Shilling on eBay

Ok so this is really starting to get on my nerves. Just about every auction I've been following the last few months has had bid retractions and high % with seller and bid retractions. I've taken a stand by notbidding on dodgy looking auctions but sometimes they just have the low numbered card that youreally want or need. AnyOne else noticing this more and more?? Can anything possibly done to try and fix this up??

Sadly high % with seller is not a good indicator as I found out as I think it looks at the last 30-90 days of bidding.

I know when I was inactive on eBay for a long time and then certain seller listed all these retro games. I bid on like 40 of them and when i checked on the ones I won, it said I had a 100% bidding with the seller.

Cobretti said:

Sadly high % with seller is not a good indicator as I found out as I think it looks at the last 30-90 days of bidding.

I know when I was inactive on eBay for a long time and then certain seller listed all these retro games. I bid on like 40 of them and when i checked on the ones I won, it said I had a 100% bidding with the seller.

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When I was selling lures I seen the same thing and in the end I had a good buyer blocked. When you are looking for an exact thing, that happens.

I think ebay sellers these days are too dishonest to honour the notion of selling with an auction. Basically, we all have an idea on our minds how much we want to sell something, especially for expensive/rare cards. So instead of setting up a Buy It Now item say for $100, they start it at $0.99 and try to guide it to an amount that they feel comfortable selling with.

I can understand how someone would feel when you see the potential of parting with that card for $10 instead of the $100 that you had in mind. But I do not support the idea of shill bidding. I believe if you don't want something to go for cheap, either set up a BIN or don't sell it on eBay at all. There will always be a risk of selling low sometimes in an auction. But it also attracts more buyers due to its low starting price.

Nowadays, I track items' prices on ebay and I noticed cards that I have seemingly lost to another bidder, being re-listed straight away. I hate those people, because they are doing it so blatantly. I have seen some guy re-list the same guy 4-5 times.

eBay could be doing a WHOLE lot more to counter this stuff, but the fact of the matter is they just DON'T CARE! All the better for them that this goes on to be honest.

Due to this shilling every time I bid on anything on EBAY I check the last few items of a seller. Last week an item got to a cetain price via auction and was 'sold' to a bidder with 0 feedback, feedback was left yet the original seller readvertised the same item starting at the same price it sold for. To me I take that as they were testing the water to see what they could get then setting the price there. For the record it didnt sell the second time. I did have a chuckle and thought karma is a good thing.

edit - the item is up again starting at a lower price than they would have sold it for the first time

spurlec said:

Ok so this is really starting to get on my nerves. Just about every auction I've been following the last few months has had bid retractions and high % with seller and bid retractions. I've taken a stand by notbidding on dodgy looking auctions but sometimes they just have the low numbered card that youreally want or need. AnyOne else noticing this more and more?? Can anything possibly done to try and fix this up??

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I have noticed this a lot lately, especially with new ebay users bidding on items. When I look into bidding history I notice that they have 60% - 70% bidding activity with this buyer and about 30 or 40 bid retractions and 0 feedback.

Good to see that everyone is picking up on it.