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Shill bidding

11 replies

Gingefringe · 16/06/2013 18:35

I won an item today. Start price 99p and my one bid was £8.50. Only one other person has bid against me - 4 seperate bids up to the value of £5 which means that this is the price I will pay.

On looking at the bidding records on this bidder they have a feedback score of 23 and 100% bidding percentage with the seller. This seems suspiciously like shill bidding to me!

I haven't paid for the item yet as I'm quite miffed and tempted to contact the seller to tell her that I'm suspicious of the other bidder and asking her to invoice me the 99p which is the price I would have won the item for if the other bidder hadn't inflated the price!

I also want to report to eBay.

What do you think? Has anyone else had experience of this and what was the outcome if you did anything about it? I still want the item but feel a bit cheated TBH! I don't like seeing people get away with cheating.

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Aetae · 16/06/2013 18:41

Definitely do it. Shill bidding is illegal (fraud) and SO common on eBay - it's very annoying and usually hard to conclusively catch people at it. eBay will probably do nothing, per their normal practice, but you can at least try.

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Mum2Pea · 16/06/2013 18:44

definitely contact them.
why should they get away with charging you more.
its illegal - end of!

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Gingefringe · 16/06/2013 18:47

Thanks folks, I have managed to find out the id of the 'shill' bidder (they actually won an item but it was relisted shortly afterwards!) after trawling through her feedback and there is definitely something suspicious going on between them!
I will email her now and see what the reaction is!

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lljkk · 16/06/2013 19:00

Some shill bidding is to boost feedback, it may not just be about increasing prices.

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Gingefringe · 16/06/2013 19:10

I have emailed her and have now just had a 'cancellation notice' for the item - her reason that the item had been sold to someone else.
This is highly suspicious and I have now reported the seller to ebay and blocked them (and the 'shill' bidder).
It will be interesting to see if the item is relished in a few days (or next free listing w/e)

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Gingefringe · 16/06/2013 19:11

Relisted, not relished!!

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fergoose · 16/06/2013 21:55

refuse the cancellation then she won't get her fees back.

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LegoAcupuncture · 16/06/2013 21:57

Report her to ebay. I hate shill bidding.

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Gingefringe · 17/06/2013 07:00

The plot thickens - she virtually admitted to me that she had used another account to put up the bidding as she wanted to stop the auction on this item as she had sold it already on another site called 'preloved'. She said that she had done this as there was 'no interest in the item strange i thought that my bid was showing interest and this was the only way it could be stopped!
I've reported her to ebay and left scathing negative feedback.
Clearly a liar - on checking her feedback/prior sales she had been using the same 'shill bidder' in each transaction. I hope eBay now cancel her account.

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Tryharder · 17/06/2013 08:52

Interesting!

How do you check bidders records like you have done OP?

I use a mobile app to eBay and can't work out to do it.

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Gingefringe · 17/06/2013 22:21

tryharder - not sure if you are able to access the same info on a mobile phone app but on my computer I click on to the 'bids' for the specific item - this brings up a list of the other bidders and the bid amounts - click onto the bidder (even though it only gives you part of their id) and you can see the percentage of activity with the seller.

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