Just got shilled :(

[James Burke]

Shill Bidding. You know the drill...bidding on an item on an auction site only to get beat out at the last minute by a lone bidder.

After some checking (God Bless Ebay's very detailed records), I notice the winning "buyer" has a track record of "purchasing" 10% of all the seller's items ever listed...all less than one hour before the end of an auction. Eighty percent of those items were "won" within the last hour of the auction.

The sellers wide variety of stuff is totally un-related and is's very unlikely the same "buyer" should ever happen to purchase (or even look at) those items. The seller has a feedback rating of less than 50.

So, I'm now awaiting the "second chance offer" message from the seller stating that his guy bailed.

Buyers beware...

JB

 

[401Graphics]

report it.

 

[James Burke]

report it.

I will...after I buy it. I'm pretty sure he'll bite on the second chance offer. It's something I really want...and it's extremely hard to find. I'm going to haggle him down to my original bid, or perhaps lower if I'm in a bad mood when he responds.

And, oh yeah...all ten of those shill bid wins for other items have been placed with in the last 30 days. I don't think that guy knows what kind of trouble he's in for. I even made a .pdf copy of his bidding history.


JB

 

[401Graphics]

worse thing they are gonna do is suspend his account permanently, and probably block his ip/name credit card/etc from opening a new account.

 

[Moze]

eBay and Amazon are dangerous. I spend entirely too much money there. Mainly Amazon.

 

[S'N'S]

I was bidding on a camera from a camera store on ebay and worked out the guy was Shill bidding so I reported him, couple of hours later and his store was gone.

 

[Pat Whatley]

Couple of hours after that he was back with a different ID.

 

[S'N'S]

Yeah Pat I know, but it made me feel good.
I have noticed quite a few people selling stuff under 2 or 3 different store names and found they have the same address, bank accounts etc. I always check out as much as possible about who I buy off.

 

[visual800]

ebay has become a playground for theft and deception. I buy lots of stuff on ebay and so far have been lucky I have been taken a couple times but jumped right on it and got it all straightened out.

bought a hard drive off there that was messed up sent it back to the guy in the same wrapping he sent to me in, he complained to ebay hard drive was dead because of poor packaging. Really?

Starting to be choosy about who is selling stuff and their record. Im one of those that will come in in the last 10 seconds and bid and lately I have been outbid, which shockes the hell out of me. Is this shill bidding an automatic thing?

 

[fixtureman]

I was shill bidded on a item that I bought from the company that was that had there name on the item that I bought. I reported them and their account was pulled for a month. they were back doing the same thing after that.

 

[WildWestDesigns]

Is this shill bidding an automatic thing?

You can go in and say you want to bid up to $xxx. If the bidding is still under that, the auto bid just does another increment up for the person.

That type of bidding has always been done. At the physical auction houses and online ones as well. So has shill bidding, however, that can be a little more dangerous if you get caught at the physical auction house doing that.

Shill bidding and auto bid are not usually the same thing, but a shill bidder can use it for that purpose. Shill bidding is used by the owners (either through themselves or through someone else) in order to jack up the price during bidding.

 

[fmg]

E bay opened the gates to a whole new breed of criminal activity.One has to be so prudent when using that place.

 

[thinksigns]

Many years ago when DVDs first came out, I bought a DVD player and put my laserdisc player on eBay. Within a few hours, a guy bid the reserve price and then sent me a message. It turns out that the player I was selling had a special laser and that it was worth much more than what his current bid was. He even sent me a link to a page that had the reasons why it was so much better than other players. I added that info to the auction, but there were no other bidders. The guy said he felt so guilty, that once he received the player, he went out a bought a new DVD, Maverick I think, and mailed it to me.

I'm pretty sure that won't happen on eBay today.

 

[IronHawk]

Many years ago when DVDs first came out, I bought a DVD player and put my laserdisc player on eBay. Within a few hours, a guy bid the reserve price and then sent me a message. It turns out that the player I was selling had a special laser and that it was worth much more than what his current bid was. He even sent me a link to a page that had the reasons why it was so much better than other players. I added that info to the auction, but there were no other bidders. The guy said he felt so guilty, that once he received the player, he went out a bought a new DVD, Maverick I think, and mailed it to me.

I'm pretty sure that won't happen on eBay today.

The same exact situation may not happen, but there's just as good of a chance of something similar happening today as there was back then. The only thing is that there are more who would rather take advantage of you AND have the means to do it easily now than there were then.

I sell on eBay and am constantly surprised by some of the good eggs out there. My expectations have been severely lowered by the hordes of people who can't seem to write a communication with punctuation, sentence breaks, a lack of capital letters, capital letters or common sense involved but I do seem to regularly run into people with a genuine ability to be somewhat normal as well.

 

[Pro Image]

You didnt get Shill bid......You got sniped.......Whole different ball game.......

Ive done it before....just waited until the last few seconds of a auction and place my bid.....You just have to watch the item close and keep up with the bidding.....Thats part of the game......

Now if he had someone he new bid it up that illegal.......

As for this guy buying from the seller all the time....I have a few Favorite ones Ill buy off of all the time....Nothing to suspect there.....