That was done as some dudes were following around other buyers and interferring with their auctions, such as making up a fake iD, bidding the item to $10000, and then never paying.
I buy a lot of stuff on eBay, and other than in the case of a rare newbie seller, I have not seen any shilling in the last 5+ years.
Bad Astronaut psst, post 34.
Oh yeah :smack:
I think that this was part of the reason for anonymous buyers. Used to be, if the shill won the auction, then the seller could contact the next highest bidder and say that the highest bidder backed out, or couldn’t be reached, or whatever. And so the seller was willing to sell to the second highest bidder, at their highest bidding price. This was a way of finding someone’s highest proxy bid. At any rate, I got taken by this scam once, and then wised up. I was contacted several times afterwards with an offer, and I’d say “Well, looking at the bidding history, I bid $10 to start, and then someone else got into a bidding war with me and put the price up to $30. I’m willing to pay that original bid of $10, but since that other bidder wasn’t sincere, I’m not willing to pay more.” Notice that I never accused the seller of having a shill, I just said that the other bidder wasn’t sincere. And a couple of times, the seller took me up on my offer, I guess because they didn’t want to get involved in another sale. Eventually I got to the point where I declined all second chances/second offers.
Interesting point. In fact, ebay sellers can still see the identity of all bidders (bids appear anonymous to everyone *but *the seller) so this may still go on.
I bid on an iPhone sleeve for the bare minimum of $.99. Same guy had about 200 auctions of the EXACT SAME sleeve. I decided, sure, what the hell do I have to lose.
You have been outbid!
WTF?!?!?!?!?!?! 200 of these things without bids and instead of putting in his own $.99 bid on the one right next to mine he decides to pay $1.50?!?!?! Then I look and sure enough, his name is concealed. F-ck THAT! Only $1 but that was WAY too fishy.
I was never a big eBay user but I hardly ever use it anymore. Nearly everything I want is “Buy it Now.” If I wanted to “Buy it Now” I’d have gone to Amazon.
You could have easily fouled up his little game by just bidding on a different instance of what you wanted each time he shilled you. Then he’d have ended up having to pay fleabay commision for all the auctions he’d won himself.
No one is saying there isn’t shilling on eBay. There obviously is, but the idea that it works as a long term stragedy is not.
Yes, you can shill and get away with it, for awhile, but you will get caught up. Especially if you report the auction to eBay. They will look into it. If a pattern arises they’ll lock the account.
Of course that doesn’t stop anyone from simply setting up another eBay account. Some of these systems are very complex.
For instance, you may have one guy with access to a lot of IPs. He makes money by setting up an eBay account with different IPs so they aren’t cross referenced and he sells the accounts to less than reputable sellers.
You will notice he doesn’t use the accounts himself. His money is in the fact he has access to different IP numbers and can get the accounts up and running.
It seems like eBay does nothing but they are. But in reality eBay is international and with automated computer systems as soon as eBay finds something and pulls the plug there are already two other ways ready to take their place.
The thing to remember is eBay will NOT, repeat NOT, take action on an auction till it’s reported. Why should they? They get the fees anyway. So report the auction.
But remember the shorter the time the auction lasts, especially if it’s over a weekend, the less time eBay can act on it before it closes.