Thursday 7 December 2006

"Safeguarding Members IDs is not a licence to shill"

Sean_Coolness has been an eBay member since 2001, and describes himself as "addicted". Specialising in motorcycles, he feels strongly that eBay should do everything they can to protect his customers from the fake 'second chance offers' which have left too many people with no goods and no money. Here are his thoughts.

Let me first say that I totally agree with eBay's new Safeguarding Members' IDs policy, because it stops fake second chance offers dead!

Sellers of high value items, like myself, suffer greatly from scammers sending out fake second chance offers to underbidders. The scammers had the underbidders' IDs from the items bid history, and could see just how much that person had bid. So it was pretty easy for them to send out a fake email which looked identical to eBay's own. Too many people have fallen foul of this, and enough of them, sellers and bidders alike, have complained about it that eBay have finally taken action.

This is a controversial decision which many think gives the seller greater scope for shill bidding. This simply isn't true.


bid history screenshot
click for full screenshot
In the new style bid history, there is a link to each bidders' bid history, showing their activity not just with the current seller, but with any seller. So if a seller is using a second account to push up the price, which is what shill bidding is all about, it will show. You can see how many times the bidder has bid on this seller's items, how many other sellers' items they have bid on, and other such information which was previously hard work to compile from the various searches available in advanced search.


bid history screenshot
click for full screenshot
In fact, a glance you can see the whole bidding activity of the bidder, and in far more detail than previously readily available. Coupled with eBay stopping private feedback, this actually reduces the scope for dodgy sellers to push prices up by shill bidding.

It has also been said by others that shill bidding is a "lesser" crime than fake second chance offers, as people who enter their maximum bid, and stick to it, can't be pushed higher by shill bidding. Where as with fake second chance offers, people have been ripped off for hundreds and even thousand of pounds. I'm not so sure I agree with this, but I do understand the sentiments.

So, with the bidder's identity hidden from general view, is it still possible to see if a seller is shill bidding, or getting a mate to regularly bid up their auctions? The answer is basically yes:

1) Using the link provided by eBay you can see how many different items and the number of sellers the bidder has bid on. If the bidder has only ever bid on one seller's auctions, but has bid on many different items, you can draw your own conclusion.

2) If a high value item is re-listed a good number of times, I would suspect the dodgy seller has "won" their own item in their efforts to push the price higher than genuine bidders are willing to pay. Remember there are a number of legitimate reasons why a seller has to re-list an item once or twice, so this isn't a hard and fast rule.

3) Common sense. Never underestimate your gut feeling.

Finally, not all sellers of 99p no reserve auctions are dodgy sellers; some of us use it as a sales pitch to generate more interest in our items :-)

Sean_Coolness

Labels: ,

3 Comments:

Blogger pennymachines said...

This comment has been removed by a blog administrator.

17 December 2006 at 02:23:00 GMT  
Blogger pennymachines said...

I'm amazed that you think this is a good idea.

Hidden bidder ID's make it almost impossible to spot and report shills, and the 30 day anonymous bidder's history is useless for detecting fraudulent activity. The active eBay community are appalled by the new sytem: Safeguarding Member IDs eBay Forum thread

And if it stops fake second chance offers dead, how come we're still getting them?

That eBay decided to allow second chance offers was ill-judged at best, greedy at worst. Had they not done so, buyers could have continued to protect themselves by the simple expedient of never buying through emails (whether or not they appear to come from eBay). As it is, the scams will continue to thrive - particulary if people believe the new system "stops fake second chance offers dead".

Brushing away shill bidding as a "lesser crime" won't do, as I think you realize. It is fraudulent. It costs the buyers by forcing them to pay more than they would in a legitimate auction. Sure the bidders' maximum bid indicates what they're prepared to pay if other genuine bidders force them to, but the purpose of an auction is not to realize that price regardless (much as that may suit eBay's coffers).

17 December 2006 at 02:58:00 GMT  
Anonymous Anonymous said...

It is amazing how a small amount of "core" ebay users believe they actually detect and help stop shill bidding. Ebay has more technology in place to detect shill bidding than people give them credit for. Ebay is tracking IP addresses, registration names and dates and many other factors that a bidder/seller can never see...and ebay will be giving the site more visiblitity on data that was previously not available to bidders. Pennymachines really does not get it, stopping fraud is more important that helping him save $3 on a item. Ebay rolled out this policy in motors in Nov. and they are rolling it out in core this week. So you will still recieve second chance offers until this is fully roled out on the site.

11 January 2007 at 05:59:00 GMT  

Post a Comment

Subscribe to Post Comments [Atom]

<< Home