Blatant Ebay Shilling

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Posted By: Dave Hornish

OK-I bid my max and don't care because I'm going to lose it but this is a blatant shill job. Wow! Wasn't sure until Bidder 11 joined the fray but now it's definite. I'm bidding three more dollars to get the shill to up it and then I'm e-mailing this guy:

http://offer.ebay.com/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?ViewBids&item=180131022309

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Posted By: David Smith

No kidding, look at Bidder 5 and 6 (I would have said Bidders but you can tell it is just one person). Report this jerk!!!

I reported pgreen84 (posted in another thread by Ted Z) for shilling and am anzious to see what eBay does about them.

David

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Posted By: Dave S

I reported this guy the 2nd day of his listings; same 3 "bidders" running-up all his cards (1 of them with no feedback, think another had "1"). They all bid in the same oddball increments. Anyway, Ebay said they'd look into it but obviously didn't...

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Posted By: Rob

i just won 2 of this sellers items. what should i do?

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Posted By: Russ Bright

I've talked to this seller and he seemed like a nice guy and has a TON of cards - T205's and T207's coming... most with the back damage, I hadn't noticed the shilling thing.... I'll keep a better eye on that, and it makes His "won't end auction early" answer make even MORE sense!

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Posted By: Dave S

Rob--looks like your 2 wins weren't upped, mostly just the bigger $$ cards. Look at the 2 Cy Young's he has that end tomorrow night...same bidder has about 20 bids on each card with $4-5 increments!! And SURPRISINGLY his feedback (78) shows a bunch of cheap transactions with the seller?? Seller might be the nicest guy in the world but sure looks fishy..

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Posted By: Rob

cool, thanks for checking it out Dave S.

Rob

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Posted By: Dave Hornish

Yeah, it's all shills. I reported the Cobb auction but am pissed because I wanted the card and would have kept bidding without the shenanigans. The winner is borderline for a shill but bidders 5, 6 and 11 at a minimum were in on it.

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Posted By: Dave Hornish

Yeah, it's all shills. I reported the Cobb auction but am pissed because I wanted the card and would have kept bidding without the shenanigans. The winner is borderline for a shill but bidders 5, 6 and 11 at a minimum were in on it.

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Posted By: Robert {Bigb13}

This is why ebay is a sellers market, bidders always get screwed, Rob 

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Posted By: Tom

In addition to new users "birdeeeee1" and "niceguylast1" who both seem to be very loyal to "sarge3376" (regardless of what he is selling), "kretschm" has bid on about everything and as a seller hails from "West Palm Beach, FL" just like "sarge3376" so can't help but suspect shilling or some friendly arrangement is in play here. If you look at some of the feedbacks exchanged between these people (birdeeeee1 and kretschm with sarge3376) the BUYER has left feedback 1 or 2 days after the sale which is very rare as usually there is transit time for shipping and such. Of course much harder to tell what is going on with the Cobbs as its hidden mostly but just wanted to share what I found as your discussion had me digging.

Tom

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Posted By: Dave Hornish

I printed out the bidder list before it went to $200 so I could track what was what since it was so obvious. Ebay has not yet responded (I am shocked it's taking this long to investigate a Power Seller )and I'm sure nothing will happen. Why shill a card that's going to sell for good money though and had plenty of interest (399 views)? I think the seller lost money because any experinced bidder would know what was occuring.

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Posted By: Dave Hornish

Well, the Safe Harbor Team responded as I though they would:

"We are very concerned about violations on the site and have thoroughly
investigated your report. The eBay Privacy Policy prevents me from
discussing the specifics of our investigation. I can tell you, however,
that in this instance we didn't find evidence that a violation occurred."

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Posted By: Jim Dale

I would speculate that since they decided to hide ID's on 200 + auctions their "staff" for monitoring such activities has been significantly reduced. It would appear they kept the real winners on board. Sad.

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Posted By: leon

I am not sure ya'll are wrong but could someone tell me exactly how you know, for sure, these were shill bidders? The ending price wasn't that extraordinary....maybe $100 high? regards

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Posted By: David Smith

Leon, I think if you click on the link and then look at Bidders 5 and 6 you will see the problem, at least I saw a problem with those two. There may be another Bidder that looks fishy but I didn't look at all of them.

David

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Posted By: leon

While I would agree with you on those bidders (I looked when this thread was originally posted) they weren't even in the top 10 bids....If someone wants to shill an auction and then not be in the top 10 bids I am not sure it really matters that much? I am not saying it's ok to shill it's just that it's not really an issue if they aren't even in the top 10.....at least that's my perspective....

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Posted By: David Smith

I had the same problem but thought that they shilled to either 1) drum up interest and make it look like there was interest from a number of different bidders or 2) shilled to a certain point (what they bought the card for) and then let other biders (maybe another shill?) take over.

Any how you cut it, a shill is a shill to me.

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Posted By: Dave Hornish

The basic problem, as I see it, is even if the shills are under the level that the real bidders get in at, there is no guarantee that the top legitimate bid won't be shilled higher. The entire auction is tainted once the shill bidding begins; it creates distrust as soon as it occurs.