Wow! Pretty crazy turn of events today. I've read a lot of conspiracy theories so far, some rather comical. I think a few observations are probably worth noting though, if trying to figure out what's actually happening behind the scenes. I'm just speculating and exercising my critical thinking skills though here, so take this with a grain of salt. I don't know anyone on the inside at either company who is in charge of making these decisions.
A few observations:
1 - PWCC has been working on their own separate platform to compete against eBay. Their Premier Auction in July was the first launch of part of their new independent platform. This is just the tip of the iceburg. As they've stated in their response to the eBay letter, they have much bigger ambitions that are soon to launch.
2 - Thus far, eBay has only banned PWCC. They didn't ban Probstein, which has gotten just as much heat on the forums as PWCC regarding this topic.
3 - PWCC's definition of "shill bidding" is perhaps peculiarly worded on their website. "Shill bidding is a bid placed without the intention to honor it - regardless of who placed the bid."
https://www.pwccmarketplace.com/faq
4 - I believe it is rather common for many auction houses to expressly allow shill bidding in their TOS (or so I've read)
5 - In the past, eBay has repeatedly demonstrated that they couldn't care less about shill bidding (I recently created a thread on this topic).
6 - Historically, eBay has not taken well to competition over the years, nor criticism. They have bought out numerous start-up auction sites over the years in an effort to maintain their monopoly, and I'm sure everyone here is familiar with the recent news articles about former eBay employees who were recently sentenced to prison for cyberstalking a couple from Massachusetts who published articles criticizing eBay.
What does this all mean? What's actually going on here?
I don't buy for a second that this is eBay's attempt at cracking down on shill bidding. That's bullshit. If eBay wanted to crack down on this, they would have done so a long time ago, and they would have done it from the inside. They are the ones with all of the relevant bidding behavior and user data. Not the sellers. They can easily crack down on shill bidding, but they've chosen not to, likely because it's a project that would take money out of their pockets.
To me, this smells like it's one of two things.
1) The most likely scenario to me is that eBay is pissed off at PWCC because PWCC basically built their brand on eBay's platform and now they think they are big enough that they can just create their own platform to compete against eBay, taking hundreds of millions of dollars of business along with them, so eBay decided to tarnish their brand on their way out the door. Sort of the "you can't quit, you're fired!" approach.
2) The not-so-recent FBI investigation into the sports card market has begun to finally shown its teeth after dragging along for many years in silence, and they are somehow just now knocking on eBay's door, asking for records on PWCC's bidding activity. I find this to be a rather low likelihood though for a multitude of reasons, the least of which is eBay's otherwise couldn't-care-less approach to shill bidding in general. If eBay were feeling heat from the FBI, they would have tightened up shill bidding long before now.
Also note that eBay's wording is rather suspect to me. "Individuals associated with PWCC"... Really? That's the best they could do? Notice what they didn't say. "PWCC is engaged in shill bidding." or "PWCC personnel is engaged with shill bidding." or "PWCC employees have engaged in shill bidding". This email was without question, carefully crafted by eBay's legal team and likely signed off on by the CEO prior to being sent out. This is a strategically worded email. "Individuals associated with PWCC" to me reads as "people who consigned with PWCC", not PWCC employees. It's reads like a cleverly worded lawyer trick that has the intention of misleading its audience into believing that PWCC employees are shill bidding their eBay listings, but is worded just soft enough that if challenged in court (which it will be) they can simply say that they meant the people who consigned with PWCC were doing the shill bidding, not PWCC themselves.
Based on PWCC's response, this came out of left field. If eBay were truly just concerned about shill bidding, they wouldn't have just blindsided one of their top sellers on the entire platform. PWCC sold hundreds of millions of dollars last year alone on eBay. They would have had a meeting with Brentsy to discuss how serious they are about preventing shill bidding at the very least. They would have coordinated on this effort if preventing shill bidding was the goal. And if they had done that already, then this wouldn't have come out of left field for PWCC (which appears to be clearly the case here).
And as far as preventing shill bidding goes, PWCC has actually done far more than eBay or any other consigner I've encountered to combat this. They send you emails warning you to confirm that you intend to actually purchase an item after placing a bid if you haven't bought from them previously (I have this very email in my inbox somewhere). Otherwise they will cancel your bid. You must be vetted by thier finance team in order to participate in their Premier Auctions (I've been through this too), and if you win an item in any of their auctions but don't pay for it, they will ban your account and you won't be able to bid on their aucitons again. These are all steps to prevent shill bidding. What more can you really expect them to do? They are a consignment company. They're not eBay themselves. They don't have access to all the user data and bid history of everyone like eBay does. There's only so much they can actually do to prevent shill bidding. Most of what can be done is and should be eBay's responsibility, not PWCC's.
That said, if it were to come out that PWCC has some top-secret operation in place to where they've hired an army of North Korean hackers to create thousands of fake eBay accounts who shill bid all of their auctions for them, or Brentsy and crew have shill bidding sessions themselves at the office, then that'd be something rather extraordinary, but I highly doubt this is the case. At best, they might have a disagreement on what the definition of "shill bidding" is to begin with. Remember, Brentsy defines a shill bid as a bid with no intention of making payment if you win regardless of who you are or if you have any association with the consigner, whereas maybe eBay thinks it's a bid placed on behalf of the consigner regardless of whether or not they plan to proceed with payment, should they happen to win.