ARCHIVED FORUM -- March 2012 to February 2022READ ONLY FORUM
This is the second Archived Forum which was active between 1st March 2012 and 23rd February 2022
Hi All - just a warning...
Anyone else like me who frequently browses ebay uk for B&O items may have noticed the pair of Beolab 3000s currently being offered by seller sunansadiq.
I noticed them listed a couple of weeks ago and saw that they did not reach their reserve.
http://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/121247160555
Then they were listed again and the bidding went much higher, they were apparently sold:
http://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/121251888134
...but have since been relisted again:
http://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/121257714682
This made me rather suspicious so I dug a little deeper. It seems user i**h (16) won the 2nd auction and quickly left positive feedback for the seller, yet the item was immediately relisted.
I notice the same buyer recently won a toilet macerator from the same seller which again was immediately relisted stating the buyer couldn't afford to pay.
It would therefore appear that this seller is using this ID to bid on their own items to artificially inflate the price - a practice I believe it referred to as shilling.
I've notified ebay of my suspicions but I wanted to put something on here in case any of the members were bidding or planning to bid on this item.
Kind Regards,
Martin.
Something fishy may be going on but when you engage in shill bidding, the shiller is never supposed to win! Their purpose is to drive up the sale price, not win it. That's a sale, and the seller is responsible for eBay's cut of the sale price, as well as listing fees. The seller and "buyer" could have mutually agreed to back out of the transaction, in which case eBay's fees would be refunded, but the point is, the shill bidder isn't supposed to win in the first place. And don't assume the shill bidder (assuming this is taking place) is the seller using a different eBay userid - it might be a friend. In fact, if it's the seller using a different userid, and both userids have the same credit card registered with eBay for paying fees, they WILL be caught by eBay's detection system.
So unless the seller is incredibly dumb to have the shiller win, I'd rule out shill bidding. It could simply be that the same buyer bought two items from this seller and can't pay for either of them. They left positive feedback as a way of apologizing for not being able to pay for it.
friend or seller themselves it still amounts to the same thing.I agree the idea is certainly not to have the shill bidder win, but I guess this is a risk of conducting this sort of activity as they obviously don't know what the other bidders maximum bids are.
Much as I like to give people the benefit of the doubt I find it very strange that someone bids on an item with a seller, fails to complete the transaction due to lack of funds, then bids on a completely unrelated item with the same seller a week or so later and for more than double the value of the previous item and then fails to complete once again. If it is genuine, and I'm really not convinced of that, as a seller I'd be furious.
Anyway, I just wanted to alert any potential bidders here to be on their guard.
Martin
riverstyx:I guess this is a risk of conducting this sort of activity as they obviously don't know what the other bidders maximum bids are.
If the same seller and buyer are constantly mutually agreeing to not go thru with their transactions (to avoid the seller fees) I'm sure this is something else eBay is programmed to pick up on.
And if it's shill bidding, why would the shill bidder leave feedback for the "sale". This just makes it more difficult for the seller to re-sell the item. A potential bidder will think that it was previously sold and returned because it was defective.