How can you tell if someone is bidding up their items

It's called shill bidding. Here's eBay's page on the topic:
http://pages.ebay.com/help/policies/seller-shill-bidding.html

Some obvious clues are the look at the bidder's bidding history. Has he bid on other items by the same seller? Has he lost a lot of the seller's auctions, but hasn't bid on similar auctions by other sellers? I remember seeing one case (and reporting it) where some fool had made a handful of accounts, and each of these accounts had been both sellers and buyers of each others' accounts, so it's really obvious.
 
its easy. look for the bidder with a "zero" feedback and an account that has been open for a year or so. no one opens and account without buying or selling something.
 
[quote name='thagoat']its easy. look for the bidder with a "zero" feedback and an account that has been open for a year or so. no one opens and account without buying or selling something.[/QUOTE]I wouldn't depend on only something like that. I know people that open eBay accounts, but they don't bid on things often and never win anything... so they have old accounts, but zero feedback. It's good to be cautious tho; anybody with 0 feedback can be a little suspicious.
 
[quote name='thagoat']its easy. look for the bidder with a "zero" feedback and an account that has been open for a year or so. no one opens and account without buying or selling something.[/QUOTE]

It took me four years to get one feedback. Sometimes people just don't use the site. I bid on a ton of CAG's auctions via the forum and haven't won one yet. Am I a fake bidder? No. I just haven't been able to win an auction at a cheap enough price, it happens.
 
[quote name='judyjudyjudy']I wouldn't depend on only something like that. I know people that open eBay accounts, but they don't bid on things often and never win anything... so they have old accounts, but zero feedback. It's good to be cautious tho; anybody with 0 feedback can be a little suspicious.[/QUOTE]ive seen bidders with accounts that have been open for 3 years without buying or selling anything. no one's luck is that bad when it comes to winning an auction. it screams of fraud and shadyness. they use it three ways: to bump up their bid, to bump up their buddies bid, or to bid on an auction that they dont intend to pay for.(just to be an ass). ive seen a crap load of these accounts this year. i think ebay needs to start checking a little closer.
 
I used to look for these a lot back on eBay's forums back in the day when they were still big on having community help solve a lot of the issues around the site. I ended up earning around $30 worth of eBay credit for some of the work I was doing, oddly enough!

Now I'm sure things have changed over the past four years, but it used to be that people who did shill bidding were quite stupid. They would use a secondary and tertiary account to bid up their own auctions. They would also have the audacity to leave feedback for themselves with these other accounts as well, making tracking them quite simple. If a Buyer or two only buys from one particular Seller, does so dozens of times, and is involved in bidding on more than 50% of the auctions, you have multiple red flags waving in your face.

Unfortunately, we all pointed out to eBay way back when that most people did this because the worst punishment available was striking those accounts off of eBay. The only problem was that these Sellers would just create two or three new accounts minutes later and start all over again. It's pretty bad when I can link over 20 different accounts to one another over a two week period and 17 of them were NARU'd fairly quickly. If I can see that pattern in less than ten minutes of searching, why didn't eBay care? We all presumed that the answer lay in the fact that, despite shill bidding, eBay was still getting all of the after-auction fees regardless. They weren't reimbursing Buyers for getting screwed, they weren't penalizing Sellers for pulling fast ones. They pocketed whatever fees they got from the auctions and that was pretty much it. What was worse, asking any employee who worked the boards about it resulted in an immediate shut down of the thread without any reasoning whatsoever. Peculiar, no?

In the end eBay basically kicked all of us investigators out because they felt we were causing more trouble for their Power Sellers based on information that may appear to be true but, in reality, wasn't true. Peculiar as well considering that we tended to put a few bucks in here and there and found out that dozens of particular crooks and shill bidders had the same names, addresses/PO Boxes, states, and zip codes as others! Some were "relatives" of the same people...with the same addresses, same "check out" info, exactly the same product listings (letter for letter)...hmmmm...

Just be careful out there. eBay was quite unscrupulous before, but at least it was mostly behind the scenes where nobody really noticed since ripoffs weren't rare but they were being handled. Now? Ooooh...caveat emptor.
 
[quote name='thagoat']ive seen bidders with accounts that have been open for 3 years without buying or selling anything. no one's luck is that bad when it comes to winning an auction. it screams of fraud and shadyness. they use it three ways: to bump up their bid, to bump up their buddies bid, or to bid on an auction that they dont intend to pay for.(just to be an ass). ive seen a crap load of these accounts this year. i think ebay needs to start checking a little closer.[/QUOTE]

Or maybe someone opened an account a few years ago to bid on something. It's also possible that they bought one or two things without getting feedback.
 
[quote name='thagoat']ive seen bidders with accounts that have been open for 3 years without buying or selling anything. no one's luck is that bad when it comes to winning an auction. it screams of fraud and shadyness.[/QUOTE]
It doesn't have to do with luck or poor bidding. Like rywateska, some people are very casual eBay users. Plus, it's easy to get feedback on eBay. I'd be much more suspicious of a new user who has 10 feedback for auctions with the seller or buying BS like cookie recipes than an old account with 0 feedback and no recent bidding history.

Edited to add: With regards to the winning stuff and getting no feedback... that's certainly true. My friend joined eBay to buy something. He never left feedback for the seller, so not surprisingly, he didn't get feedback either (or maybe the seller was someone who's not in the habit of giving feedback).
 
[quote name='judyjudyjudy']It doesn't have to do with luck or poor bidding. Like rywateska, some people are very casual eBay users. Plus, it's easy to get feedback on eBay. I'd be much more suspicious of a new user who has 10 feedback for auctions with the seller or buying BS like cookie recipes than an old account with 0 feedback and no recent bidding history.[/QUOTE]i wouldnt. 0 feedback=shady. but feel free to deal with these people if you want. its your funeral.
 
[quote name='thagoat']i wouldnt. 0 feedback=shady. but feel free to deal with these people if you want. its your funeral.[/QUOTE]I'd be more concerned if it was a seller. Not surprisingly, 0 or low feedback bidders losing auctions is not uncommon.
 
[quote name='judyjudyjudy']I'd be more concerned if it was a seller. Not surprisingly, 0 or low feedback bidders losing auctions is not uncommon.[/QUOTE]youre right. 0 feedback bidders usually dont win(because they dont want to win). the last one that i dealt with actually won the auction only to say that " i dont want it now". guess what? hes still on there bidding for shit that he has no intention of paying for. hes one of many. if you want to believe that the "0" bidders are just someone's grand ma ma looking for a nice bargain, thats fine. i just hope you dont have to deal with them.
 
[quote name='thagoat']i wouldnt. 0 feedback=shady. but feel free to deal with these people if you want. its your funeral.[/QUOTE]

So you won't let people with 0 feeback bid on your auctions at all then?
 
[quote name='greendj27']So you won't let people with 0 feeback bid on your auctions at all then?[/QUOTE]i cant stop them. i wish i could. they bid on my shit all the time, and the whole time im thinking to myself "please dont win". ive had my share of non paying bidders and they came in the form of folks with bogus accounts.
 
[quote name='thagoat']youre right. 0 feedback bidders usually dont win(because they dont want to win). the last one that i dealt with actually won the auction only to say that " i dont want it now". guess what? hes still on there bidding for shit that he has no intention of paying for. hes one of many. if you want to believe that the "0" bidders are just someone's grand ma ma looking for a nice bargain, thats fine. i just hope you dont have to deal with them.[/QUOTE]Well, he obviously wanted to win... he just didn't want to pay. I understand if you feel 0 feedback bidders = inexperienced or incompetent bidders (that's why you can block 0 feedback folks from your auctions). I just don't see how an old, no feedback account directly implies shill bidding.
 
[quote name='thagoat']i cant stop them. i wish i could. they bid on my shit all the time, and the whole time im thinking to myself "please dont win". ive had my share of non paying bidders and they came in the form of folks with bogus accounts.[/QUOTE]

I've yet to have any NPB with over 200 feedback. I guess I've been lucky so far then.
 
[quote name='thagoat']i cant stop them. i wish i could. they bid on my shit all the time, and the whole time im thinking to myself "please dont win". ive had my share of non paying bidders and they came in the form of folks with bogus accounts.[/QUOTE]
You could always cancel their bids before the auction ends
 
[quote name='thagoat']i cant stop them. i wish i could. they bid on my shit all the time, and the whole time im thinking to myself "please dont win". ive had my share of non paying bidders and they came in the form of folks with bogus accounts.[/QUOTE]
I thought you could... or is it just negative feedback?

Edited to add: nm, it's only negative feedback.
 
[quote name='thagoat']heres a good example. this bidder has been active since april of 2004 with no feedback. do you think hes going to plunk down 800 big ones for this xbox? i wouldn't hold my breath. look at the other high priced items. you'll see a lot of bidders like this. http://cgi.ebay.com/Microsoft-XBOX-...240604991QQcategoryZ62054QQrdZ1QQcmdZViewItem[/QUOTE]
Well, he's obviously not shill bidding since he's been bidding on other XBox 360 auctions.
 
[quote name='judyjudyjudy']I thought you could... or is it just negative feedback?[/QUOTE]you can block people that haven't paid and have strikes against them. you can block people without a paypal account, but thats about it. people with bad feedback and 0 bidders can do what they want. you can cancel a bid, but im always hopeful that a legitimate buyer will place a bid.
 
[quote name='judyjudyjudy']Well, he's obviously not shill bidding since he's been bidding on other XBox 360 auctions.[/QUOTE]thats what shill bidding is. he bids, he doesnt win. and if he does, he doesn't pay. theyre freakin parasites.
 
[quote name='thagoat']thats what shill bidding is. he bids, he doesnt win. and if he does, he doesn't pay. theyre freakin parasites.[/QUOTE]No, that's just an NPB. Shill bidding is bidding for the purpose of inflating the price. Unless he's selling an Xbox 360, he's probably not shill bidding.
 
[quote name='judyjudyjudy']No, that's just an NPB. Shill bidding is bidding for the purpose of inflating the price. Unless he's selling an Xbox 360, he's probably not shill bidding.[/QUOTE]they do both. they inflate prices as well as disappoint sellers. avoid. avoid. avoid. thats all im saying about the matter in this thread. farewell.
 
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