Suspicious bidding

There is a seller http://www.ebay.com/usr/phindatalus that all his auctions in the last 30 minutes are at $30-$60 then jump to $110+.

Not uncommon but then I noticed the same two bidders jumped them all up.  By the bidding history the same bidder, with a feedback of (5) has won 30-some of sellers items in pat 30 days.   Seems odd a person would by 30 pairs of cuff links at over $3500.   And that the buy price is always just under BIN price....but no sales AT BIN price.  And no feedback between buyer-seller.

I don't know but something seems fishy here.   

I'm a little confused here but one thing I wanted to poinnt out that confused me at one point was ebay used to show the actual bidders bidding on an item so for example if your theebaydude and your the highest bidder the bid history would show theebaydude. Ebay a while back however made all this anonymous so that even though your name is theebaydude in the bid history it would show like "dcf284" Thats not actually a persons real ebay username its just a fake name they plugin there I'm guessing to keep things anonymous. It's possible this is waht your seeing and its not the same person buying.

You are right, they did anonymize(sp?) it, but one person bidding will have the same anonymous id made up from 2 random characters in their username with stars/asterisks in between. and it will be the same name with their feedback score next to it, so you will not know who they are specifically but you can see how many times they bid and what they bid on from a combination of their anonymous name and feedback score. see pic attached

I'm a little confused here but one thing I wanted to poinnt out that confused me at one point was ebay used to show the actual bidders bidding on an item so for example if your theebaydude and your the highest bidder the bid history would show theebaydude. Ebay a while back however made all this anonymous so that even though your name is theebaydude in the bid history it would show like "dcf284" Thats not actually a persons real ebay username its just a fake name they plugin there I'm guessing to keep things anonymous. It's possible this is waht your seeing and its not the same person buying.

If you are the one conducting the auction the buyers real screen names will show when you collect on the spot that says
"12 bids" or "2 bids" or whatever.

If you are just someone watching the auction (perhaps as a potential bidder) if YOU click on the "12 bids" you will see a readout that might say "5 bidders, 12 bids" and THEIR names would be coded such as "a****x" for one bidder and maybe "z****y" for another. It would ALSO show that the first one had maybe a feedback rating of 27. Maybe the second one in my example had a feedback rating of 162.

If (as the original poster here said) he (the original poster) had been tracking this seller and his potential buyers he MIGHT be able to assertain that on auction #2 which he was also watching that a bidder with the 162 feedbacks was bidding on the 2nd auction as he did on the first. Sure the 162 rating guy will have a different code name in auction 2, but now a history is building. In auction 3, 4, 5 (as tracked by the original poster here) that bidder with 162 is still going to stand out from the crowd of other bidders.

As to WHY this is proceeding as it is, that's ANOTHER question.

By searching completed listings.....
Anytime he bids don't get up over $117 the same to bidders always win.   
Same two bidders, in last minutes of auction, always jump price to $117.... .


I'm assuming ebay always assigns you the same anonymous ID because that's a pretty bid coincidence.


Now, new auction by this seller has $117 as start price.


Pretty sure he is using multiple accounts to run up price.   Guess the ebay fee is less than the loss...?

sounds maybe like shill bidding but its kind of a stupid strategy as he's paying final value fees on all these listings which end with bids

sounds maybe like shill bidding but its kind of a stupid strategy as he's paying final value fees on all these listings which end with bids

If he has his "other" bidders request to cancel transaction after auction is over, and he agrees, then final value fees are returned. I know because I have had 2 or 3 people win and then change their mind. Once the tranaction is cancelled final value fees are returned. Sometimes I relist and it sells for more, sometimes less, its the price you pay to play. Also, there are ways to report things like this to eBay if you felt so inclined, because what he is doing is definately againt eBays policies. He is most likely doing it as a way to have a reserve price without paying the reserve price fee. If you have a minimum you want just set the minimum opening bid to that amount or do a buy it now, or best offer and price it a little higher than you want to get.

edit: I just went and took a closer look at his listings, I was bored, and he is definitely shill bidding in my opinion. So, just for fun I reported 5 of his completed listings for artificially infalting price usin other accounts. If a few more people do it is well, it could really ruin his day. ;-)

If he has his "other" bidders request to cancel transaction after auction is over, and he agrees, then final value fees are returned. I know because I have had 2 or 3 people win and then change their mind. Once the tranaction is cancelled final value fees are returned. Sometimes I relist and it sells for more, sometimes less, its the price you pay to play. Also, there are ways to report things like this to eBay if you felt so inclined, because what he is doing is definately againt eBays policies. He is most likely doing it as a way to have a reserve price without paying the reserve price fee. If you have a minimum you want just set the minimum opening bid to that amount or do a buy it now, or best offer and price it a little higher than you want to get.

edit: I just went and took a closer look at his listings, I was bored, and he is definitely shill bidding in my opinion. So, just for fun I reported 5 of his completed listings for artificially infalting price usin other accounts. If a few more people do it is well, it could really ruin his day. ;-)

Ebay is pretty good at tracking stuff like that. I doubt he's cancelling every transaction and doing this on a regular basis with the same couple accounts. Ebay recently contacted me and told me I was starting and ending too many listings and told me to stop. Basically I try out different formats for search terms and stuff and then will pull down a listing and try again. Ebay is pretty good at catching onto stuff and ebay likes to make sure they get their money. They would catch it it for weeks on end the same buyers keep buying things and then requesting to cancel transactions. Also not sure if his are auctions or buy it now but buy it now you have to pay instantly and once you refund you cant get a fvf back in my experience.

As for reporting him. Good to do but just so you know those reports where you click report item or report sellers basically do nothing. Yeah if enough people flag stuff they may do something but for the most part no. I talk to ebay reps on a regular basis and they will openly admit there's so many listings and so much going on that little if any activity is ever taken. I've taken to actually calling ebay on the phone and makin the rep look at individual stuff and mostly they say click the report button. When I press them and insist they do something they'll half heartedly either say they will or they will tell me they agree and wish they could do something but dont have authorization to take down listings or whatever else.

I figured reporting it wouldn't do much, but I had a few minutes to kill. Personal story though, I have a product of a certain brand I got out of a unit, it is a specialized part and very expensive to get new from regular sources. I acquired 125 of them, and put them on eBay for $25 each about 1/4-1/6 of what they retail new for. I was not getting very many hits and no sales for about a month, I did a quick search and another seller was selling an off brand of the same product but using the name brand as keywords in the title for $13 each. I used the report item link to report it for keyword spamming, within a few hours his listing was gone and I have sold 65 of these items in the last 2 months since it was taken down. So reporting may not work in every case, but it sure as hell helped my sales by taking down some competition.

I figured reporting it wouldn't do much, but I had a few minutes to kill. Personal story though, I have a product of a certain brand I got out of a unit, it is a specialized part and very expensive to get new from regular sources. I acquired 125 of them, and put them on eBay for $25 each about 1/4-1/6 of what they retail new for. I was not getting very many hits and no sales for about a month, I did a quick search and another seller was selling an off brand of the same product but using the name brand as keywords in the title for $13 each. I used the report item link to report it for keyword spamming, within a few hours his listing was gone and I have sold 65 of these items in the last 2 months since it was taken down. So reporting may not work in every case, but it sure as hell helped my sales by taking down some competition.

good point. when your selling random one off things i dont think anybody really cares to report others. within certain niches like silver, specialty tools, specialty parts, things where a seller is always selling the same item competition developes among those in the niceh and they look for any reason to pop each other off and get each others listings taken down so in that case you reported them as probably did others in that niche or cateory and thats most likely why it got taken down.

in my category people put up tons of duplicate listings. sometimes i get them taken down, other times ill report daily for months and nothing happens. i dnt like being an ebay tattletale but i dont like people having an unfair advantage. if you can beat me straight up more power to you but dont cheat. a while back before i understood the rules i got popped for duplicate listings and they burried me in searches for like 3-4 months i had literally no business. when the penalty expired and i got ranking again i was doing 200k a month easy.

I've reported people before that used my picture to list there own stuff and Ebay took down there listing. Frigging lazy people, take your own damn photos.

Oh look!   The same bidder/buyer just won another tie clip.....identical to the other three he has gotten.

http://offer.ebay.com/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?ViewBids&_trksid=p2047675.l2565&rt=nc&item=111195474885

Oh look!  The same bidder/buyer just won another tie clip.....identical to the other three he has gotten.

You can never have enough tie clips!