Steve:
It is viable, especially with a reserve. You tell your buddy what the
reserve is, and ask him to bid up your TR6 to just below the reserve. If no
one else bids, your buddy is off the hook, and so are you.
If you have no reserve, your buddy creates a new account with zero
feedback using a hotmail or Gmail account. You ask your buddy to bid the car
up to a certain value. Your buddy can make several bids in a row, in effect
bidding against himself to give a high bid count. This may (or may not)
generate some excitement in the belief that if there are many bids, it must be
an especially desirable car. If your buddy wins the car, you turn him in as a
non-paying bidder and he loses his new account (but keeps any "real" eBay
account he may have). Since you did not sell the car, you are only out the
listing fee.
If eBay simply excluded the free e-mail services from bidding, shill
bidding would drop dramatically. EBay won't do this because they profit from
shill bidding, as does the seller that arranges it.
I once saw a suspicious car on eBay up for sale. It stated in the
auction that there was no title, and the VIN was missing from car. The picture
showed an intact relatively new car, with low miles. The only reason for no
title and no VIN that I can think of is that the car is stolen. I contacted
eBay, stated my suspicions, and noted that it had no VIN in violation of
eBay's written policies. The response from eBay was that they would not remove
the posting unless I sent them a copy of the police report. Clearly eBay has
few ethics, except those that make them money.
Vance
Vance Navarrette
Knowledge is power.
Power corrupts.
Study hard, be evil.
http://www.triumphowners.com/832
From: steve bridge [mailto:slbridge@hotmail.com]
<snip>
I'm not sure that "Shill Bidding" is viable.
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