pwcc

[cincyredlegs]

People are shilling auctions; not just Probstein or PWCC. I know it, you know, even Rick and Brent know it. Here is my take:

-People continue to go to Probstein and PWCC because they are getting top dollar.

-Shilling drives up the prices so the seller maximizes his profits as well as Probstein and PWCC.

-Probstein and PWCC are doing nothing illegal (as long as they are not the ones shilling).

-So if Rick and Brent were to REALLY get tough and police it, what would it do to their business? Would they start to lose customers because they were not getting top dollar anymore?

So what is their vested interest in doing anything about it?

Funny thing is I know a guy who won his own auction that he consigned to Rick, paid for it, Rick mailed the card back to him then he sent back to Rick to re-list.

Mark

[Peter_Spaeth]

Originally Posted by cincyredlegs

People are shilling auctions; not just Probstein or PWCC. I know it, you know, even Rick and Brent know it. Here is my take:

-People continue to go to Probstein and PWCC because they are getting top dollar.

-Shilling drives up the prices so the seller maximizes his profits as well as Probstein and PWCC.

-Probstein and PWCC are doing nothing illegal (as long as they are not the ones shilling).

-So if Rick and Brent were to REALLY get tough and police it, what would it do to their business? Would they start to lose customers because they were not getting top dollar anymore?


So what is their vested interest in doing anything about it?

Funny thing is I know a guy who won his own auction that he consigned to Rick, paid for it, Rick mailed the card back to him then he sent back to Rick to re-list.

Mark

And yet you have people like Larry (painthistorian) who care about their integrity and their buyers, who take measures such as the ones he outlined above to stop these practices.

[Iron Horse]

The only way this will come to an end at least on eBay it would be by eBay somehow coming up with a system that if you retract bids more then once or twice in a month it locks you out for 30 days.

[thecatspajamas]

Given eBay's history of "solving" problems with cover-ups and changes that really don't help, I can pretty much guarantee that before they do anything like this or any other elaborate programming solutions that anyone has suggested, they will simply stop showing the retracted bid count. Then nobody will know which listings to gripe about (at least, not with any certainty). No griping = problem solved from eBay's standpoint.

Still trying to figure out how to get notification of someone retracting a bid on one of my auctions. I get them when someone withdraws a Best Offer, but not for retracted bids.

[tschock]

Originally Posted by thecatspajamas

Given eBay's history of "solving" problems with cover-ups and changes that really don't help, I can pretty much guarantee that before they do anything like this or any other elaborate programming solutions that anyone has suggested, they will simply stop showing the retracted bid count.

-1 ... only because I think you hit the nail squarely on the head.

[slipk1068]

I expect the auction houses to at least do the bare minimum to protect its customers.

A previous post shows a Mantle card that went for $12,100. The bid history on that card is sickening.

D@v1d $h1p$ey

[markf31]

In shill bidding situations like this, PWCC is the account/ebay user who's ass is on the line ultimately so we can all do our best as legitimate buyers/bidders to force the issue and attack this problem.

Its been mentioned multiple times that these consignment sellers have thousands of listings going on simultaneously. If we take time to report those auction listings we find that are being shilled (using the link included in every listing to "report a listing") Ebay should begin to put the heat on those particular sellers. In Ebay's policies they mention they will begin to notify the seller of shilling in their listings and if enough reports/multiple reports are made regarding a particular seller that Ebay could restrict and/or suspend the sellers account.

Maybe when Ebay begins to receive multiple shilling reports over and over again about consignment sellers like PWCC this will force PWCC themselves to become more vigilant in eliminating shilling on their listings because if they don't, it's their ass and their business on the line.

[CaramelMan]

Originally Posted by Iron Horse

The only way this will come to an end at least on eBay it would be by eBay somehow coming up with a system that if you retract bids more then once or twice in a month it locks you out for 30 days.

ding ding..we have a winner! so easy to enact!

but why would ebay do that? the more shill bids, the more money for them!