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[archermk]

Hello all

I used to visit the forum regularly some years ago when I had an Omega. For various reasons I sold it and moved on, but I'm now looking for another. No, this is not a "wanted" ad.

Whatever you think of eBay, it does serve a purpose. My last Omega was bought & sold there and I think both deals were fair value.

Yesterday I became aware of a scam which apparently is fairly widespread but some of you may want to look out for.

I was watching a car about an hour before bid close. The price suddenly went up from £600 to £1050, so I gave it no further thought and looked elsewhere. After it closed it was listed in my watch-list as selling for just over £600. The £1050 bid had been retracted 30 seconds before it closed. This left the next highest bid as the winning bid. I had been in contact with the seller earlier so I suggested that they should be cautious about this sale. The seller advised me this morning that the winning bidders had turned up and had been very aggressive.

This bidding technique is known as Bid Shielding. The scammer, who is the eventual winner, enters a very high bid while the car is still at a low price about an hour before closure. This allows them to see if the previous high bidder is using automatic bidding. The scammer then gets his mate (or uses a second eBay account) to outbid him by a small amount. These two bids are now at such a high value that everybody else walks away. Just before closing, the scam-buddy withdraws his bid. Just as the bid closes, the price collapses back to just above the best bid that existed before scammy & buddy turned up.

Scammy walks away with a low winning bid and the seller loses out because legitimate bidders have been locked out. In yesterday's example, the seller seems to have been a decent person who placed their car in good faith.

As a seller, how do you stop this? Put a reserve on your car that you will be happy with. Check the bid record after closure and report any discrepancies to eBay (does that achieve anything, I wonder?).

I hope that helps someone get the fair value for their car.

Meantime, I'm back to eBay looking for mine.

[archermk]

Sorry, there is one obvious way to avoid this scam......sell your car through this forum!

[going crazy]

Agreed or in private

[stuart30]

Yeah and whats wrong with that...the seller wants the highest price he can achieve.

If you simply enter your maximum bid too start then there's no way the scam would work.

Cant see the problem...

[Sad]

Yeah and whats wrong with that...the seller wants the highest price he can achieve.

If you simply enter your maximum bid too start then there's no way the scam would work.

Cant see the problem...

The problem comes that when say the genuine bidders have it at £600 and the shielding bidders get the price to £1000.  The genuine bidders that would've paid say £800 can't and won't, so that when the shielding bid is removed the bidding goes back down to just over the £600 the original genuine bidder had put in.    

I'm not sure this would work, but I just don't use eBay any more unless I absolutely have to (once in the last 12months)  

[Loch View]

thanks for that. I'll give it a go  
With 2 laptops & 2 desktops in the house I'm sure we can figure something out  

[Lizzie_Zoom]

Yes, e-bay I do not use and would never use when buying or selling a car, or anything else for that matter.

Personal, face to face Private or Trade dealing, with someone accompanying me, will always be my preferred method! 8-) 8-) 8-)

[TheBoy]

Yeah and whats wrong with that...the seller wants the highest price he can achieve.

If you simply enter your maximum bid too start then there's no way the scam would work.

Cant see the problem...

This is a different scam, where the BUYER is shill bidding to get an item cheaper (by overpricing it early and other potential buyers don't bother).

stuart30 - In your case, what you are doing is wrong and against ebay rules.  If you want to get a certain price, set a rather reserve, its not difficult, nor is it rocket science. Sellers who don't play with a level playing field is exactly why ebay is ruinned. If people played it honestly, stuff finds its natural market value, and everyone is happy.  Scumbags who don't want to play by the rules ruin it for everyone.

[stuart30]

Yeah and whats wrong with that...the seller wants the highest price he can achieve.

If you simply enter your maximum bid too start then there's no way the scam would work.

Cant see the problem...

This is a different scam, where the BUYER is shill bidding to get an item cheaper (by overpricing it early and other potential buyers don't bother).

stuart30 - In your case, what you are doing is wrong and against ebay rules.  If you want to get a certain price, set a rather reserve, its not difficult, nor is it rocket science. Sellers who don't play with a level playing field is exactly why ebay is ruinned. If people played it honestly, stuff finds its natural market value, and everyone is happy.  Scumbags who don't want to play by the rules ruin it for everyone.

Trouble is TB Ebay was ruined long ago...before i used it.

Setting a reserve is fine however that incures more cost,im sure as hell aint paying even more than i already do.

If someone wants too pay £500 then all they need do is enter £500 as there bid...if some silly bugger wants too set a false price thats way above market value then the £500 bidder simply wouldn't win so no harm has come too them,the only potential loser is the seller....hence why i cant see a problem.

I feel the same way about ""sniping tools"" as you sound you do with shill bidding...hardly ""fair"" now are they.

Hmmm actually these people who you call scumbags does that include the auctioneers in well known auction houses who pretend there's more bidders bidding than there actually is....ummm whilst it maybe morally questionable is perfectly legal.....maybe not on Ebay but who cares.

[Auto Addict]

Yes, e-bay I do not use and would never use when buying or selling a car, or anything else for that matter.

Personal, face to face Private or Trade dealing, with someone accompanying me, will always be my preferred method! 8-) 8-) 8-)

Me too Lizzie.

[Gaffers]

Yes, e-bay I do not use and would never use when buying or selling a car, or anything else for that matter.

Personal, face to face Private or Trade dealing, with someone accompanying me, will always be my preferred method! 8-) 8-) 8-)

Sounds like you have found someone you can take along with you.......  

[shyboy]

The simplest solution is for ebay to ban retraction of bids at all stages.
If I remember correctly the rules, (or guidelines  , say that bids may be retracted only in exceptional circumstances, which is obviously ignored by ebay. They don't give a toss so long as they secure their fees.

[TheBoy]

Yeah and whats wrong with that...the seller wants the highest price he can achieve.

If you simply enter your maximum bid too start then there's no way the scam would work.

Cant see the problem...

This is a different scam, where the BUYER is shill bidding to get an item cheaper (by overpricing it early and other potential buyers don't bother).

stuart30 - In your case, what you are doing is wrong and against ebay rules.  If you want to get a certain price, set a rather reserve, its not difficult, nor is it rocket science. Sellers who don't play with a level playing field is exactly why ebay is ruinned. If people played it honestly, stuff finds its natural market value, and everyone is happy.  Scumbags who don't want to play by the rules ruin it for everyone.

Trouble is TB Ebay was ruined long ago...before i used it.

Setting a reserve is fine however that incures more cost,im sure as hell aint paying even more than i already do.

If someone wants too pay £500 then all they need do is enter £500 as there bid...if some silly bugger wants too set a false price thats way above market value then the £500 bidder simply wouldn't win so no harm has come too them,the only potential loser is the seller....hence why i cant see a problem.

I feel the same way about ""sniping tools"" as you sound you do with shill bidding...hardly ""fair"" now are they.

Hmmm actually these people who you call scumbags does that include the auctioneers in well known auction houses who pretend there's more bidders bidding than there actually is....ummm whilst it maybe morally questionable is perfectly legal.....maybe not on Ebay but who cares.

In a proper auction, you bid in small increments so it goes at the lowest price possible - thats the point (assuming the auctioneer isn't crooked).

Online not really so possible in same way, so you tell ebay your ceiling, it bids on your behalf.

An open auction, including Ebay, is not about an item going for the maximum any one person is prepared to pay, its about it going for the market value on the day.  If you go to an auction house to buy something, you don't say how much you are prepared to pay for an item, which in effect what tossers who shill bid their own items are trying to achieve.

Note, ebay do not run closed auctions.  I'm sure there are plenty of sites that do, or if there are not, then there is you business opportunity.

So your only reason for not putting a reserve on is the extra cost? Well, either pay the reserve, or let the item go at market value, not your idea of inflated prices.  Or use Buy It Now.

No wonder Ebay has a bad name when some of its members think they are entitled to something for nothing.

I feel with some auctions, I have to use sniping tools, to conteract the dishonest sellers  

 

If you fancy giving me your ebay ID, I can add it to my Ebay Ignore list....

[shyboy]

Yeah and whats wrong with that...the seller wants the highest price he can achieve.

If you simply enter your maximum bid too start then there's no way the scam would work.

Cant see the problem...

This is a different scam, where the BUYER is shill bidding to get an item cheaper (by overpricing it early and other potential buyers don't bother).

stuart30 - In your case, what you are doing is wrong and against ebay rules.  If you want to get a certain price, set a rather reserve, its not difficult, nor is it rocket science. Sellers who don't play with a level playing field is exactly why ebay is ruinned. If people played it honestly, stuff finds its natural market value, and everyone is happy.  Scumbags who don't want to play by the rules ruin it for everyone.

Trouble is TB Ebay was ruined long ago...before i used it.

Setting a reserve is fine however that incures more cost,im sure as hell aint paying even more than i already do.

If someone wants too pay £500 then all they need do is enter £500 as there bid...if some silly bugger wants too set a false price thats way above market value then the £500 bidder simply wouldn't win so no harm has come too them,the only potential loser is the seller....hence why i cant see a problem.
I feel the same way about ""sniping tools"" as you sound you do with shill bidding...hardly ""fair"" now are they.

Hmmm actually these people who you call scumbags does that include the auctioneers in well known auction houses who pretend there's more bidders bidding than there actually is....ummm whilst it maybe morally questionable is perfectly legal.....maybe not on Ebay but who cares.

The problem is that genuine auctions are designed to let people secure items at the cheapest price possible according to the demand on the day. Anything (including auctioneers taking imaginary bids) which prevents this principle applying makes a mockery of the system, and leaves it wide open to exploitation by the wideboys and spivs of the world. As said in my previous post, the answer to this particular problem is to hold the high bidders to their bids, with no retraction allowed.
But it doesn't bother me because I don't normally use ebay unless there is a BIN, and I certainly don't look to buy high value items through ebay anyway.

[Mr Skrunts]

The simplest solution is for ebay to ban retraction of bids at all stages.
If I remember correctly the rules, (or guidelines  , say that bids may be retracted only in exceptional circumstances, which is obviously ignored by ebay. They don't give a toss so long as they secure their fees.
 

I think you can check a persons profile.  and I believe it lists things like bid retractions.  So do your home work  where ever you can.

A lot of sellers have multiple accounts in an attempt to gain higher prices by bidding up their own items.  as TB says it's against the rules.


Stuart, it seems you have no scrupples in makeing money, and sadly for that reason if you ever get stuffed with a trade on Ebay then I have no sympathy for you. :-/