eBay schill bidding - do you watch?

Several questions/scenarios. I am interested in peoples opinions regarding, I guess ethics within auctions from both buyers and sellers. Thank you in advance for your thoughts!

I know there is nothing worse than listing a coin on a no reserve auction and then sit on the edge of your seat for a week with fingers crossed that some one will bid..... You only get a couple of bidders and your $250 coin is only at $100 on the last day of your auction.

On that morning of the day the auction closes? Do you open your other account and throw a bid on it, essentially making it a reserve? What if you a bid on it only to find out you are outbid. DO you throw another on trying to find what was bid?

What I am trying to get at here. At auction houses, isn't it normal for the seller to be allowed to bid on his own coin? This is not ok to do on eBay, correct? I don't think it is. I also am not sure if a consignor can all the sudden put a what is essentially a reserve, on a "no reserve" auction.

Now real situation. If you notice that you were outbid by someone who only bids on this sellers items...... a small seller FB=347, Only 3 current listings, 30 or so sales in the last 4 months, $200-$1500 range .... You

That the person who outbid you, only bid on this sellers items at the start of the listing and now at the end. This person who outbid you the morning of the close entered several bids and stopped once they were the leading bidder....

What would you do?

• Do you turn the seller in for suspected schill bidding.
• Do you just move on and leave the hack to take advantage of unwary buyers?
• Do you message the seller and ask WTF - threaten to turn him in?
• Do you have a heart and not do anything?

How prevalent do you suspect that sellers on eBay schill bid?

Any tips to look for?

• Do you think that my bringing up this topic is bottom feeding and that I am a rotten person for bringing this up?
  
• Do you think the seller is a rotten person and should be called out?

Lots of questions. I am just curious of what the opinion is of the people on this board who are willing to post. Thanks

 

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I think that you're going way out on a limb here.

First of all, how do you determine who that other bidder is, now that eBay anonymizes bidder names?

Second, how do you know the other bidder "only bids on this seller's auctions"? How can you tell what the other bidder is or isn't bidding on?

Third, if you have somehow figured out that this other bidder only bids on one seller's auctions, how can you tell that it's not just someone following their one favorite seller?

I have no doubt that shill bidding takes place. I just don't see how you can tell that that's what's happening. And if you can find out that it's happening, please let eBay know, because, yes, it violates their Terms of Service.

 

As Jeffb said it's against ebay policy to shill bid, however the bottom line for me is I'm going to bid a certain amount on a coin and not a penny more. So if someone bids more than me it doesn't really matter to me who it is.

 

I'll post screen shots later on. It's all circumstantial. but when a buyer only bids on one seller who have both gold and lincoln cents and only bid on those items at the open and close of the auction....... when this seller only lists 2 or 3 items at a time.....

If this was a favorite seller for this buyer - why hasn't the seller or the buyer made contact with each other? oh! they have! lol

 

No, not ever. This would make you as bad as the people you are complaining about. there are rules in place, you know them before you start, you have the option to place a reserve at the start of the auction.

I am interested the same as above, How would you be able to tell this?

 

I would be nervous as well EEW. You have not proven anything. I buy from certain sellers often, with some of them only selling something once a month or so. I have bought from them, know it is a good deal, so you will see my bidder name if you search their closed auctions? Am I a shill bidder? Absolutely not, as I do not know the man, have never met him, and he doesn't ask me to bid on his items to drive the price up. If you were the other bidder, though, I would look exactly like what you are describing. There have been periods on Ebay for months at a time I have only won this seller's auctions. Like Camlov2 asks, can you really tell I have only bought from this seller nowadays?

I know a lot of stuff looks suspicious, just be careful that there is not another possible explanation. A lot of buyers, for many reasons, become very loyal to certain sellers.

 

If you are that convinced there is shill bidding here, you turn him in. eBay is going to do nothing unless and until they have evidence to show it is really shill bidding and what you have presented here contains no evidence that I can see. In fact, the pattern of bidding you cite would be nearly proof that he is not shill bidding. Why on earth would he bid at the beginning of an auction? I do it all the time to watch an item. If he is shill bidding he already knows what he is bidding on and the is no reason to bid at the beginning. He then places multiple bids at the end of the auction until he is the leading bidder. Again the purpose of a shill bidder is not to win the bid, but to assure that the item sells for a minimum amount. As you state it, "put a what is essentially a reserve on a "no reserve" auction". By winning the auction, he has defeated what he was trying to do.

BTW -jeffB
first - by his feedback
second - the percentage of bids with the seller is given if you click in the bidder from the bidding page.
third - he cannot determine that.

 

It should not be of any concern if there perhaps was as you say a " schill " bidder . The only important thing , is that your knowledgeable about the item your bidding on and have the constitution to only bid to your assessed value . No one takes your hand and hit's the bid again button.

 

Exactly.

 

I think Curt Schilling was a great pitcher. What? We aren't talking about Schilling? We are talking about shill bidding? Oh, that's different. Shill bidding is not allowed on eBay.

 

Oh, ho -- I did not realize that you could get that activity summary from the bidder list! Thank you for pointing that out.

And, yes, the fact that bidder IDs show up on feedback does constitute a big information leak. I'm not quite sure what to do with that information, but it's important to remember.

In light of this, yeah, I do believe that you could spot certain patterns of shill bidding. If it's as egregious as your original description indicated, report it to eBay.

On the other hand, if *I* were this sort of cheater, I'd be sure never to leave feedback when "I" "won" an auction with a shill bid.

 

I have called EBAY to complain about someone I thought was a shill. I was bidding on many different lots of one particular seller (A). But I noticed that one particular bidder(B) was bidding a lot on this sellers auctions - but never winning. AND when I click on his specific info (in an auction (1) click to the right of "Bid history:", then click on (2) a specific user) you could see that even when he won an auction - he would retract his bid. I was alerted to this particular guys because I lost out to him on an auction - but he retracted his bid - so I ended up winning. I tried to find out as much as I could about this shill(er). You can only gather so much info. After that you have to go to EBAY. They never told me one way or another as to any outcome. I still see this guy (B) bidding up the sellers (A) auctions (this thread caused me to look just now). I'm as convinced as I can be that something underhanded is going on. This particular guy has 1031 bid retractions in the last 6 months. His (B) bid activity is 100% with this specific seller (A). I despise people like this. Making a buck by cheating. Taking advantage of others.

 

I pretty certain that shill bidding occurs all the time on the 'bay... but as has been mentioned, it's nearly impossible to prove. The bidding method you describe is much like my bidding style,,, I'll often place a bid on an item when I see it and if i wish to follow it,,, so the first bid is just for tracking...... then at the close of the auction, providing it hasn't gone over where I wanted it, I'll place my final bid or two....
I've also seen creep bidding that looks suspect, where a bidder will increment one dollar at a time,,,,, this does a couple of good things for the seller... 1 - it pushes up thier bid count and makes it look like a lot of activity, which draws attention and in general is good.... and 2 - it pushes up or shills the bid without over running the top bid by too much should they accidently over shill...... (both of these assume shill bidding).
Party Poker (before they left the US) use to run logic in the background to check player to player activity in order to ensure that "teams" didn't load up a table and soak one or two individual players...... I've heard it worked nicely. Ebay could probably come up with some background logic to scrub for "teams" on the 'bay........ Problem is that any logical routine, no matter how unlikely the consumer risk (ie-risk of non'teams are tagged as "teams"), will falsely net some and hurt business,,,, and although cheating on the 'bay is bad, it's not as bad as cheating in poker ; )

Bid often, and bid "LOW".... and you get a few. and it you "must have it,,,, then wait for the last second to input your bid so that there is very little time for the teamed sellers to creep shill thier auction.

Oh,, and if someone ever retracts a bid and leaves you the high bidder,, then follow suit and retract your bid,,, or if too late, then simply refuse to pay... I've done both with no problems on multiple sites. Bid retractions are a definite sign of shill bidding,, and if you say there is a seller.bidder combo as you describe above,,, then yeah.. that should be shut down by the 'bay as it is blatent.

 

Myself, I always follow, "bid at last second as much as I would pay" strategy. I snipe everything, and if I don't win I don't have a chance to second guess myself into paying more. This is why Ebay has become a 8 second auction effectively, to lesson shills, etc.

 

oh yeah,,, on more than one occassion when I see this I've entered healthy bids in advance and then let the creep bidder out bid me,, and then win when I didn't increment them over the remainder of the auction (often days).... It gives me a warm feeling to see an auction bid history where I come in second place and the next highest bidder to me 50% lower or so....
Mission accomplished. You can play them against themselves this way, but it takes practice and an understanding of thier expected shill practice and range,,,,, shoot for 10% below thier tendency on a nice coin and 20 to 25% below on a common coin.. and 99% of the time you'll often stick them with paying for fees on the purchase of thier own coin...... and don't play the game at all unless your ready to drop some $ if you get the win (something I've never had to do,, knock-knock)... It's a game I enjoy,,, I'm sure the bay loves it too.

 

What's schill bidding?

Frankly, I don't really worry much about shill bidding. I figure out what I want to bid and bid it. On eBay that equates to a fire and forget snipe. On larger internet auctions, it typically means bidding in the last minute of the auction. At live auctions (which I very infrequently attend/bid), my strategy depends on the auction and the piece I'm going after, but more often than not I bid late in an auction. What's in common with each of these venues is that I figure out how much I'm willing to pay for an item long before the heat of the moment, and I try very hard not get caught up in last minute adjustments or "auction fever". The coins I chase aren't so rare that I cannot afford to be patient -- and it took me a while to figure this out.

 

p.s. As for the questions posed by the OP, I don't think you're a terrible person. If you are convinced what you see is shill bidding, the I think the right thing to do would be to turn it over to eBay and let them investigate. I think people who break the rules and use shill biding are wrong, and deserve whatever punishment there is specified under the rules of eBay and/or the law.

 

darn it all, just when I thought I knew it all, I went and learned me sumthin new!!


you da man baha!

 

naaaaa... depends on what side of the bed I wake up on. Today, I decided to post on here rather than report. I sort of think it's a ying and yang thing..... if you believe in karma........then....... I try not to let it bother me too much, because I am purposely searching for certain types of listings/sellers and throwing low ball numbers out, some times early, sometimes a late snipe, sometimes I check back, sometimes I don't. The point is, I feel like it's bottom feeding, sort of the opposite of what the occasional lonely seller is doing when he pushes his bid with activity whether it be his initial bid or the creeper showing activity or flat out schill bidding. BTW - for those that don't know this, it doesn't take many bids to appear at the top of "view items with most bids".. Creating a "herd mentality" is slick and it works.

It just really bugs me when I didn't get that $400 coin for $100 cause the seller was the only other interested party!

I appreciate the thoughts everyone wrote. There are a lot of strong opinions with firm unwavering convictions within this hobby, so I was curious what those who were interested in this subject would write. So thank you again.


PS. eBay does provide enough information to indicate whether if a seller is playing games. I think as Baha knows, that you have to have the experience of buying thousands of coins and bidding on tens of thousands a year to get a feeling. Plus. where there is smoke there is fire, relying on gut instincts.. etc etc etc


Now ... does anyone want to see the freakin junk that arrived from Heritage today comparatively to the random eBay coins in the past? rofl!!!!!!

Lets put it this way, I finally got 7 substantially overgraded coins to help complete the study set I have building.

 

I am totally with you. I just learned a $1500 lesson at Heritage, while I got them for slightly less than I would at other venues, my initial bids were still too much for what arrived.