shill bidder spotting?

[tiggers]

Here's what ebay considers shill bidding. So how do you protect yourself? Hopefully relaying my recent ebay adventure will help a few of you out.

1. I saw this Talk Talk Dualdisc (DVDA) that I wanted. One bidder was ahead of me, but my $1.50 bid put me over the top. So far so good.

2. A few days left in the auction, I notice I am outbid. No problem. Unfortunately for this seller, I'm a curious person!

3. In general, when I bid early or am watching an auction I'll usually check out the other bidders and their bid history. If I see that a lot of the other bidders are into SACD or DVDA auctions, I might just save my time and stop watching the item as I know that the bidding will only drive the price over what I'm willing to pay.

4. I checked out bidder r***e ( private ). What immediately catches my attention is that r***e ( private ) had a 100% bid history with the seller! Out of about 400+ items, 100%!! That ratio has changes since first looking. Now its about 96%.

So then I started watching the seller for other similar items (exact item actually). this is what I found.
1
2
3
4

Wow! r***e ( private ) really likes those TALKING HEADS - TRUE STORIES dualdisc's!

So that only compeled me to check/watch a few others:
5
6
7
8

And so on and so on. You'll start to notice the pattern on where r***e ( private ) gives up depending on the disc. Here's the sellers completed auctions if you want to look further. The seller "eaglevisionusa" may have a 100% feedback, but I don't think buyers really know what's going on!

Needless to say, I'm pretty convinced that this seller/bidder are shilling and should be avoided. Hopefully, by studying this sellers actions others will be able to do their own little bit of investigation and protect themselves as well.

Anyone know the best way to report this seller? :sun

 

[cliffbig]

Can't help you with the shill bidder, but I will point out that Amazon still has the Talking Heads DualDisc box set available at a reasonable enough price:

http://www.amazon.com/Talking-Heads/dp/B000B5XSK8/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&s=music&qid=1261630202&sr=8-1

 

[timbre4]

On eBay click on the Site Map and look for the Security topics or try this: http://pages.ebay.com/securitycenter/

 

[w.a.reid]

yep - seen it before.....but hard to prove. seller "i cant help it if my brother bids on all of my auctions" i fell victim to that too many times - see something i want - leave a way large bid on it early in the auction, and within the last few moments someone else would bid right on up to - but not more than my bid. i quickly realized - last second bid... or die.

but i break all ebay rules - if theres something i wanted badly enough - sure its in the $300 range , but last second bid $3500! sure i win - but if it jumped out of control with other last second bidders - "hey, c'mon, that was an accident - i didnt mean $3500 - i meant $350. sure there is some fuckery going on - but ive been victimized more than ive been abusive.

i really liked the previous format when i could see who i was bidding against - i would stay away from any qrx9001 that "stolijohn" would bid on - he couldnt be outbid - same with camaro396 - or something like that - cant buy marantz if he wants it too....ebay would rather i try i guess, y'know, run up the bid. ebay changed im sure because too much - "hey i saw you were bidding on xxxx - i have one - - wanna buy it ? email me" ebay no like losing that sale - and often seller was a scam anyways.

i would also "haunt" a seller that i had a bad experience with - used to be you could see who was bidding and copy the same TRUTHFUL WARNING to all current bidders - and often got a "thanks for the heads up" as a reply - i wish someone would have done that for me many many times.

just talking - crap - im drunk.
happy new year.

w.a.reid

 

[EMB]

Bidding early is pointless in most instances, IMO. Bidding late and sniping is the best way to win any auction, and at the least, if there are any competitors, you can decide whether to up the ante or bow out. Personally, if I think someone is shilling me--which is rare, BTW--I'll keep jacking the price up, but stop after the other guy's placed a bid a little before the auction ends. If a real shill is being used, then it's a wasted auction; if not, the seller makes a tidy profit from someone who shoulda known better....

ED