PWCC – Announcing Formal Policy Concerning eBay Bidder & Buyer Integrity

[Brent Huigens]

My name is Betsy Huigens; Brent and I own PWCC Auctions. Our company has always considered the integrity of our auctions to be our number one priority. We take a proactive approach towards monitoring bidders and taken action when appropriate. The purpose of this post is to announce the next phase of policing. I’ve historically monitored and managed our comments on the message boards (like this one), so I know how important auction integrity is to the collecting community. It gives me great personal satisfaction to take the next step in ensuring our venue is the most trusted and honest marketplace in the world.

As members of the eBay selling community, we don’t operate in a vacuum. The same independence of software that offers transparency and protects maximum bids also somewhat constrains our ability to make quick, sweeping change. Having said that, our relationship with eBay has allowed us to convey the importance of auction integrity to the right people and we are excited by the action eBay has taken. Specifically, starting with our last auction (Premier Auction #7) eBay began a “pilot” project with PWCC specifically enabling us to take action when we notice concerning behavior.

In close partnership with eBay, we are formally announcing the following policy which we will employ to monitor bidding, effective immediately. Considering our policy, we reserve the right to contact users whose behavior falls outside this policy, and in some cases, with the support of eBay we will restrict bidding privileges and eBay may even issue suspensions on specific user IDs from the eBay marketplace.

Bid Retractions:

• The overwhelming majority of bid retractions are in violation of eBay’s stated policy. With few exceptions, all bid retractions on a PWCC auction are reported to eBay and result in an eBay-issued warning. A second retraction will result in that user ID being blocked from further participation in PWCC auctions and eBay suspending biding privileges for a period of time across the eBay platform. A third retraction will result in permanent suspension from eBay. Please spread the word.
• eBay wide, any user ID that has a high number of bid retractions on the eBay platform will be blocked from participating in PWCC auctions. We believe that the majority of users who abuse the bid retraction tool will cease this behavior. We have to establish a starting point, so to start any user ID we identify that has greater than 25 bid retractions over the last six months will be blocked from participating in PWCC auctions. Any user ID we identify with between 10 and 25 retractions will be notified of our policy and warned. In time, we plan to reduce the allowed number of retractions to 10, and perhaps as low as 5. Note: a user’s bid retraction count is not a statistic we can automatically filter; we appreciate the help of the collecting community in identifying user IDs which show quantities beyond our defined limits.

String Bidding:

• String Bidding is a new term we’ve coined to define a series of sequential bids at the eBay minimum bid increment. This practice can be perceived as bid manipulation because it increases the odds of a bidder exposing the maximum bid of another bidder without becoming the high bidder him or herself. Any instances of string bidding will be flagged and bidders warned and logged. Subsequent infractions may result in that user ID being blocked.

Unpaid Items:

• As has been the policy for several years, any unpaid item on a PWCC auction results in a permanent block of that user ID from participating in PWCC auctions.
• Additionally, any user ID which has two or more unpaid items strikes across the eBay platform are filtered and restricted from bidding with PWCC.

The time has come for us to respect this hobby as a commodities marketplace. Since implementing this policy last month we have already placed blocks on over 50 user IDs. It is our belief that the majority bidders whose behavior falls outside our policy are otherwise reliable and considerate members of the trading card marketplace. As such, it is our strong belief that in due time, problematic behavior will become a thing of the past. We encourage other eBay sellers to take a similar stance and aid us in supporting the integrity of the eBay platform.

Again, the integrity of our auctions is our number one priority. We ask that the collecting community on this board and others assist PWCC in identifying concerning bid behavior on any of our auctions. Please notify PWCC of any suspicious behavior by sending an email to bidmonitoring@pwccauctions.com. I can be reached at betsy@pwccauctions.com if you have any questions, comments, or suggestions. We thank everyone for their commitment to the hobby.

Thank you for your kind assistance in this process.

Betsy Huigens
PWCC Auctions, LLC
website: www.pwccauctions.com
betsy@pwccauctions.com

[ajjohnsonsoxfan]

Bravo! The bid retraction policy alone is a big move. Great to see pwcc and eBay realize and react to protect the integrity of the marketplace.

[Leon]

Very good. Thanks PWCC folks !! I wish all sellers would institute your policy.

[earlywynnfan]

Excellent! Quick question about non-paying bidders on ebay: does ebay really keep track? I had a couple of non-payers this summer, and both continued buying (and paying for!) items after I reported them.

[gregr2]

I like these policies and they will help the hobby, thanks! The bid retractions has to stop and this seems like a good step in that direction.

[Sean1125]

Originally Posted by earlywynnfan

Excellent! Quick question about non-paying bidders on ebay: does ebay really keep track? I had a couple of non-payers this summer, and both continued buying (and paying for!) items after I reported them.

eBay does keep track, but it is up to the seller to mark their restriction.

[Danny Smith]

This is great news. I will happily be bidding on PWCC auctions from now on.

[ls7plus]

Originally Posted by Leon

Very good. Thanks PWCC folks !! I wish all sellers would institute your policy.

A big +1!

Thanks,

Larry

[Snapolit1]

The only thing that makes any sense is the idea posted in the string Peter cited: someone is trying to run the price up - but not win it - because they have the same card and are in effect trying to protect their investment buy making sure a card doesn't sell for too low a price. If I paid 160,000 for a Rose rookie card, I might be a little concerned if one was about to close at 90,000. So I pump the gas a little hoping to move up the price, not really hoping to be the buyer at the end of the day. Still think this is a dangerous strategy if you don't really want the cRd, particularly at AHs with a 10% step up on bids. Of course if you are a real dirt bag you just renege on the deal f you are accidentally the winner and don't pay at all. Or use 1 of your 25 retractions.

[Peter_Spaeth]

Originally Posted by Snapolit1

The only thing that makes any sense is the idea posted in the string Peter cited: someone is trying to run the price up - but not win it - because they have the same card and are in effect trying to protect their investment buy making sure a card doesn't sell for too low a price. If I paid 160,000 for a Rose rookie card, I might be a little concerned if one was about to close at 90,000. So I pump the gas a little hoping to move up the price, not really hoping to be the buyer at the end of the day. Still think this is a dangerous strategy if you don't really want the cRd, particularly at AHs with a 10% step up on bids. Of course if you are a real dirt bag you just renege on the deal f you are accidentally the winner and don't pay at all. Or use 1 of your 25 retractions.

There is no visibility into auctions that don't get paid for. There never has been in AHs (except when you see the same card available for less within a week LOL). On ebay, there isn't any now, particularly with the removal of IDs and the inability of a seller to leave negative feedback.

[shernan30]

Great work PWCC team. Seeing funny business in the past I've been reluctant to bid on many items. I have won a few and with these new policies I anticipate more packages in the future.


Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

[Aquarian Sports Cards]

Never understand why ebay doesn't institute dynamic endings for their auctions. Would certainly eliminate the sniping issue. sellers and therefore ebay would also make more money.

[Peter_Spaeth]

I fail to see the "issue" with sniping.

[ALR-bishop]

Originally Posted by Peter_Spaeth

I fail to see the "issue" with sniping.

+ 1

I almost always snipe, but have on occasion bid in increments until I am the high bidder or find that the high bid is higher than I want to pay. If I never retract ( and I don't), I would think that should be ok

25 retractions is too high a threshold , by at least 20... unless the purpose is to give folks who have clearly been bidding inappropriately a second chance going forward with the new criteria.

Still, I view this as a positive development

[jim]

hi Brent, currently, in your auction (http://www.ebay.com/itm/1935-Goudey-...-/351861695474), your high bidder has 3 bid retractions in the last 6 months while the underbidder has 9 bid retractions in the last 6 months. Does anything need to be done with these two bidders? thanks,
Jim Loewke

[Paul S]

Originally Posted by Aquarian Sports Cards

Never understand why ebay doesn't institute dynamic endings for their auctions. Would certainly eliminate the sniping issue. sellers and therefore ebay would also make more money.

I just did an ebay search for "dynamic endings". Got the same results as Frank's suggestion for "string".

[JRO$!(]

I often get outbid in the final 3 seconds of auctions. So be it.
I did not bid High enough, and someone

else was willing to bid higher than my highest bid.
Simple.

I almost always snipe manually,
(have never used a snipe program).

[griffon512]

nice to see the large amount of responses to the pwcc new policy, especially in light of the bid retraction issue was something i proposed a change in recently and the response from board members was mixed: http://www.net54baseball.com/showthread.php?t=224524

i started that post after a conversation with brent highlighting this issue and learned that they had policy changes in process. now that we see the culmination of this process, a couple of thoughts on how to improve it:

1) a starting point of 25 bid retractions on the ebay platform over the last 6 months is much too high imo. an ending point of potentially 5 is also too high. i have read the posts on legitimate bid retractions and find all of them underwhelming. i would suggest starting with 4 as a trial balloon and within a few months at most ending with 2. the actual number is less relevant, thankfully, if the first part of the policy change is rigidly enforced -- if someone has 2 bid retractions on pwcc's site the user's account will be suspended from further bidding on their site.

2) string bidding does not bother me because every bid the user makes could be the winning bid...unless they retract the bid. the intention of the bid is not very relevant to me as long as the user is willing to pay the bid price. no one can police intentions. we can police non-payments/bid retractions. what's relevant for all of us is that a "real" market price is reflected by their bid given the expectation they maintain the bid and pay for the item if they win!

i think this is a very good start from pwcc, would just like to see more teeth on the bid retraction number and reconsidering string bidding.

[Brent Huigens]

Thank you all for your thoughts, comments, and questions. I have been closely watching your reactions to our original post and I’m replying now to answer the questions that were raised. This will be our last post on this thread. If you have further questions, or have feedback you’d like to share, please send an email directly to me (betsy@pwccauctions.com) or to our bid monitoring email address (bidmonitoring@pwccauctions.com).

Questions concerning our ability to enforce our Bid Retraction Policy

Retractions on PWCC items:

Just like other sellers on eBay, we are notified real-time when a bid is retracted on our auctions. We review the issue and take action daily.

• First Offense: When a bidder retracts their first bid with PWCC, we report it and a warning is issued by eBay.
• Second Offense: Should a second retraction occur on our account, that bidder will have their bidding privileges revoked by eBay for a period of 14 days.
• Third Offense: Should a third retraction occur on our account, that bidder will have their account suspended by eBay.

Total number of bid retractions eBay-wide:

For each occurrence of a bid retraction, as well as through various spot checks of our listings, we take note of the total number of bid retractions that a particular user ID has on their account eBay-wide. We take action based on the following approach:

• When a bidder has between 0-9 bid retractions in the last six months, we log When a bidder has between 10-24 bid retractions in the last six months, we send a warning message outlining the fact that bidders who show 25+ bid retractions in the last six months will be blocked from participating in PWCC auctions
• When a bidder has 25 or more bid retractions in the last six months, we block that user ID from participating in PWCC auctions

As pointed out by many of you, 25 is indeed a very high number of bid retractions to be considered reasonable in a six-month period. It stands to reason that any bidder who is bidding with discipline and control should have very few justifiable retractions. Brent and I put great consideration on how we would roll out this process. Truly, if we placed the threshold at something lower like 10 or 5, we feared it would be too much of a drastic change. Ultimately, our goal is not to punish bidders, but rather to inform users of the rules as we believe in due time bid retractions will diminish.

We are starting with 25 as the threshold to help get the word out. Starting in Q1 2017 it will be reduced to 10, and later in 2017 it may be reduced to 5.

Questions about the definition of String Bidding:

As highlighted by many of you, simply placing a series of sequential bids is not string bidding. We understand the logistics of bidding on eBay, particularly using eBay’s app which actually makes it easiest to place minimum bids, and we understand that many bidders place a series of sequential bids for completely legitimate reasons.

Here’s why placing a series of bids at the minimum bid increment can be problematic:

Let's assume there are two bidders interested in a listing. Bidder A is the high bidder at $6,000, but has a maximum bid of $7350. Bidder B places a bid of $6,100, and eBay raises the bid to $6,200. Bidder B bids $6,300 and eBay raises the bid to $6,400, and so on. Finally, when Bidder B bids $7,300, eBay raises the bid to $7,350 (not $7,400) thereby ‘outing’ bidder A’s max bid. This essentially allowed Bidder B to increase the bidding to Bidder A’s max bid while greatly reducing the likelihood that they became the high bidder themselves (50/50 odds). We will remain patient on this topic as it’s NOT our primary concern (bid retractions and unpaid items are far larger issues), but we do hope to limit string bidding and will contact users who seem to employ this behavior.

Two important notes:

1. Most troubling is when there is an instance of string bidding paired with a bid retraction. A bidder that engages in this behavior has and will be blocked from participating in PWCC auctions and will be reported to eBay. We have a zero tolerance on obviously manipulative behavior and string bidding paired with a retraction is considered highly manipulative.

2. String bidding which ultimately results in that user ID becoming the high bidder (eventually) will not be flagged by PWCC as this clearly suggests that the string bidder has real intention to win the item.

Since implementing our policies here are some statistics:

• PWCC has blocked 92 user IDs for having 25+ bid retractions in the last six months and contacted those bidders in hopes they will refrain from retracting bids moving forward
• PWCC has reached out to 62 user IDs for having between 10-24 bid retractions in the last six months
• PWCC has reached out to 54 user IDs to explain our position on string bidding
• PWCC has blocked 16 user IDs due to malicious string bidding combined with a retraction
• eBay has sent warning messages to 375 user IDs (we've been logging bid retractions for the past 8 months)
• eBay has suspended bidding across eBay for 14 days for three user IDs for their second bid retraction
• To date eBay has not taken the step to suspend any IDs but will do so for a bidder who retracts their third bid with PWCC

Please contact me directly (betsy@pwccauctions.com) with any questions, comments, or feedback. Thank you!

[Stonepony]

All sounds very reasonable to me. Thank you for these efforts!!

[Mikehealer]

Originally Posted by Brent Huigens

[/LIST]As pointed out by many of you, 25 is indeed a very high number of bid retractions to be considered reasonable in a six-month period. It stands to reason that any bidder who is bidding with discipline and control should have very few justifiable retractions. Brent and I put great consideration on how we would roll out this process. Truly, if we placed the threshold at something lower like 10 or 5, we feared it would be too much of a drastic change. Ultimately, our goal is not to punish bidders, but rather to inform users of the rules as we believe in due time bid retractions will diminish.

We are starting with 25 as the threshold to help get the word out. Starting in Q1 2017 it will be reduced to 10, and later in 2017 it may be reduced to 5.

If a bidder should have very few justifiable retractions, as you state, then why start at 25? Drastic change! Don't want to punish! They should be punished, they are crooks for goodness sakes.

Couldn't you send out 1 more email, I get multiple emails from you every month, as I guess most of the people that bid or have bid in your auctions.
It wouldn't take much, just a sentence or two. You are welcome to use the following.

If you have 10 bid retractions in the last 6 months you can't bid in our auctions, effective immediately.

[Snapolit1]

Thanks for taking a leadership position on this in the industry. Would be nice if some of the other AHs weighed in with their reaction and efforts in this regard. Let's say I'm not holding my breath.

[vintagetoppsguy]

Originally Posted by Snapolit1

Would be nice if some of the other AHs weighed in with their reaction and efforts in this regard.

One already has. Probstein was alerted of shill bidders (by name) and still continued to let them consign AND shill their own auctions.

[Peter_Spaeth]

Originally Posted by Mikehealer

If a bidder should have very few justifiable retractions, as you state, then why start at 25? Drastic change! Don't want to punish! They should be punished, they are crooks for goodness sakes.

Couldn't you send out 1 more email, I get multiple emails from you every month, as I guess most of the people that bid or have bid in your auctions.
It wouldn't take much, just a sentence or two. You are welcome to use the following.

If you have 10 bid retractions in the last 6 months you can't bid in our auctions, effective immediately.

I agree with Mike. I applaud the effort in general, but there is no reason in my opinion to phase this in so gradually insofar as the bid retractions go. To me it's like giving people three months' notice that robbing banks won't be tolerated.

[D. Bergin]

Glad to see these changes taking place. Would be nice to see Ebay implementing this into their software sitewide, instead of just handholding a single big seller with concerns and forgetting about the rest of their site.

[Zach Wheat]

Bravo...would welcome the changes.

Z