I'll put in my 2c worth. Last year I raised a question with eBay about a
situation where the same bidder was repeatedly bidding (and losing) on a
particular sellers items. The response I got was that there are safeguards
in their system which "kicks" out that type of information for
investigation. In this particular case, they found that the bidder did that
on several seemingly unrelated sellers (and items). eBay went on to say
that there did not appear to be any collusion in this particular case. They
did say that they suspend 3-5 sellers/buyers a week for shill
bidding.
So even though it does seem happen, eBay is making an effort to enforce
their "rules" prohibiting it and the buyer can alway stop bidding at their
own limit.
If you think it is happening, check the sellers previous auctions. look at
the bid history and see if the same names show up as winner/second bidder.
Very Rare.
Carl
-----Original Message-----
From: Mark Gendron
To: Bob Simmons; Barry Schwartz; Triumphs Mailing List (E-mail)
Sent: 6/8/00 12:10 PM
Subject: RE: suspicious dealings on ebay
Are you sure about your facts? The JD is investigating eBay,
but it has nothing to do with bidding practices by eBay customers.
Another company (AuctionWatch, I believe) complained that eBay
won't allow them to catalog eBay auctions with a web crawler and
post them on their own web site. They are alleging antitrust
violations, and the JD is investigating. IMHO, the complaint
has no merit.
If eBay customers are engaging in "shill bidding" (I think that's
what it's called), then eBay would need to take civil action
against them. Of course, the government MIGHT get involved if
there is widespread activity of this sort by an individual or
organized group of individuals.
> -----Original Message-----
> From: Bob Simmons
> Sent: Thursday, June 08, 2000 8:58 AM
> Subject: Re: suspicious dealings on ebay
>
> Barry,
> there is an investigation going on right now regarding ebay by the
justice
> department. It regards basically what I had previously mentioned.
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