Belt Auction

How much revenue does eBay make from sellers that engage in shill bidding?

The voices in my head started talking to me today and they said: "shill bidding seems like it could be very profitable- not only for sellers... but also for eBay." Up until about a year and a half ago, you could see who was bidding in an eBay auction. This was awesome because it actually put some sport into auctioning as you could research the other buyers- and by their bidding history, you could calculate your own bid. For instance, vintage01 is a buyer who pays top dollar for vinyl records and rarely is outbid. There's no point in bidding against him. eBay has since changed it so that all bids are anonymous, but only after going under fire for shill bidding in 2004-2005: http://www.lawblog.com/2005/02/ebay-accused-of-shill-bidding.html . I put the pieces together: *Higher auction prices can easily double a sellers eBay fees and PayPal fees. *Now that you can't see who's bidding, it makes it really damn hard to spot and shill bidder and eBay isn't going to hunt them down . *With 90% less reports of shill bidding to investigate = more money in eBays pocket... 2008 eBay revenue was 8.541 billion. How much of that came from shill bidding? http://www.theinternetpatrol.com/ebay-admits-to-shill-bidding-and-ebay-sellers-jacking-up-their-own-bids

Public Comments

1. You can read their SEC reports which are linked to their company in Yahoo Financial. That will tell you more than you care to know about Ebay. I would, however, be amazed beyond belief if you can find out how much shill bidding goes on. Ebay at least says they try to guard the community against that. If it could be documented, they would be forced to stop it. All the information that a public company is required to release is available in their SEC reports even when it is not in their annual report. It was said that if Enron employees ever read the company's publicly available SEC reports, they would have known what the company was doing.
2. The anonymous bidder identities weren't put in to encourage shill bidding - they were put in to eliminate phony Second Chance offers that were ripping people off. If you had gone to the ebay community discussion boards and LISTENED to what the experienced sellers told you, you would have found that out. ebay has also been running a program specifically designed to detect shilling and they toss anyone suspected of it off the site. So that means that you should be seeking mental health treatment for the voices in your head. ;-)