Page 1 of Getting sick of ebay...

Yet again,I`m the victim of `Shill bidding` on ebay.
I`m bidding for an item and I`m the only bidder with an hour to go,with no reserve.
All of a sudden this `private ID bidder` comes in and starts upping the price.
Just bidding against themselves :/ until the item `sold` for much more than I was willing to spend.
It was such a blatant attempt to `bait` me into a last second bid,but I`m experienced enough not to get caught up in this naive practice.
I`ve reported them for it,but I won`t hold my breath. >:(

surely its simple enough for ebay to block users with the same ip bidding against each other?

but no. at the end of the day it makes em more money :(

jc808

It needn`t be the same IP address,unfortunately.
It could be his home computer,or a mate`s.
I`ve no doubt it goes on all the time,but some are more blatant than others.

A friend of mine also had a similar experience to yours, he realised what was going on so stopped bidding like you. Straight after the auction finished he was contacted saying the winning bidder had "pulled out" and was he still interested. It was so obvious that the seller was bidding against himself!

To be honest Ebay is pretty poor. I've had loads of people who don't pay so I've reported them to Ebay, they get an unpaid item strike but it doesn't seem to do anything other than make the person give you bad feedback even though you've done nothing wrong! You have no way of getting rid of false feeback. It's crap really as I've had people with vendetta's setting up a false account just to win something to give you bad feedback.

The problem is EBay are making a fortune so they really don't care about the dodgy things that go on, you can't speak to people who run Ebay, instead you just get automated emails in response to any issues. It's so annoying!

I suppose one way to protect yourself from shilling is to start to snipe - bid once, bid your maximum and bid *late*.

I snipe manually, but there are programs that do it.

Unfortunately eBay will only ban the person doing the shilling, not the person who is running the auction (who is obviously in on it).

You can use the Advanced search to see what a person has been bidding on in the past month - watch for the same name cropping up again and again. (Do this before you bid if there have been bids already) I think the site that the Firefox "eBay Negs" extension uses also lets you compare bids from two user IDs.

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This item was edited on Monday, 20th June 2005, 12:18

I`ve stopped using EBAY - everything is suspect now - you can`t trust anything! it used have far fewer people and description were usually bonafide - but it`s just all gone wrong over there.

Loot!

Quote:
I`ve stopped using EBAY - everything is suspect now - you can`t trust anything! it used have far fewer people and description were usually bonafide - but it`s just all gone wrong over there.

I think you`re being unfair there. I`ve made over 160 transactions and they`ve all gone without a hitch with the exception a few years ago of one divot who sent me a badly packed CRT monitor which was in several pieces by the time I`ve got it.

Sure, there are some dodgy dealers and they`re often easy enough to spot, but the majority there are legitimate.

I still think that the good just about outweighs the bad on eBay and will continue to use it. There are a lot more timewasters and crooks on it than ever before though. Whenever I bid and lose and then the seller comes back with a second chance offer claiming the winner has pulled out I always tell them no thanks

Andy

I tend to only really use ebay to punt the old crap i dont want or to, pretty much, buy it now.

For example, the last thing two things I bought from Ebay were a Cybershot camera case and a DKU lead for my dads nokia.

The Camera case was BIN for 9.99, 19.99 everywhere else on the web. The guy had 2000 odd positive feedback.

The DKU lead was 2 quid with a fiver P&P from hong kong. 20-30 quid in your carphone warehouses. The seller had over 3000 positive feedback.

Both transactions were as smooth as a cashmiere codpiece.

Thats the only real buying I do on ebay. Electrical/household Items I need, for cheap from power sellers.

This item was edited on Monday, 20th June 2005, 13:29

Its quite easy to spot a shill bidder, providing you don`t get sucked into re-bidding on the item, you always get contacted after the auction saying the best bidder pulled out.

Then you just check the other auctions that bidder has won bids on, and see if they are from the same seller, and if so you contact ebay.

I`ve had this one, but in hundreds of transactions, that makes it a very uncommon occurence.

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