them. So I check for that and OF COURSE, each item this fake bidder won is now back up for auction!
In the past, each case I reported to ebay was taken very seriously. I don't report something like this to ebay unless I am 100% positive. As you can see from the evidence above, there's no mistaking. I get an email from ebay today regarding the report-
Hi Doug,
I had my investigations team look into this and show no evidence of
shill bidding on this seller or items.
Thanks,
Raj Bhatia
eBay
Uh, okay. Way to live up to all the bad things people say about you ebay. Ebay has become a pathetic shell of the site they once were. They raise fees constantly, give sellers less and less respect, constantly make policy changes that make it even less enticing to sell there. I'm a very large seller on ebay at the moment, but only because we currently have no other options. The good news is that our website is almost done, and we'll be doing less ebay business as quickly as our bottom line permits.
Thanks for reading everyone, have a great day!
-Doug
So here's the bang part. I want to tell people about an issue I take very seriously because it directly affects my bottom line. I'm talking about shill bidding. Shill bidding is the practice of a seller bidding on his own items in order to drive the price up. We buy a good bit of our products directly from ebay, so this underhanded technique costs me untold thousands every year. For a long time, probably as long as ebay has existed, the site had held a strong stance against this practice. I've known numerous people who have been removed entirely from the site for shill bidding. I've even gotten several of them removed personally by reporting them myself. Well about a year ago, ebay began hiding all bidder's id's. Their explanation for this was to curb scammers contacting bidders after auctions were over, offering to sell them a similar product for less. While this may be part of it, the bigger part as I have seen personally on several occasions is that ebay feels that shill bidders cannot be reported any longer since bidder's id's are obscured.
Why would ebay not want shill bidding reported, even though it remains an official ebay violation? That's easy. Because like I said, shill bidding artificially raises the final price of items for auction on ebay. Ebay profits from shill bidding because they make more money based on that final price. Ebay makes a fortune by turning a blind eye to shill bidding, and with their stock price having taken a dump in recent years, anything helps.
Now how do I know for sure that this is ebay's new stance on this once severe violation? I know because I report each and every obvious case of shill bidding I see. Here's a few examples-
Ebay seller id- bambooexpress- This one's ridiculous it's so obvious. In alot of cases I can figure out the bidders id even though it's been hidden, because the shill bidding seller will leave himself feedback for his other id. This seller has not done so. Regardless, this one's open and shut. Even though the bidder's id is hidden, anyone can still click on the hidden name, and it will take you to a page that shows you how many items the member has bid on, and how many different seller's make up those bids. This bidder- 9***8
has as of this writing bid on 32 items. That's not the obvious part. What's obvious is that EVERY one of those items belongs to the same seller. Now if the seller were selling all similar items, like say video games, then maybe not so unusual, but this seller sells all sorts of things- computers, cameras, video games, cards, etc... and this bidder bids on them all! Another very tell-tale sign of shil bidding is that the items won by that member will be relisted, since of course it's just the buyer bidding on his own stuff. What brought this case to my attention is that I got a second chance offer on an item I was the second highest bidder on. Whenever I get one of these I get very suspicious, as second chance offers are another sign of a shill bidder. So I looked into it to see who beat me, looked at his bid history, and it was clear. The last, and biggest sign of a shill bidder is that the items won by the shill bidder will be relisted soon after he wins them. So I check for that and OF COURSE, each item this fake bidder won is now back up for auction!
In the past, each case I reported to ebay was taken very seriously. I don't report something like this to ebay unless I am 100% positive. As you can see from the evidence above, there's no mistaking. I get an email from ebay today regarding the report-
Hi Doug,
I had my investigations team look into this and show no evidence of
shill bidding on this seller or items.
Thanks,
Raj Bhatia
eBay
Uh, okay. Way to live up to all the bad things people say about you ebay. Ebay has become a pathetic shell of the site they once were. They raise fees constantly, give sellers less and less respect, constantly make policy changes that make it even less enticing to sell there. I'm a very large seller on ebay at the moment, but only because we currently have no other options. The good news is that our website is almost done, and we'll be doing less ebay business as quickly as our bottom line permits.
Thanks for reading everyone, have a great day!
-Doug
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