Shill Bidding??? Any thoughts

[staindsox]

I was watching this auction and boom-49 bids? It makes me very suspicious to see that many bids in the last hour or so. What sucks is that we can't see the other bidders since eBay changed their policy. Any thoughts? Thanks.

Chris

http://cgi.ebay.com/ws/eBayISAPI.dll...0725&rd=1&rd=1

[3arod13]

I was watching this auction and boom-49 bids? It makes me very suspicious to see that many bids in the last hour or so. What sucks is that we can't see the other bidders since eBay changed their policy. Any thoughts? Thanks.

Chris

http://cgi.ebay.com/ws/eBayISAPI.dll...0725&rd=1&rd=1

Chris,

I hate the new change. I can't tell you how many people I reported to ebay for shill bidding. It was so easy to research and most were from the same are as the seller. I think this change by ebay is more of a negative and helps shill bidding. I don't see any positives to it, other than people can't contact you as a bidder, trying to sell you something.

There is no question it's happening more now than before. Ebay doesn't monitor each auctions daily for shill bidding. Most were caught by people like us who could see the obvious, report them, and then action be taken by ebay.

I emailed ebay on numerous occassions to change it back, but no luck.

Tony

[metsbats]

I personally stopped bidding on these anonymous bidder auctions precisely because of this reason.

Ebay doesn't care about shill bidding because the higher the bid the bigger their cut.

David

[allstarsplus]

I personally stopped bidding on these anonymous bidder auctions precisely because of this reason.

Ebay doesn't care about shill bidding because the higher the bid the bigger their cut.

David

David - That is an unsubstantiated comment on the shill bidding. There are people convicted every year because of shill bidding. Of course thousands of cases go undetected due to the nature of proof.

I read that eBay is able to shut down shills when they have duplicate IP addresses due to some technology they have. Can we say the same for other auction houses????

Now where do the other big auction houses stack up on identity of their bidders? Almost all of the big auction houses use totally anonymous bidders and you can't even tell if the same bidder has put in more than 1 bid in most cases.

During the old fashioned live auctions, many potential bidders would send representatives to place bids for them or proxy bids were phoned in. Again, totally anonymous if they so desire.

While the new eBay anonymous bid system requires additional analysis, you can still follow patterns of bids as it shows statistical bidding patterns. eBay's focus groups came up with this idea as it became necessary to protect bidders from constantly being spammed.

I personally think eBay should have gone the route of not allowing any emails sent to bidders unless they were sent by the seller. I also think eBay should give the seller the option of open identity like the old system vs. the new anonymous bidding.

In the end, you can identify the winning bidder unless of course the seller chose the Private Auction option.

Anyway, just some added insight from someone who thinks the world isn't perfect but believes that most is good.

Andrew

[allstarsplus]

I was watching this auction and boom-49 bids? It makes me very suspicious to see that many bids in the last hour or so. What sucks is that we can't see the other bidders since eBay changed their policy. Any thoughts? Thanks.

Chris

http://cgi.ebay.com/ws/eBayISAPI.dll...0725&rd=1&rd=1

Here is the link to view detailed stats on Bidder 5 who pushed the bid up on this hat with 26 total bids. Looks like this bidder likes seller #1. Click on the link to view:

http://offer.ebay.com/ws/eBayISAPI.d...ne_DetailsLink

[metsbats]

Andrew,

Thanks for the insight. It's good to know that Ebay is taking action and I didn't realize that they are proactive in dealing with shill bidding on their side.

I agree that they can't catch them all and that give the illusion they are not doing much.

Good point about the old fashion auction houses. We really don't know who is bidding under the covers at GF, Mastro etc.

I believe you are able to see the bidders in the MLB online auctions.

David

[metsbats]

How many auctions have we all seen the price drop due to cancellation of suspected shill bidding??

Anyone see this "system" in action?

David

[David]

A few years ago Broadway R bid in his own auction (he had 2 accounts, one his initials followed by a 1, the other his initials followed by a 2-- so there was no doubt about who was bidding), he admitted in a MSNBC article that he bid in the auction. And guess what? eBay didn't suspend his account as they said they didn't have enough proof of shilling (!?!?)

Since then, I have required concrete proof that eBay takes shilling as a serious issue. Remember, they profit from inflated sales prices.

[allstarsplus]

Most of the shill is probably friends bidding for friends as they can detect identical IP #'s. Broadway must have been using different computers.

eBay certainly benefits from trumped up auction prices, but keeping the community safe and people paying for their auctions and delivering the items are the #1 biggest problem that persists in the 3rd party auction system.

It will never be perfect, but how can it be with millions of listings. At least nobody in eBay management is bidding on their own auctions

Andrew

[David]

In defense of eBay, it's a 'one or the other' situation. Their new hidden bidder bidding above $200 bid does allow shilling. However, fake and off-eBay sales to underbidders was also a problem-- and covering bidder ids helps prevent this on high ticket items.

It's worthy to note that preventing off-auction sales increases eBay's profits (as sellers will have to make their sales on eBay), while lowering shill bidding lowers eBay profits (eBay takes a percentage of final sales price and the lower the sales price the lower eBay's take). If all of a sudden eBay eliminated all shilling, the company profits, and presumably stock price, would fall. While I grant that eBay had to chose how to fix one problem over the other in this instance, I doubt it's coincidence they chose the way that would result high profits.