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I was looking through some bits auctions and noticed that one seller, bits-world, seems to have at least one person boosting auction prices but never actually winning the auction.

http://offer.ebay.com/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?ViewBids&item=111294695927&ssPageName=STRK:MEWA:BIDN&_trksid=p3984.m1423.l2765

http://offer.ebay.com/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?ViewBids&item=131140125964&ssPageName=STRK:MEWA:BIDN&_trksid=p3984.m1423.l2765

http://offer.ebay.com/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?ViewBids&item=111300260753&ssPageName=STRK:MEWA:BIDN&_trksid=p3984.m1423.l2765

All three auctions have one thing in common. A bidder (showing up in my browser as r***e (38) keeps boosting the auctions up to what appears to be an "acceptable" level. It seems this thing is used to push bids from automatic bidders upward.

I've not done a lot of research into bits-world's other auctions so it is very possible that I'm just noticing some little snot-nosed bugger out screwing with people but somehow I'm getting a different vibe.

Does anyone have any history with spotting/researching shill bidders?

It's difficult to spot, because eBay have made it difficult to spot. In the past you could check what items a particular user had bid on, and whether they were exclusively on one company. Nowadays you can't. In a world where we complain forever about GW, we seem to overlook eBay, who for the past five years have been making changes which have made the whole site less and less usable, and less and less accountable.

That said, there are some weird users. with irrational bidding patterns, who I notice even on my own auctions, bidding in small increments as if to budge up the price, exactly like the bidder you cited... I only ever use snipe bidding, but I'm grateful not everyone does this on my auctions.

Looks like they have set auto bids and the pattern your seeing us other bidders bumping their automatic up.

UNCLEBADTOUCH wrote:
Looks like they have set auto bids and the pattern your seeing us other bidders bumping their automatic up.

I would agree with this (i.e. the apparent pattern could be an artefact of how eBay displays automatic bids).

I buy from bits sellers on eBay (not the above specific auctions though) If there's a particular bit I want then I'll typically just place my bid (up to the maximum I'm willing to pay) and then wait and see. If I win, I win, great. If not, I bid on the seller's next listing of the same auction instead. Sometimes if takes a few weeks before I win an auction, but if I'm not in a rush, that's not a problem.

So, in summary: it could be shill bidding, or it could just be this person's personal price ceiling is somewhere near $40.

sometimes it is so obvious there is schill bidding going on.

Best tip is to just bid at the last minute.

I'm not worried about my bid being pushed up. I'm worried about the overall price of an item being inflated which in turn becomes the expected market value. In this case, even if I snipe (which I always do) the price is much higher than I would otherwise expect to pay.

@ UNCLEBADTOUCH: If you look, you'll see it's the same guy on all three auctions doing this and not "us other bidders". Now if it were different people on each or if the suspect shill account had actually tried to win, then I wouldn't worry.

that model is the hot new thing right now and it's an expensive model to start with. it's probably just regular bids.

maybe the snot nosed bugger as you call him just wants the bits too and is getting sniped in the last minute? boohoo you cant get your toys for free.
you should have much more evidence before you go and slander someone.

@breotan it's how eBay shoes auto bids, each time a.n.other bids then as long as the current highest bidder has a higher bid available they will appear as the next bidder in the list. This can happen several times as long as the current bidder has space under their auto bid cap. Then when their auto bid runs out of cap the next highest bidder appears. The previous bidder then can go back and up their auto bids and the pattern can be repeated time and again as seen in these listings.

The fact that they didn't win these auctions would make the person more likely to bid on the next item that comes up as they obviously want that item.

The give away for schill bidding is when the item is own by the schill bidder, they fail to pay and the item is sold on second chance to the next highest bidder. That's the behaviour to look out for,

Schill bidding usually only happens on bits sites with the current stuff, or very popular auctions for things.

If you were not bidding on knight parts you would prolly not have this issue, as knights are pretty new and many people can use them for an army they have and want them.

kb305 wrote:
...you should have much more evidence before you go and slander someone.

Let's look again at the title of this thread. HOW to spot shill bidding on eBay? Seriously, provide some suggestions. After all that's what was asking for when I created the thread.

 Hivefleet Oblivion wrote:
That said, there are some weird users. with irrational bidding patterns, who I notice even on my own auctions, bidding in small increments as if to budge up the price, exactly like the bidder you cited... I only ever use snipe bidding, but I'm grateful not everyone does this on my auctions.

I think the incremental bidding is someone starting at let's say, $22, but it's not the high bid. So they bid $23, no good, $24, still no good, so they just stop. Going any further would just be getting carried away. That could also be true for the user the OP is bringing up.

Does eBay tell us if bids have been cancelled? Or just the seller?

I've been having some confusing ebay auctions the last month or so too.

Not like this - but: I've been bidding on some minis; one seller lists the same half-dozen of them over and over. Every week, I get outbid - and then the same half dozen items get listed yet again. (On like the 5th cycle now since I've been paying attention). It's not a store front, so it strikes me as weird that he has so many copies of such a limited selection.

It makes me wonder if he just isn't outbidding everyone from dummy accounts as a way to get boost his seller rating or something.

Unless it's trivial stuff, that can be an expensive way to boost your rating. Is it the same buyer(s)?

To the OP: you need to learn to eBay better my friend. Click on the link that says "show automatic bids" this guy was likely just bidding up to where he thought it was reasonable.

I do this on auctions as well. Put in a bid, if the automatic bumps up, try again until it gets higher than I believe is reasonable.


Automatically Appended Next Post:
http://offer.ebay.com/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?ViewBidderProfile&mode=1&item=111294695927&aid=r***e&eu=&bidtid=1176909025001&view=NONE&ssPageName=PageBidderProfileViewBids_None_ViewLink

The stuff this guy has been bidding on. It is from different sellers

Would it be possible to have this discussion without slagging off each other or people on eBay?

I have sometime encountered what to me were suspicious bidding patterns. However there is little or nothing that can be done to verify it. The only thing is to avoid that specific seller in future, if you really believe he has organised a shill account.

I tend to avoid auctions on which the seller has made the bidder list private. That seems a licence to shill.

I generally decide on an amount in prepared to pay and put that on an item. I don't get into bidding wars.

Shill bids shouldn't be a problem if you put in what you are willing to pay and stick to it. Shill bidding is a problem in real life auctions rely on the psychology. Seeing what bidders are doing. Seeing if you can push them for a little more. See how excited they are. On eBay you are just taking a guess that someone is willing to pay more. Shill bidding and snipping do nothing but make people feel they are "winning" the system when what they are actually doing is paying more than you wanted to or spending time bidding in increments when they could just put your max bid in and leave it.

 Steve steveson wrote:
Shill bids shouldn't be a problem if you put in what you are willing to pay and stick to it. Shill bidding is a problem in real life auctions rely on the psychology. Seeing what bidders are doing. Seeing if you can push them for a little more. See how excited they are. On eBay you are just taking a guess that someone is willing to pay more. Shill bidding and snipping do nothing but make people feel they are "winning" the system when what they are actually doing is paying more than you wanted to or spending time bidding in increments when they could just put your max bid in and leave it.

The problem that I think the OP is concerned about is somebody paying more than they have to through false bids. If you get taken up to your max against another genuine bidder, that is the risk/ fun of an auction.

For example, I will pay up to £8 for a Praetorian meltagunner. The problem occurs when I end up paying that £8 rather than £5 because the seller has a false account that he uses to push the bid up after other genuine bidders have backed out.

As another poster said, Second Chance offers could be an indication of something not being quite right.

There was one seller where I never won the auctions but on three separate lots (over a couple of weeks) was given a Second Chance to buy within a couple of hours of the auction ending. I did take the Second Chance the first time but didn't on the other two occasions because I thought there was something dodgy going on, especially when the auction was private and I couldn't check who the other bidder was.

Of course I couldn't prove it but was left wondering if a fake account had been used to push the price beyond my max. I then get a Second Chance to buy at my max because all of a sudden the High Bidder couldn't finish the deal.

Yes, I've seen things that suggested strongly to me that the seller was not satisfied with the price achieved at open auction and shill bid the item up to stop it going cheap to the last genuine bidder.

But nothing can be proved. It might be just my paranoia.

I just post what I am willing to pay, then go away until the auction is over.

If I pay $8 instead of $5... I would have been willing to pay the $8 anyway.

I am more likely than not to use the Buy it Now option, if it is available.

The only time I won a 'Second Chance' was when two people dropped out - after they had been bidding against each other. (Nothing major - a length of Lemax brick road that I wanted for basing.)

I do not have an urge to snipe, so I post what I am willing to bid, then leave well enough alone.

Heck, when I used to sell minis on eBay I got most of my business through Buy It Now, not from bidding.

The Auld Grump

 TheAuldGrump wrote:
I just post what I am willing to pay, then go away until the auction is over.

If I pay $8 instead of $5... I would have been willing to pay the $8 anyway.

I am more likely than not to use the Buy it Now option, if it is available.

I'm the same way. I try to avoid bidding unless it's the only sale for that item. Then I put my max and leave it alone, win or lose. And even then, I check iOffer or fan sites to see if anyone's selling one there before I bid.

Never attribute to malice that which is adequately explained by stupidity. -Hanlon's Razor

I really wouldn't worry about it. I sold a ton of stuff last fall on eBay before I moved, and I can genuinely say that buyers are fairly unpredictable. While I'm not trying to say that bidders are stupid, I think it's folly to go digging through bids and look for malice.

 slowthar wrote:
Never attribute to malice that which is adequately explained by stupidity. -Hanlon's Razor

I really wouldn't worry about it. I sold a ton of stuff last fall on eBay before I moved, and I can genuinely say that buyers are fairly unpredictable. While I'm not trying to say that bidders are stupid, I think it's folly to go digging through bids and look for malice.

True that. I've relisted items that haven't sold for £0.99 for a third time only to have two bidders check it out, decide they want it and it goes for £3-£5. If they'd seen it the week before, they could have had it for £0.99.

I think my biggest case of buyer madness was the £75 end bid when two decided they really wanted one of the Sideshow polystone Marine statues I was selling and had a little bidding war.

Don't bid more than you want to for an item, and you won't overpay for the item...

problem solved.

blaktoof wrote:
Don't bid more than you want to for an item, and you won't overpay for the item...

problem solved.

This thread isn't about overpaying for an item. This thread is about suspecting that you are paying your maximum bid only because the price is being pushed up by a fake bidder.

If you don't have the willpower to stop upping your maximum bid and you end up paying a crazy price, that's your own fault.

alphaecho wrote:

blaktoof wrote:
Don't bid more than you want to for an item, and you won't overpay for the item...

problem solved.

This thread isn't about overpaying for an item. This thread is about suspecting that you are paying your maximum bid only because the price is being pushed up by a fake bidder.

If you don't have the willpower to stop upping your maximum bid and you end up paying a crazy price,that's your own fault.

Exactly. The whole purpose of sniping is to avoid the situation where someone pushes your bid up to the maximum. Shill bidding is designed to mitigate loss / maximize profit to the seller. The problem with shills is that a bits seller can set an artificially high market price and eBay users, many being sheep, will just accept it and pay. This is one of the reasons shill bidding, even through a proxy, is illegal in many countries.

So while I think a lot of things can be written off as just how ebay works with incremental bidding. However, I was just searching eBay for Zombicide sets and came across 2 really odd exmaples right off the bat:

http://offer.ebay.com/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?ViewBids&_trksid=p2047675.l2565&rt=nc&item=221397055378

http://offer.ebay.com/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?ViewBids&_trksid=p2047675.l2565&rt=nc&item=181355210180

Notice the second one bids it up from $50 to $500 in a two minute span. Just struck me as really suspect.

Sometimes I feel like some of those crazy prices you find on eBay and Amazon stem from money laundering.

 Starfarer wrote:
So while I think a lot of things can be written off as just how ebay works with incremental bidding. However, I was just searching eBay for Zombicide sets and came across 2 really odd exmaples right off the bat:

http://offer.ebay.com/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?ViewBids&_trksid=p2047675.l2565&rt=nc&item=221397055378

http://offer.ebay.com/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?ViewBids&_trksid=p2047675.l2565&rt=nc&item=181355210180

Notice the second one bids it up from $50 to $500 in a two minute span. Just struck me as really suspect.

why? somebody had a max bid of $500 at 10 am and he was bid up by 3 different people until a 4th bidder over bid his $500 bid 9 hours later.
bidders are strange and we all have our quirks. My wife hates how I bid on stuff.