Aesthetic, eBay has reserve prices. If the reserve price isn't met, the item isn't sold. If someone happens to want more for a synth than I'm willing to pay, so be it, that's their decision.

If I were selling a synth, I'd absolutely hate to see it go way below what I'd expect to get. So I'd either set a starting price or a reserve price, since eBay provides those options.

An individual can't hide behind a group's mentality. I don't think most eBayers use shill bidding, and even if they did, that is absolutely no excuse for me to violate my principles. I have to feel comfortable with who I am. I'd like the world to be a certain way, so I live by the principles I'd like to see. If other people want a world full of shill bidders, then yes, they absolutely should partake in shill bidding, and encourage others to do likewise, otherwise the practice will die out.

I can't believe how some of you think it is a low scummy thing to do shill bidding. I have never had to do it but I would do it if necessary. I want to pay Ebay as little as possible so I will list it very low with no reserve.

On the off chance that for example my virus ti was going to go for £400, there is no chance I will let that happen. Its not about trying to swindle bidders into paying more than they want. As a bidder, you can set your maximum bid, if a shill bidder puts the price above that, then you don't have to bid anymore. You havent't lost anything.

If you set a high maximum bid and the shill bidder pushes the price towards your maximum, well you were prepared to pay that much so you obviously think its worth it.

To me the only person who pays more is the lister who will have to pay Ebay fees twice but thats a small price to pay compared to letting your virus ti sell for £200 less than it should have gone for...

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Pfff. Why are you even auctioning your synths then if you have a firm price you want for it and you are unwilling to let it go for less or afraid of that possibility? People attend auctions to try and get a bargain. People sell at auctions in the hope of getting a bidding war going on a rare item. Virus TI's aint rare and you aren't going to get anywhere near retail for it.

You really have got nothing to argue. List it as Buy It Now or set a reserve price if you don't want to sell it for too little. But don't fucking whinge about it when theres no interest in your item and it goes for less than you wanted when you didn't set a reserve.

If you shill bid it and people really aren't interested then thats too bad - you will probably win your own auction and you just legally obligated yourself to buy your own item which you won't do but you will need to relist it if you want to actually sell it. Give yourself positive feedback (they always do).

But then, I don't think you get how eBay auctions work. The price always stays low until like the last 1 minute of the auction where about 10 people refresh the page every 3 seconds and try to snipe it. You can tell obvious shill bidders because they high bid up until the reserve is met far earlier than anyone in their right mind would. People see the high price early on and just don't bother. Auction sniping is incredibly lame but you do realise this bidding tactic came about out of a necessity to protect buyers from getting shilled?

You also realise that shill bidding on hundreds of very cheap items is one way for a new seller to get hundreds of positive feedback in a very short amount of time. Then use it as currency to scam a really expensive item.

Read up about it:

http://www.ukauctionhelp.co.uk/shill.php
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shill
http://pages.ebay.ie/help/policies/seller-shill-bidding.html
http://ezinearticles.com/?eBay-Explained:-Shill-Bidding&id=121199

Shilling was also responsible for the rise in popularity of this horrible peice of shit.

Last edited by Derivative on Sep-26-2007 at 12:53

You are missing my point completely. If I was selling a ti (which I'm not) I would hope to get at least £600 for it. I won't set a reserve as its one more thing to pay for. I wont list it as a "buy it now" in the hope that people will bid above £600 in an auction. I certainly wouldn't shill bid it early on just to get the price up. What would be the point in that? But if with 5 mins to go, its current bid price was say £400 then I would bid it up to £600. If others then bid above me then great. If not, then okay I will have to list it again but I couldnt have chanced it going for £400.

Like I've said before, I've never had to shill bid, but in principle I would if necessary.

The way I see it is this.

Say you list your ti for 0.99 with a reserve price of £600. I list mine for 0.99 with no reserve. Yours gets bid up to £400 and holds there, doesn't sell. Mine gets up to £400, holds there so I shill bid it up to £600, I win the bid. Neither have sold. I have to pay the ebay selling fee, you don't so financially you are better off at this point.

1)How has my method hurt anybody other than myself? How does it make me a scumbag?

2)My method avoids the initial extra ebay fees of having a reserve price, and gets more interest due to the lack of a reserve.

3) I am 100% confident that items will always sell for what they are worth anyway hence the fact that I have never shill bid in my life.

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quote:

1)How has my method hurt anybody other than myself? How does it make me a scumbag?

Eh whether your master plan backfires or not is irrelevant. You tried to fix your own auction and you failed. Some don't and on auctions where bids are in the thousands, shilling is a really big problem. Its legally classed as fraud in some jurisdictions.

Let me ask you then - if you think a 'little bit' of shilling is ok, but scamming thousands of 10 of thousands of dollars off buyers is 'fraud' then where do you draw then line and how do you enforce it?

Personally speaking, its about time eBay finally fought the good fight and sealed all bids on timed auctions - meaning that bidders disclose their names but not the amount that the have bid until the time runs out. Then whoever offered the highest takes the item.

If you must sell a Virus TI on eBay, taking a slight hit and going with a Buy it Now or setting a reserve isn't a bad idea. The amount of scamming that goes on amongst eBay users is astonishing and I wouldn't trust the system to come up in your favour.

Last edited by Derivative on Sep-26-2007 at 18:29

G-con:

1) Your method, if successful, has hurt the winning bidder financially by the amount your shill bid is above the next highest real bidder's bid. If not successful, you've misrepresented the auction - the item didn't go for the highest price an interested bidder was willing to pay. Either way, it's not an auction in the form that bidders would be expecting.

2) so you want to "have your cake and eat it too". eBay offers ways to give you exactly what you want, for higher fees. But you want what you want anyway, without paying the fees. The fees are for other people, not you. Why should you pay what other people are willing to pay? Same logic goes for people using cracked VSTs and so on. Listen, I'm no angel, I'll sometimes download mp3s and such (and then I'll buy the songs I really like), and also used a cracked version of Waves a few years back. When I moved to Cubase this year, I paid for the gold bundle because I want to support the company, I think their plugins sound great. In this instance, I'd wear the higher eBay fees so that bidders can clearly see what the situation is.

This is a massively grey area currently and companies are doing whatever they can to protect their copyright and I can fully understand them doing that. Maybe if there's a trend by consumers to do the right thing the situation will improve. It's going to be fascinating to see where all this is at in 10 years. (yes, I know I'm muddying the waters by diverting from the original eBay fees topic - but it still comes down to every person making a personal decision about how they want to interact with the world, and have the world interact with them)

3) You're not 100% confident if the thought of shill bidding has entered your head. You're probably 99% confident. But that means, when it really comes to the crunch, you will 100% consider shill bidding and a seller who doesn't believe in the practise 100% won't consider it.

I don't see how this could possibly be called fraud in any jurisdiction. The buyer is still purchasing of his own volition the correctly described item.

It's a misrepresentation of what kind of auction it is. What you're saying is there is no such thing as a true "no reserve" auction, so the words "no reserve" should be dropped from the eBay vocabulary, since an artificial reserve will be introduced anyway via the practice of shill bidding. I think that at least would be more honest. If eBay can't police shill bidding 100%, then ban the concept of "no reserve" for all auctions.

Auctions in real life have dummy bidders, and they also have reserve prices, so what do you say about that?

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Man you guys are dumb.

Read the links I posted to find out that the New York Attorney General has prosecuted for fraud by shill bidding on online auctions. Heres another link but feel free to google 'shill bid walton' for another high profile case.

Dummy Bidding? See here: http://www.auctionbytes.com/cab/abu...m11/abu0025/s06

Notice the practise is severely frowned upon in live auctions and there are many measures in place to prevent it from happening. Background searches. The auctioneer will also recognise regular clientelle and be able to spot irregular bidding patterns.

That article also covers bid shielding which rarely happens in live auctions now. Those are incredibly lame.

Setting reserve prices is not malicious at all. It is agreed with the auction house and indemnifies the seller from being legally obligated to sell at much lower than expected price. Sellers are encouraged to use lower reserves than their expectations allow to encourage more people to bid on their items.

In live auctions bidding always starts at the reserve price if a reserve is set. If its too high, people simply wont bid on it and the item wont sell.

On eBay you can bid any amount - the reserve is hidden until someone places a bid which is higher than the reserve and the auction will list 'Reserve Met' on the front page.

quote:

Originally posted by Bruce I don't see how this could possibly be called fraud in any jurisdiction. The buyer is still purchasing of his own volition the correctly described item.

Except that on eBay the buyer can be forced to 'auto bid' (eventually) up to their highest bid amount. A common method of sussing this out is to bid loads of really small incremental bids until the other bidder doesn't automatically bid to beat yours. Then you retract your last bid. Congratulations. You just forced his bid up to maximum before the auction finished and found out the maximum price he is willing to pay. If he wants it he might manually bid again. Either way hes on top.

2 people doing this on the 'same team' is known as bid shielding which is incredibly gay. The high bidder makes a huge bid (close to or at recommended retail price) discouraging everyone else from bidding. Who would pay RRP for a second hand item right? His buddy places a low bid - any amount that puts him in second place. 5 seconds before the end of the auction the high bidder retracts his bid, and his buddy, the low bidder wins the auction for super cheap. If it fails you are obligated to buy at the high price but you see - eBay isn't very good at enforcing this obligation so you still get people bid shielding, losing because they suck, getting reported and having nothing happen because eBay doesn't do anything about it.

Fortunately this is incredibly easy to spot and doing it in a live auction is asking to be thrown out. On eBay though, you can complain to management but most of the time they don't do anything about it.

quote:

Originally posted by Derivative 5 seconds before the end of the auction the high bidder retracts his bid, and his buddy, the low bidder wins the auction for super cheap.

That the problem right there.. Once you have placed the bid, there should be no way of retracting your bid.

I bought some tinted rear lamps for my car once, from ebay Germany, and the seller was obviously shill bidding.

The second "bidder" was bidding me all the way up to my highest bid, and one bid more.

I still got the lamps because the other bidder "changed his mind" after the end of the auction.

I got them for a decent price anyway so..