Primarily Petroliana Shop Talk Forums Archives of the best of past topics For Sale Archive, Non-Petro typical shill bidding

This seller is pretty obvious with his shill bidding,
(in my opinion <- the cya part).
AUCTIONS
Private auctions, crazy multiple bids on items that typically get MUCH less.
Even has one item that has 3 bids and it's only at $1.54.
Ain't a nuthin' you can do about it though.

If they were running it up would it not be crazy high????
Seems like a waste of time for a $1.53 bid???? tt

Nope, it can only go as high as ANOTHER bidder lets it. It appears they are only bumping it one incriment at a time, which is the reason for so many bids on some items and such a low prices.

I was accused of shill bidding this year because of suspicious bidding patterns. A person bid on about 12-13 comic style books of mine. I started them at a low price of 4.99. Some he got for 4.99 some were bid up to about 11 and 2-3 were bid pretty high that suprised even me. He harrased me and filed multiple reports with ebay. Obviously through ebays investigation they found nothing wrong, but this guy was so persistant. He had funds frozen from my account, and was able to leave negative feedback when I did nothing wrong. It was to the point that even ebay refunded him money on one of the auctions.

In the end I offered the guy a full refund including the cost to ship the items back to me and he wouldnt budge, he just wanted me to admit to shill bidding which I did not do. I admit the bidding pattern is weird, but that how it goes sometimes.


People are strange on ebay, I myself might put a small bid to find it does not put me as a high bidder, and might inch up a little not wanting to over pay. I think things were so much easier when you could see who was bidding. Now that you can't see who is bidding, it tends to make things look more suspicious.

Crazy bidding patterns does not necessarily mean shill bidding, especially on $1.53....I would think if anyone was gonna "bump" bids they would do it on items that were worth more....just my two cents...

Does look suspicious. I like the barber pole though.

I'm right there with ya, especially at the end of an auction. If it were one or two of his items I would just shake my head at some of his bidders, but it seems to happen on almost all of his auctions, and he has quite a broad range of items.

I watch barber poles pretty well and quite a few have come up very similar to his, and none of them have had even close to the number of bids he has gotten, and those within the first few days. That one threw up the red flag, and then when I saw it on the majority of his auctions I was convinced.

Again, just my opinion, but there's no doubt in my mind as it's blatant as can be.

Look at his closed auctions. Though they dont tell you the name of the bidder, they will tell you the bidders feedback score. If that score is the same across many random items I would suspect something fishy a goin on....

The seller knows that, that's why all his auctions are private (with undisclosed bidders and their feedback score).

Thats why I tend to use esnipe if I really want to win an item....

What is esnipe?

Its a program that you sign up for. I think there are others like it. It places a bid for an auction the last few seconds before the auction ends. This way you don't miss an auction, and don't have to worry about being outbid. Problem is if you don't bid enough it will place your bid, but your bid might not be the highest. I liked it alot when your user name was able to be seen. People would follow certain collectors to see what they found and bid against them. Plus you don't have to worry about missing or forgetting about an auction.....