Belt Auction

Do you think there’s “SHILL BIDDING” on Ebay?

Many times I bid on an item for days and the same person will come back and increase the price only to disappear at expiration time and never buy…It’s frustrating since it's happened many times. Went to Ebay rules and basically there’s no way to prove someone’s opened a separate accnt to inflate bid prices on his own product. Have you noticed this too? What can u do? http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shill http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/shill http://pages.ebay.com/help/policies/seller-Shill-bidding.html

Public Comments

1. Well, some English guy was busted by the cops for shill biding last year. He opened up two accounts and started bidding on his own items to boost the price. He used the same computer for the shill bidding and the regular bidding so eBay turned him over to the cops. The question is has do you know that the guy never actually buys the item that they are bidding on? They might win and buy, or they might not win at all. You cannot tell if somebody wins and then doesn't pay unless you're the seller. But, yes this kind of thing does happen. Somebody gets their friends to bid on something to put the price up. There's not much that you do about it unless oyu see a clear pattern. In which case you can contact eBay and tell them.
2. One of the biggest deterrents to bidding is the blind eye Ebay turns to this false pricing,and also Ebay has made it nearly impossible for other buyers and sellers to tell if shill bidding is going on. Why control shill bidding? It is not in ebays best interest (money from fees for inflated sales) to control it. I have personally turned in a seller 3 times a couple of years ago, ebay shut her down along with 3 other id's she was using. Now she is back using the same old ID's. I contacted ebay with the past info I had sent, they claim that after 90 days the info is gone and they can no longer refer back to it...also they find no wrong doing..very convenient!
3. Ever since I began participating on eBay as a buyer only, eBay has been rife with shill bidding especially since the bidder's anonymity was protected. Every single time I discovered it was happening I reported it and always receiving a canned reply from eBay that there was no way to determine whether or not it was indeed occurring. That claim is a pile of camel dung, pure and simple. It doesn't take a brain surgeon to follow those types by the FB numbers even though the names change. I refuse to bid most times and must look at the history of bids and the person putting up the item w/scrutiny unfortunately, then when I suspect shill bidding I no longer bother reporting it. eBay is well aware of who and don't do much of anything about it. Just don't bid.
4. I don't ever bid anymore. It's a waste of time. These sellers know that nothing's going to happen to them and all they care about is boosting the price.