Ebay shill bidding essay

[Dale]

G'day,

An astute Ebayer has published an interesting essay on the practice of shilling in Aus.

Link

Really fascinating

[Gooshin]

thats a long read holy shit

[Dale]

Yeah,

A bit over long, he needs an editor. Still, just another way to get e-fleeced.

[ve2vfd]

I was a good read nonetheless...

I've always suspected some vendors of shilling their bets... thats why I ONLY bid on an item in the last seconds of a sale (sniping). If I don't get the item, then oh well... maybe next time.

Bidding early and entering a maximum bid is a sure way to rapidly increase the price of an item. That defeats the purpose of auction buying (where the point is lwest possible cost to me as a buyer!)

My 2 cents

Pat

[hoojammyflip]

Maybe this is a better example of potential shill bidding: item 120455680363, 35 bids, look at the bids from bidder 9 against bidder 6. Bidder 6, no track record, enters a high starting bid, bidder 9 chases it up with 10 bids. This is obviously cheaper than putting in a reserve for an item. And who pays GBP60 for a lens which normally sells for GBP30....

My tips for bidding
1) Always snipe
2) Check the sellers previous auction bid histories. Funny bid patterns with prices sky high and many small incremental bids to buyers with low ratings are a bad sign
3) If you are going to enter a bid in the middle of the auction, make it the lowest possible. Then a shill bidder can only bid once to be the best bid, and will be forced to stop shilling
4) If you expect there is a shill bidder in the auction you are in, the price is higher than it should be. Stop bidding.
5) Watch items in groups and avoid ones which are too high relative to the other auctions

[K-9]

The person posting that would have done a lot better if he had stayed away from using "and ebay knows it" several times over. At least say something like "ebay must know this is happening" as you are just sounding slanderous otherwise.

I always bid in the final seconds, and I have noticed it is pretty odd when someone makes an auction private when it's not adult or possible embarrassing things up for sale. I have to be more cautious about those, as I have bid on one or two items lately which were just normal things and the seller marked the bidders identities as private for no apparent reason. I didn't really think of it until now.

I don't like the 2nd chance offers, as it doesn't tell you if the high bidder didn't pay or if the seller just had a 2nd one. If the high bidder didn't come through, I would tell the seller I would only buy it for one bid increment over the 3rd highest bidder, because if the high bidder never bid, I wouldn't have been paying one increment below them.

Just bid last minute, and don't bid more than what you want to pay. With mobile phone access, I can just bid even when I'm not home so I don't have to bid 4 hours early and get bumped up.