New Epay Rules Just Made Catching A Shill Bidder Harder

[Gilbert]

Was monitoring an item that I was following, and noticed that the bidders usernames are now omitted. So what use to be readily visible (feedback, location, etc.) is now gone. It is virtually impossible to find out whether a bidder and seller are in kahoots.

Below is the new epay message accompanying the change.......

"As the internet evolves, eBay continues to strike a balance between preserving transparency and protecting our Community of members. eBay has decided to change how bid history information is displayed so bad guys cannot target bidders with fake offers using this information. In certain cases, some bidders will no longer be able to view Bidder User IDs on the Bid History page. Your User ID will be shown only to you and the seller of the item you're bidding on. Other members will see an anonymous name, such as Bidder 1, applied consistently to the Bid History page."

[mas]

EBay needs a quality competitor who employs a quality escrow service to eliminate fraud.

[Gilbert]

Woooohoooo baby, I take that back. I think things are actually better now, because one of the Stat's that comes up on a bidder is his/her Bid Activity with that particular seller. And it doesn't appear to be item specific, but I'm not positive yet, but it sure looks that way.

[mas]

EBay may have changed their position, but I haven't. []

[Parrot]

eBay recently announced that they're raising their rates, as well. The billions they rake in already just aren't enough. They just paid $300 million for a ticket scalper company and that will enable them to screw more people.

[Good2BHome]

I saw this a few days ago for the first time, but I don't understand the way they select the items or sellers. On identical items this approach was not used. The sellers other items were not.

SO ????

[Gilbert]

Good2,

It's a pretty slick change, that I was initially negative about. The stat's of any particular bidder will quickly show a pattern or relationship between a bidder and the seller of an item that you are interested in.

In the past, I have just had to snif them out by weighing through the feedbacks, or just using common scense (roll the dice in my case) and watching the bidding. Now that information is instantly shown when you move the cursor over each bidder.

This new feature will definitely make the shilled items stand out like a sore thumb. The only exception is new member accounts, or zero feedback bidders. Which in the past only raised RED flags anyway.

I like it, but still proceed with caution and always bid within the closing seconds.

EDIT:

HERE'S A PERFECT EXAMPLE OF A SHILL

http://offer.ebay.com/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?ViewBidderProfile&mode=1&item=330070908953&aid=6&eu=JtyhbRvQQ30%3D&view=NONE&ssPageName=PageBidderProfileViewBids_None_ViewLink

Man! Just looking at some of the other bidders stats, it's easy to see these amps are being seriously shilled by the sellers buddy's. This auction really stinks [+o(].

[Guest " "]

oh thats no good....now you can't back track a sellers current low feed back bidders to see how many times those circle of low feed back bidders appear on past transactions just for the sake of inflating the bids.

[cueman]

I tell ya, I sell on ebay all the time. I get no less than 5 emails from bidders, asking me to visit their website for cheap prices on electronics. Here's an excerpt from a recent email today:

Dear friend
This is sharon ,nice to meet you
pleased to contact with you.We are a big wholesaler company
that can offer the latest and most famous digital and electronic to you,
such as digital camera,video,Mobile,laptop,Notebook,TV,IPOD NANOS ,GPS,PSP PS3 , XBOX360
and so on.they are brand new,authentic,each one come with original box.
Our products have sale all over the world.We can offer high
quality product,the lowest price and goods

for more detail ,please feel for free to contact us
the msn is syedy3574@yahoo.com.cn
the email is syedy3574@yahoo.com.cn

Recently I looked researched some of their feedback, because sometimes they will have one or two. All the items they have won are just a line of question marks, like the title of the auction is: ???????????????????????????? and they are always Unverified and in China

I found on seller who had not been shut down yet, and had over 300 such listings going, just so the other users (probably the same person) could buy and get feedback. The point is, if a user has 300+ auctions running with the title of question marks, then they (ebay) are not trying very hard to shut these people down. I always forward the email to spoof @ ebay dot com but it takes days before they get shut down

[cueman]

Was monitoring an item that I was following, and noticed that the bidders usernames are now omitted. So what use to be readily visible (feedback, location, etc.) is now gone. It is virtually impossible to find out whether a bidder and seller are in kahoots.

Below is the new epay message accompanying the change.......

"As the internet evolves, eBay continues to strike a balance between preserving transparency and protecting our Community of members. eBay has decided to change how bid history information is displayed so bad guys cannot target bidders with fake offers using this information. In certain cases, some bidders will no longer be able to view Bidder User IDs on the Bid History page. Your User ID will be shown only to you and the seller of the item you're bidding on. Other members will see an anonymous name, such as Bidder 1, applied consistently to the Bid History page."

I wonder how you use that option in your listings. It is different than a private listing. I just went through a mock listing to see if there was a place to add this type of bidding history and I didn't see it. Maybe it just automatically does this when an item hits a certain amount.

Edit: Now after a little research on laptops, I see that any item under $200 shows the bidders, once over $200, then it goes to Bidder #1, etc. I guess this happens automatically now by ebay?

[Gilbert]

oh thats no good....now you can't back track a sellers current low feed back bidders to see how many times those circle of low feed back bidders appear on past transactions just for the sake of inflating the bids.

If your concern is shilling, which is where I think your going, ..... there is no longer a need to track through a sellers feedback. That statistics are electronically calculated for you by epay. You can get the info instantly, by looking directly at the percentage of times any particular bidder has been associated with the seller of an item. AND THE STAT INCLUDES PREVIOUS AUCTIONS!! AND...It doesn't matter whether the shill bidder has won in the past or not.

I honestly don't think that unscrupulous sellers will change there tactic's, but at least a stinky auction will be easier to spot, and avoided.

[cueman]

I see what you are saying, and I agree, it's a good thing. What I was getting at in my previous post is that it looks like $200 is the magic number, where once the bidding hits $200, then it goes to the new system