Ebay - Shill Bidding

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TWG1572

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I'm curious to get everyone's perspectives on an auction I was participating in on Ebay. The bidding pattern is very interesting, and I'm wary something odd is going on.

I typically hold off till the last few moments to bid, but on this item there wasn't any interest at all so I figured I'd throw in a bid at approximately 50% of new retail price. The seller listed it as one month old, like new. The seller also has 0 feedback, so I thought I'd proceed cautiously and see what happened. Take a look at what happened shortly after. 3***a, and c***c entered a ton of bids in increments. The first time it happened I just chalked it up to wierdness. But the second time seems a little too odd. I had the high bid up to $175.

The multiple incremental bids just feels really odd to me. Am I being too paranoid? I've not really ever tried to analyze bid history before. At the price it's at now, I'm not really interested so I'm not getting back in. Probably should have just waited to the end like I usually do to bid.

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Use Auctionsniper. Set it to place your bid at 3 seconds till the end of the auction,and set the price with the highest amount you're willing to pay. Never get into a bidding war,that's a seller's dream come true.
 
I've used a sniping program pretty often. I didn't on these because I was kind of half hearted on them anyway. They weren't what I really wanted, but at the right price I would have bought them.

I'm not sure if this is a bidding war, or someone bidding up the item. The 0 feedback brand new seller made me wonder. Doesn't really matter at this point I guess.
 
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Yes, that was almost certainly shill bidding.

One scheme is that the shill bidder program bids up until it has the high bid, and then the seller cancels the bid as not qualified. A second shill identity then bids just below your now-known maximum.

More sophisticated schemes use more bidding identities to hide the shill bidding from easy detection.

This could easily be detected and blocked, but eBay makes more money by ignoring the practice.
 
Originally Posted By: djb
One scheme is that the shill bidder program bids up until it has the high bid, and then the seller cancels the bid as not qualified. A second shill identity then bids just below your now-known maximum.


Interesting. That pattern could certainly fit here. I'm going to sit back, grab some popcorn, and watch. I won't cry if it goes to me at $175, and is as described. I'll be out some cash compared to just sniping it, but I guess it will be a lesson learned. I don't like being a sniper, but it seems like it's the the only way these days.
 
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Originally Posted By: aquariuscsm
Use Auctionsniper. Set it to place your bid at 3 seconds till the end of the auction,and set the price with the highest amount you're willing to pay. Never get into a bidding war,that's a seller's dream come true.


^this is the correct way to ebay (if you must bid on an auction item).

I just shop ebay as if it is amazon now-a-days and only do buy-it-nows.
 
the laptop I'm typing on. I bought it for 75 bucks. someone bid up my 40 dollar bid up to my max and I won the item. I put the max bid three hours before the auction ended. so someone bid me up to the max I was willing to pay. I got lucky actually. I didn't want to spend too much on a used laptop and these were going in the 150 dollar range. I guess the seller didn't want to relist it and fool with it anymore. The auction ended at 430am. I guess someone got up in the middle of the night to bid on it but not one penny more to win this laptop. LOL
 
I've never used eBay for much, and generally leave one bid and get what I get.

But if others are bidding, the current price is inky the next bid increment over the next highest bid. For example, item is currently $40, with the winning bidder currently willing to pay $100 max. Someone else comes and bids $60. The next thing that would be shown is that the original bidder is now winning at $62. The person that did the non winning bid doesn't show up.

So it seems that there are at least three people besides yourself bidding. The one who put in the second bid seems genuine, and it seems that the other two had a little bidding war. If it were a shill, why keep bidding it up after they beat you? The issue there is that if the main buyer cancels, there is someone else next in line who is not you. You're currently third back in the line.
 
I don't understand why people bid hours or days before the thing ends. All that early bidding does is run the price up and usually you wont win because someone else bid $.25 more than you.
 
Originally Posted By: JHZR2

But if others are bidding, the current price is inky the next bid increment over the next highest bid. For example, item is currently $40, with the winning bidder currently willing to pay $100 max. Someone else comes and bids $60. The next thing that would be shown is that the original bidder is now winning at $62. The person that did the non winning bid doesn't show up.

So it seems that there are at least three people besides yourself bidding. The one who put in the second bid seems genuine, and it seems that the other two had a little bidding war. If it were a shill, why keep bidding it up after they beat you? The issue there is that if the main buyer cancels, there is someone else next in line who is not you. You're currently third back in the line.


I'll be the first man to admit I don't completely understand the bid history page, but how you are explaining it doesn't sync up with what I observed. Until 12:50 PST, I was winning this auction. I got the notification that I was outbid when I was sitting at my desk mid-afternoon (CST). If I understand you correctly, you are saying that my bids (since I was winning) should have showed at each of the increments where I got bid up. AKA the $62 example above. I was the winning bidder from $20ish to $175.

I guess I'm struggling to see who the second person between me and the winning bidder is. What I think I see happening is 3***a tapping out last night at $68. c***c then showed up this afternoon and went from $80 to $250 over the course of a minute in six bids. I don't know why the winning bidder kept bidding once he beat me, but the bids are 10 seconds apart roughly. I can't imaging two people having a bidding war that quickly.

Again, I don't pretend to be an expert on this so I'm certainly open to learning how I'm reading this wrong.

At the end of the day, this whole eBay bidding thing isn't a huge deal. Just one of those...wow, this seems weird moments.
 
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Yep, there's something fishy going on with that bidding. When you were first outbid at $180, any higher bid that c***c (I feel like I'm bypassing the censor now) put in would not result in the winning price going up like it did.

What will probably happen is the auction will end and the seller will complain to eBay that the winning bidder won't pay so he can avoid the selling fees. Then he'll contact you outside of eBay to sell it to you at your maximum bid amount and keep all the cash and you won't be protected by any of eBay's services.
 
Originally Posted By: Chris142
I don't understand why people bid hours or days before the thing ends. All that early bidding does is run the price up and usually you wont win because someone else bid $.25 more than you.


I do b/c I bid like it's 1996! I bid my max and if someone goes over me they win it. Otherwise it's mine.

I don't play games or try to get it for less.

I also don't ebay very much-- the stuff I do get is usually BIN anyway.

I have ten toggle switches coming shipped from China for $1.48 for example. Beats hitting the ham radio flea market.
 
Originally Posted By: Chris142
I don't understand why people bid hours or days before the thing ends. All that early bidding does is run the price up and usually you wont win because someone else bid $.25 more than you.


They do it because that's how the system is designed to work.

eBay's proxy bidding system is designed expressly so that you don't have to go in and bid during the last three seconds of an auction. My response to this question is one of the inverse: why would you feel the need to bid during the last seconds of an auction? If you're scared of getting out-bid without time to place another bid, then you're not using the system as designed in the first place. By design, if you're been out-bid, you should be out, because the auction has then exceeded the HIGHEST price you are willing to pay for the item. The time left in the auction after being out-bid is a moot point. The auction has exceeded your highest price and you are no longer interested in the item at that price.

eBay has designed a very nice system that takes the I-have-to-be-there-at-the-end component out of an auction format. It removes the need for two people to repeatedly leap-frog each other in bids. The irony is people don't use it correctly and end up doing what the proxy bidding is supposed to do for you. An analogy I can come up with is constantly changing the temperature of your thermostat at home to get your HVAC to turn on and off, rather than setting one temperature and letting it work.

If bidders feel this leap-frog bidding gives them an advantage, I believe they don't understand how eBay works. I've been buying and selling on eBay for over 15 years. The appearance of "sniper bidding" services demonstrates the general misunderstanding of eBay's proxy bidding system.
 
In an ideal world, I would agree, and in fact, that's how I e-bay. I bid what I'm willing to pay and if I'm outbid, well good on the bidder that gets the item.

But the ebay system doesn't do much for the shill bidder scenario mentioned. Where someone bids in an effort to find your max bid and then the seller disqualifies the bid and finally uses a sniper/shill to bid just below your max bid in an effort to force the auction to your max price.

If the system was working as you said, if no one else was interested, the auction wouldn't go near your max bid. But if the seller is working with a couple of shills, they can get the auction up to the max you would pay.

Sure, you were willing to pay that and no more. But if it would have gone for less in the marketplace of legitimate bidders, you would like to keep your money too.

So nothing wrong with using a sniper to bid your max bid at a few seconds before the auction ends in an effort to minimize what you would pay.
 
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