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 Replies: 11 / Views: 1,726 |
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Valued Member
United States
206 Posts |
It seems there is a lot of coins sold on the same night with huge price spreads for the same type, year, grade with factored in ship cost.
A bidder with a fairly low bidder identity example (4***4 2 )score has a 86% bids with this seller and has 25 bids this month be a prime candidate ?
Sometimes he is always the second highest bidder with on all idems that night from this seller. But appears at a level of bidding some where in the bids.
I always look at the bidders to see if there are any flags
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Pillar of the Community
United States
5601 Posts |
Stephen,
You have touched on a very dirty topic, in that I also look very closely at Many, Many auctions, and also find the people who are in on many auctions and Never do they win .
I also check their profile, as I see from your wording, you do also and find that a person who bids on one sellers auctions ALL the time and does not win any, is to me, a strong very visible red flag.
I belong to a special watch dog group for E-Bay to protect people from fraud and forgery, this falls under that topic, while I can say many things, believe me I personally report per week tens of auctions for one (seedy) reason or another, my suggestion to you and All who suspect this type of behavior, please feel free to report this to E-Bay and believe me the results may not, in fact to be very truthful, most of the time people are warned simply because they do not have the man power and proper oversight needed to be in total control as they would wish to be.
I would also state that the rules for that site are IMHO, based on income to the site, I would give an example, why would you bite the hand that feeds you. This is my opinion and I have been doing this as many others also do for years and it gets to be frustrating at times. If you see a problem, how can we expect things to change if no one steps up to try and correct the wrongs we see,Report the problem, good luck, Mike
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Pillar of the Community
United States
2335 Posts |
If those are the criteria I can remember many times I could have been accused of shill bidding. When I used to find a new(to me) seller that had coins I was interested in I would bid on several of their auctions at once, being cheap I was outbid probably 99% of the time.
I think the safest thing to do if you suspect a shill, a fake, or a fraud is to pass on the auction.
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Pillar of the Community
United States
790 Posts |
I too fit a similar pattern. When I find a seller I like, I tend to spend a few months bidding exclusively with them. Then the items get old to me and I move on to another auction. I too will often put in bids on nearly every item a seller has. If an item has a fairly high catalog value, but I don't have a particular interest in it, I might put in a very low bid and hope. It works occasionally.
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Pillar of the Community
1844 Posts |
As my fellow members say there are all kinds of red flags... Another great one is the Private Bidder auctions.. E-bay has gone to great lengths to protect the anonymity of bidders, so WHY put your listings PRIVATE ? to me thats a clear sign......I too report many many infractions but nothing seems to happen.. ex..This one seller always has large cents ( Canadian) for sale and seems to always get crazy prices..... Just the other night I had an 1886 Can.lrg cent solid AU+ with lots of red remaining..Mine sold for 5.00+change...This guy had one aswell but IMHO grade maybe maybe EF at best ..He gets like over 40.00 Now if you look at all his auctions the bidding goes by very small increments, never exceeding 2 or 3$ at a time..... Another we must stop is the way ebay allows the bigger sellers to do what ever they please...again a great ex... ICCS & CCCS is clearly not allowed in the titles...but yet little sellers get their listings removed for this infraction ( I know they done it to me ) but yet The bigger guys get away with it at will...?? |
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Pillar of the Community
United States
2669 Posts |
Quote:
E-bay has gone to great lengths to protect the anonymity of bidders, so WHY put your listings PRIVATE ? The reason it was usually done before was to protect a buyer if it was a high profile or high priced item. On a regular auction, you can't see the bidder's name during or after the auction, but if the user leaves feedback, their user name is clear to anyone along with the ebay auction number. In a private listing, you can see feedback and it counts for (or against) the seller, but the buyer's ebay id & the auction id is still hidden. So the seller doesn't want the buyer contacted, for some reason. I will not speculate as to why. Quote:
If those are the criteria I can remember many times I could have been accused of shill bidding. Same here. There are very few listings I still look at on ebay and they are usually from the same sellers. When those sellers put up a good amount of coins I sometimes bid on quite a few (and don't win quite a few). Quote:
I think the safest thing to do if you suspect a shill, a fake, or a fraud is to pass on the auction.  Unless it is blatant, then report it, of course. |
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Bedrock of the Community
United States
10045 Posts |
Quote:
E-bay has gone to great lengths to protect the anonymity of bidders Another interpretation: ebay has gone great lengths to protect their revenues, ie preventing "spam" secondary selling off ebay's own venue. While in some ways understandable, this policy effectively stymies the interactive community of users. For example, if bidders IDs were visible, the community might have a better idea of what's going on w/bidding, and be able to share info with each other. Imo, the inherent value of the internet is community, not whatever ebay's business model might be.  So this is my soapbox...because a side-hobby was forgery detection, and saving people thousands of $$$/month by warning of fraud on ebay. |
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Pillar of the Community
United States
1840 Posts |
I'm sure that some would suspect me of shill bidding. I have a few favorite sellers that always seem to have several coins that interest me. Since I know that I can trust these sellers, I usually make modest bids on 10-30 coins in a given week. Frankly, it is bottom-feeding. It is also a way to get some good deals, but I probably don't win more than 2% of the auctions that I bid on.
If you are truly worried about shill bidders, why not snipe? It is how I bid on coins that I am serious about winning.
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Locked
822 Posts |
Quote:How does one spot a shill bidder on ebay? The answer is very simple. You can't. Period. End of story. Even with ebay's backend available to you it wouldn't be a certainty, since there's dynamic IPs, user-agent spoofing, proxy services, etc... Doesn't stop people from swearing they can tell though. I guaranty that 95% or better of the shill bid accusations on forums across the internet are wrong. Heck, I've seen bidder IDs accused vehemently of shill bidding just because they only bid on one or two seller's auctions. Which of course is completely absurd. |
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Bedrock of the Community
United States
20753 Posts |
Quote:The answer is very simple. You can't. Period. End of story. Even with ebay's backend available to you it wouldn't be a certainty, since there's dynamic IPs, user-agent spoofing, proxy services, etc... Oh so true. I hate to mention it but I know people that do that all the time. One person I know that deals with cameras has several people helping him with just similar tactics. All really hard to prove. |
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Valued Member
Australia
465 Posts |
I am currently attempting to get this answer from e-bay.
Is it okay for a buyer to place 1 bid on 300 seperate items
with one seller and one seller only?
...the bidder is now up to 325 bids when I last checked and his feed back has stayed level - even though he is winning some. STINKS. I have asked the question 4 times and got 4 different and unrelated answers.
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Valued Member
Australia
465 Posts |
Still awaiting a valid response from e-bay. I thought I had it last week but also no! Check out my latest answer which I got. I thought he understood the question and then FAIL.
***************************************
Thank you for taking the time to write to us again. My name is Jason and
I understand that you'd like to know if the buyer is allowed to place 1
bid on 300 separate items for one seller.
Though it is our endeavor to reply to your email as soon as possible, I
do apologise for the delay in answering your email. Your patience
during this time is more than appreciated.
I'd like to inform you that all buyers are allowed to place multiple
bids on the item they want to buy. However, if you think the buyer will
not honor his bids, I have listed some tips to help you reduce your
exposure to buyers who may make sales difficult.
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Replies: 11 / Views: 1,726 |
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Posted 10/11/2009 08:28 am
