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That one auction site and cheating seller (Shill bidding)

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That one auction site and cheating seller (Shill bidding)
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supertank

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I'm bidding on an auction that ends tomorrow, and I noticed that every time someone comes in to bid on it, the same brand new buyer outbids them. So I looked into it a little and discovered the buyer has zero feedback, and has only ever bid on five auctions, which happen to all be from the same seller, who only happens to have five auctions. What do you suppose the odds are that a random buyer would decide to shell out hundreds of dollars on Disney pins, but only buy them from the same seller, and try to buy every item that seller has? Pretty close to zero.

So I sent the seller a message letting them know it needs to stop. I'm debating whether I should report them to eBay or not... I really want to win one of the auctions, but I'm worried that he'll artificially raise the price on me. If I report him, the auction will likely get deleted and I'll likely have to spend more money buying the pins individually. What should I do???
 
Your on the right track by messaging them. Now they know that you are on to them.

oh && I would also say report it if you continue seeing that they do that. It is not fair, I'm always scared that someone will do that to the stuff I want to bid on.
 
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I went ahead and reported them. This sucks. If the items get deleted, I'll have to spend more money to buy them individually (he's selling four pins I need as a set). If I win them, I'll have to spend more money than I should because of his raising the price artificially. I know that he's just trying to not sell the pins for less than they're worth (ie, puts a starting bid at $45, then attracts some attention and raises the bid to $100 so it doesn't sell for less than that)... but still, this isn't the way it's supposed to work and it's frustrating. I'm an eBay seller myself; it feels good to know that while I sell some items for less than their value, I'm not a low-life cheater.
 
report them, by the time ebay takes action it'll probably be too late but they will ban that account and depending on how any infractions they've done they'll IP block them so they can't even make a new ebay account to shill-bid
 
report,- I asked a seller a question a while back and I was blocked from bidding on his things (pins) probably were scrappers
do the right thing you will get the ones you want eventually
 
Well, I reported this exact type of thing about two years ago (a "mystery" bidder with 0 feedback whose bids were 100% for a single seller). I told eBay what I saw and they said that this wasn't enough proof. They also suggested I ASK the seller to reimburse some of the money I paid for pins won after shill bidding.

I mean, really?? I never did. They ended up selling a lot more pins but I put absolute minimum bids on these pins, assuming he would shill bid them and then decide later whether or not to offer me a second chance. I hope yours turns out differently...
 
Are you sure it's the same bidder? I thought we couldn't see who bid on items - we just get A****5
 
yes, I'm sure. If you click on the users ID (the A****5) that you see, it will tell you their bidding history... number of items they've bidded on, Percentage of items bid on with one seller, total number of bids, etc. For this bidder it says:

Feedback: 0
Number of bids: 9
Number of items: 5
Bidding percentage with this seller: 100%
 

Wow, never knew that! Definitely report then
 
I reported it, and sent the seller a message, basically letting him know that I knew what he was doing. His response to me was:

"I have no idea what you are talking about and i can not control who bids on my items!!! My prices are good and my service on ebay is great. i am not surprised that one person wants a number of my items...

thanks"

Lol, whatever. We'll let eBay sort it all out.

I'm wondering how long it will be before the other 'bidder' goes and throws a ton of really low bids on items that will sell for much higher to "prove" that it isn't the seller cheating because "look, he's bid on a lot of other stuff, too!." We shall see.
 
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Report it! It is so frustrating when sellers do that. Karma will come back around and you may see your pins in another auction.
 
Had this happen to me recently too. Never got the auction, but found the pins elsewhere cheaper!! Karma does come around.
 
I reported a similar situation to eBay. They cancelled the auction but the seller kept selling. eBay only cares about the fees this kind of thing brings in for them.
 
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