Shill Bidding on eBay

"iconoclass" wrote in message
.. .
If you ever bid on eBay, how would you feel when you encounter shill
bidding ?

You're not smart enough to bid on eBay. If you were, you wouldn't have
bid
more than you're willing to pay.


Shill bidding, is that when someone bids on their own item?
-tom

On Jan 31, 10:36 am, "John R. Yamamoto-Wilson"
wrote:

I think you're wrong about that. If your bid is lower than the reserve
then, yes, it will come out at just over the next highest bidder. But if
you break the reserve then it will come out at just higher than the reserve.

That is correct. If you break the reserve, the bid amount jumps to
the reserve amount.

"In Reserve Price Auctions, if your maximum bid is the first to be
greater than the seller's reserve price, the eBay system will
automatically jump the price up to meet the reserve, and bidding will
continue from there."

There is the possibility that the $299 bid would cause the price to go
to the next increment up (i.e. $299+$5 = $304) rather than 300 flat.
I'm not sure whether the reserve would affect that. Can an under-
reserve bid force an over-reserve bid to go to the next bid
increment? I dunno.

Anyway, the zeroth law of auctions is: don't bid more than you're
willing to pay. If you know the reserve is $300, and you think that's
a fair price, and you bid more than that... then you might just have
to live up to your bid.

For what it's worth, I've always had good interaction with Ebay
police. But that's always been for pretty blatant stuff: fraudulent
'second offers' and there was the time I tipped them off to a stolen
book from UCLA's Special Collections.

--Mike

If you ever bid on eBay, how would you feel when you encounter shill
bidding ?

You're not smart enough to bid on eBay. If you were, you wouldn't have bid
more than you're willing to pay.

On Jan 31, 12:46 pm, "
wrote:
This inquiry seems to confuse two issues.
#1 = This item. Calvin bid what he thought was a
fair price, and knew was 4 per cent over the reserve
price. He now considers declining to make the purchase.
#2 = Shill bidding.

However deplorable, if either of the other bids here was
from a shill, it could not have bought the item for sale,
because less than the reserve price. Calvin remains
the only bidder over the reserve price.

This means, if Calvin now is reluctant to compete the
purchase, he would need a reason acceptable to eBay.
Is he seeking the reason from RCB users?

--
Don Phillipson
Carlsbad Springs
(Ottawa, Canada)- Hide quoted text -

- Show quoted text -

There was no confusion in the inquiry. Even though my maximum bid was
4% over the reserve price, if the shill bidding was not there, my bid
would come in at $121, $1 over the genuine bidding and well under the
reserve price. NO ONE won that item.

You are completely wrong.
Your bid over the reserve would have set your bid to the reserve
price, even if there had been no other bids.
You've presented absolutely no evidence of shill bidding.
It seems like you are just trying to weasel out of paying for the item
- you knew the reserve was $300 and bid over that amount. You clearly
were willing to pay over the reserve price, now you seem to have
buyer's remorse.
Be a man and pay up.

wrote in message
oups.com...

I bought more than 200 eBay items in the last several years with no
problem until now.

This eBay seller had a reserve. When I asked him about the item
conditions, he told me the reserve was at, i.e. $300. I put in my
maximum bid at $311, considering the item value.

When the bidding closed, there were 2 other bidders, one at $120 and
the other one at $299. The second bidder has (0) bid history! He and
the seller signed up with eBay about 2 months apart, more than 2 years
ago. The seller did not have any eBay activities in the last 14
months.

Since this seems like a typical shill bidding, I reported the issue to
eBay 3 days ago and received an automatic reply from eBay saying they
consider shill bidding a "serious" violation and they will investigate
the report within 24 hours.

I sent eBay another email yesterday to check on the report status and
once again received the same automatic reply from eBay.

Two questions arise:

1. How do you folks handle eBay shill bidding problem ? If I do not
pay, the seller can leave me a negative feedback. My current feedback
is 100%.

2. What is your experience with eBay when you need their help ? Is
there anything else I can do ?

Thanx,

Calvin


I agree with John Y-W and others. It's unlikely that this is shill bidding,
because it wouldn't have affected the outcome of the auction. You are
incorrect to think that no one would have won. *You* would have won, because
the highest bid over the reserve wins the auction. Even if there were no
other bids at all, the auction price would have jumped to $300 as soon as
you placed your $311 bid, because you were the only bidder higher than the
reserve. http://pages.ebay.com/help/buy/buyer-reserve.html

The only reason for the seller to have arranged the $299 as a shill bid
would be so that any other bidder would be forced to bid at least the
reserve. Theoretically, it could have saved the seller from listing fees for
a $299 item. But if that were the motive, it wasn't done correctly. For
something like that to work, you would need two shill bids. One at $294 and
the second at $299. But *you* couldn't have gotten the item for under $300
in any case.

I also wouldn't place too much credence in the fact that these accounts were
created two months apart. According to the eBay website, there are more than
100 million people using eBay. There is absolutely nothing astounding about
the fact that a seller and a bidder have accounts created within eight weeks
of each other.

What happened is that someone bid $120, then another bidder came in at $299,
which showed up as $122.50 (one increment over the next highest bid) until
you came along. As soon as your $311 bid was placed, the full value of the
second bid showed because now your bid was higher. You didn't mention
whether your bid then jumped to $304 (one increment higher than the $299
bid) or whether it remained at $300. In any case, you got the item at a
price you were willing to pay, and the prior bids made almost no difference
in the outcome.

Caution is a fine thing, but in this case, you got what you wanted at the
price you were willing to pay, and there's just not enough evidence of
anything underhanded to lose a second's sleep over. (In my opinion.)

Alice

On Jan 31, 5:26 pm, "my-wings" wrote:
wrote in message

oups.com...







I bought more than 200 eBay items in the last several years with no
problem until now.

This eBay seller had a reserve. When I asked him about the item
conditions, he told me the reserve was at, i.e. $300. I put in my
maximum bid at $311, considering the item value.

When the bidding closed, there were 2 other bidders, one at $120 and
the other one at $299. The second bidder has (0) bid history! He and
the seller signed up with eBay about 2 months apart, more than 2 years
ago. The seller did not have any eBay activities in the last 14
months.

Since this seems like a typical shill bidding, I reported the issue to
eBay 3 days ago and received an automatic reply from eBay saying they
consider shill bidding a "serious" violation and they will investigate
the report within 24 hours.

I sent eBay another email yesterday to check on the report status and
once again received the same automatic reply from eBay.

Two questions arise:

1. How do you folks handle eBay shill bidding problem ? If I do not
pay, the seller can leave me a negative feedback. My current feedback
is 100%.

2. What is your experience with eBay when you need their help ? Is
there anything else I can do ?

Thanx,

Calvin

I agree with John Y-W and others. It's unlikely that this is shill bidding,
because it wouldn't have affected the outcome of the auction. You are
incorrect to think that no one would have won. *You* would have won, because
the highest bid over the reserve wins the auction. Even if there were no
other bids at all, the auction price would have jumped to $300 as soon as
you placed your $311 bid, because you were the only bidder higher than the
reserve.http://pages.ebay.com/help/buy/buyer-reserve.html

The only reason for the seller to have arranged the $299 as a shill bid
would be so that any other bidder would be forced to bid at least the
reserve. Theoretically, it could have saved the seller from listing fees for
a $299 item. But if that were the motive, it wasn't done correctly. For
something like that to work, you would need two shill bids. One at $294 and
the second at $299. But *you* couldn't have gotten the item for under $300
in any case.

I also wouldn't place too much credence in the fact that these accounts were
created two months apart. According to the eBay website, there are more than
100 million people using eBay. There is absolutely nothing astounding about
the fact that a seller and a bidder have accounts created within eight weeks
of each other.

What happened is that someone bid $120, then another bidder came in at $299,
which showed up as $122.50 (one increment over the next highest bid) until
you came along. As soon as your $311 bid was placed, the full value of the
second bid showed because now your bid was higher. You didn't mention
whether your bid then jumped to $304 (one increment higher than the $299
bid) or whether it remained at $300. In any case, you got the item at a
price you were willing to pay, and the prior bids made almost no difference
in the outcome.

Caution is a fine thing, but in this case, you got what you wanted at the
price you were willing to pay, and there's just not enough evidence of
anything underhanded to lose a second's sleep over. (In my opinion.)

Alice- Hide quoted text -

- Show quoted text -

I'd like to thank Alice, John Y-W and others for your postings.

I will proceed with the payment. Among other things, I also learned
that there are even "the Good, the Bad and the Ugly" in RCB
world! :-)))

Calvin

On Feb 2, 10:21 am, "
wrote: I will proceed with the payment. Among other things, I also
learned
that there are even "the Good, the Bad and the Ugly" in RCB
world! :-)))

Just like there are weasels like you who try to justify screwing some
seller out of what's due him by trumping up unmerited charges of shill
bidding.
Next time don't bid more than you want to pay, jackass!

This is my FIRST and LAST email to any similar postings!

In the virtual world, we're what we post!

I feel sorry for first grade teachers of posters like this one. They
would have their heart broken knowing how their pupils turning out to
be 40, 50 years later!!!


On Feb 2, 11:29 am, "RWF" wrote:
On Feb 2, 10:21 am, "
wrote: I will proceed with the payment. Among other things, I also
learned

that there are even "the Good, the Bad and the Ugly" in RCB
world! :-)))

Just like there are weasels like you who try to justify screwing some
seller out of what's due him by trumping up unmerited charges of shill
bidding.
Next time don't bid more than you want to pay, jackass!

On Feb 2, 3:03 pm, "
wrote:
This is my FIRST and LAST email to any similar postings!

In the virtual world, we're what we post!

So I guess that you are a weasel and a deadbeat who doesn't want to
pay for auctions he wins, then tries to smear the seller with
unfounded charges of shill bidding.

RWF wrote:

So I guess that you are a weasel and a deadbeat who doesn't
want to pay for auctions he wins, then tries to smear the
seller with unfounded charges of shill bidding.

I think the OP did jump to conclusions, partly perhaps because of
misunderstanding how the bidding system works with a reserve. But as far
as I can see he didn't identify the seller, so he hasn't actually
smeared anyone, just put forward some doubts and had things set straight
for him.

I would have thought it could all have been done without unpleasantness,
but I seem to be in the minority here.

John
http://rarebooksinjapan.org