ebay Bidding Caution

[dencins]

Here is an interesting approach to eBay bidding I stumbled over today on an item I have on eBay. If it was not my own item I would have thought it was someone shilling (buyer trying to artificially inflate the price) but since it was my own item I knew that was not true.  

One person seems to be using three eBay ID's (o***n, i***i, s***s).

o***n has 3 favorable feedbacks and 8 bid retractions
i***i has 5 favorable feedbacks and 14 bid retractions
s***s has 1 favorable feedback and 5 bid retractions

Notice the bid retractions. The feedback from all three buyer id's to sellers is "Nice!".

o***n enters bidding at $15.50 with a maximum of $1400.00
i***i (maximum limit of $150.99) then bids about every two to four minutes bring bring the bid to $51.99.
s***S (maximum $55.01) then bids up to $56.01.
i***i then comes in again and bid up to $150.99.
o***n automatic bid then puts bid at $153.49.

Once the item is overbid and "watchers" go away or other potential bidders have lost interest, o***n retracts the bid dropping the bid to $76.01. If i***i then retracts the bid goes to $56.01 for s***s. If s***s retracts the bid falls again, etc. The bidder owning the id's then has the opportunity to capture the auction at a reduced price.

While sniping can be frustrating at least it is competitive bidding. This approach is designed to suppress bidding.  

I cancelled the bids on my item from these id's and submitted documentation to eBay investigations and asked them to email with their results. Time will tell if they do anything.

Dennis Hallworth

[Dave F]

Dennis,

Thanks for the info.  Looking back, I believe that this tactic was once used against one of my auctions as well.  At the time, I didn't know for sure that the multiple bidders were really one in the same, but after hearing your story I see now that they most likely were.  I will certainly be vigilant in the future and promptly contact eBay if it ever happens again.

For what it's worth, even if eBay takes action against the bidder(s) in your auction, they generally won't tell you.  They tend to keep their punishments secret for whatever reasons they have.  But if the bidder gets suspended, you might be able to tell by occasionally looking at his feedback page.  He might temporarily be "not a registered user", and that would show up.

In addition, you might also add all of his IDs to your Blocked Bidder's list.  This would keep him (them!) from ever bidding on any of your auctions again.  In fact, you should probably make his IDs public so we can all add him to our respective Blocked Bidder's lists.  We all want to win, but this type of thing is really below-the-belt behavior.

Thanks again,

Dave

[Wallphone]

eBay does tell you how many times a buyer retracts a bid but I also think it would be nice if they told you how many times a seller ended the auction early. As for bid retractions I think that some bidders use their secondary account to go fishing on what some of the other bids are. I never thought about them trying to get rid of the competition and then retracting right before the auction ends, but it certainly makes sense. You would think that eBay would have a program to weed out the scum. Here is one that I saved. < http://tinyurl.com/6zdmuff > The bidder has ZERO feedback but 24 bid retractions. The auction that I found this on he just so happened to enter the wrong amount of $12,648.00 for a $500 phone. I've seen another one where the bidder had 91 retractions. I think that one was for one of Sargeguy's phones.
Doug Pav

[GG]

I don't think we can count on Ebay making any changes to stop these kinds of abuses.   It's in Ebay's interests to have the maximum number of users even if that means not weeding out the corrupt ones.

However a concerted protest by an organized group could put the pressure on Ebay to change its policies and get rid of these accounts. 

BTW, the term for these in some places is "sock puppets," meaning, fake users that only exist to serve the interests of the person who is behind them.   

And we can handle them internally here, by using this topic as a place to broadcast warnings about these people, so folks here who sell stuff can at least block these people from bidding.

[AE_Collector]

And we can handle them internally here, by using this topic as a place to broadcast warnings about these people, so folks here who sell stuff can at least block these people from bidding.

Well not really. The bid codes (x***x) don't identify anyone or even give the ebaY handle that a seller would see when his item is bid on. Bid codes are not unique to an individual ebaY handle.

I guess we could have a thread where we post actual ebaY handles that have been troule in the past but then it will only be a matter of time until a "heated discussion" breaks out on the forum when someone discovers their handle posted with bad comments.

There are lots of people who regularily read the posts here but are unable to post themselves because they haven't registered with Dennis. I am constantly amazed at the number of "guests" (not registered and unable to post) compared to "users"(registered and able to post) on here at any given time. You can find this info at the bottom of the home page. At this moment there are four registered users on-line; Dennis Markham, Doug Rose, Remco and Myself. There are an additional 22 "guests" on as well.

So my point is that while we think everyone on here is of a like mind and are honest reputable people, there are many on here reading posts who we have no idea about their ebaY habits etc.

And a final comment is that even when we have read the handles that are problematic on lists, we still will forget all aout it when we see something we want and bid on it. Once we get ripped off someone will point out that the name is on "the list" and you shouldn't have dealt with him but it is too late then.

I could post a bunch of ebaY handles here that we should be wary of but I don't think we want to go there, do we? Dennis?

Terry

[Dennis Markham]

I could post a bunch of ebaY handles here that we should be wary of but I don't think we want to go there, do we? Dennis?
Terry

I agree, Terry.  I think it would be best not to do that.  I do think however, that such information can be shared privately between members.  But we want to be careful about finger pointing publicly when a mistake could be made and there may be accusations of libel.  I have read warnings on both ATCA and TCI lists in the past about certain individual sellers/bidders.

[Dave F]

<snip> ....I am constantly amazed at the number of "guests" (not registered and unable to post) compared to "users"(registered and able to post) on here at any given time. You can find this info at the bottom of the home page. At this moment there are four registered users on-line; Dennis Markham, Doug Rose, Remco and Myself. There are an additional 22 "guests" on as well....

Terry

Terry,

Not all the guests are non-registered folks.  I often check out recent postings just to see what's new without taking the time to log in.  I suspect that many of us do this.

Also, as much as we all would like to publicly eviscerate those who abuse the eBay system, I'm afraid that if we start publishing user IDs of our favorite targets it wouldd cause us more problems than it would solve, possibly even some legal hassles.

Dave

[AE_Collector]

Not all the guests are non-registered folks.  I often check out recent postings just to see what's new without taking the time to log in.  I suspect that many of us do this.

Yes I had forgotten that. I click on the "always stay logged in" thing so I don't have to bother logging in each time.

Also, as much as we all would like to publicly eviscerate those who abuse the eBay system, I'm afraid that if we start publishing user IDs of our favorite targets it wouldd cause us more problems than it would solve, possibly even some legal hassles.

Dave

Agreed.

Terry

[dencins]

I agree which is why I used the ebay reference that is public record rather than the ebay id which would only be seen by the seller.

Dennis