How Ebay could solve this problem quite easily.
Times Online has a great story today about shill bidding on ebay. Shill bidding is a practice, whereby sellers use a false ID (or have a buddy) bid on a product in an effort to raise the selling price of it. This either forces up the bidding (if the current winner sets a high maximum bid) or lets the seller not sell it at all if the price doesn’t reach where he wants it to reach.
Ebay has made this practice easier (in my estimation) by hiding bidder names from users. With a little pattern recognition, it used to be easy to tell if a seller shill bidded or not. Simply check his past auctions; if the same user or two always appeared in the bidders list - never won, just drove up the price, then you can safely assume he’s a shill bidder. I know it’s commonplace - I’ve been the victim of it on domain name auctions in the past. Times Online just confirmed it.
One of Ebay’s Titanium PowerSellers virtually admitted to such a practice. From the story:
In a conversation with an undercover reporter last week, Paraskevaides claimed shill bidding was commonplace on eBay.
When the reporter asked whether he arranged for associates to bid on his own items, he replied: “Well, if I put something really expensive (up for sale) and I was concerned that it was going for nothing, I would phone a friend of mine, even a client of mine who buys from me, and say: For Christ’s sake, I sell you 100 quids’ worth of items a week . . . just put two grand on it, will you?” The reporter was posing as a seller of valuable antiquities. He inquired whether Paraskevaides could sell them on eBay and guarantee a minimum price.
He replied: “Leave it to me (laughs). Don’t call it shill bidding. Then I won’t be accused of shill bidding. Yes. I mean — I’ve got people.
Ebay could very easily solve this problem; and the sniping problem as well, if they’d simply extend auctions automatically if someone bids in the last 5-10 minutes of one. Let’s say someone bids with 2 minutes left (usually a sniper), it is virtually impossible for someone else to come in and win (page loads, internet access, etc). Ebay should simply extend the auction another hour. If someone bids 50 minutes later, extend the auction again, until no one has bid for hour before close. Simple enough. Sellers would probably love it, as those last minute price wars can get intense (I’ve been in one and regretted paying so much later - but you just want to win!)
For shilling, simple pattern recognition on Ebay’s part could resolve this as well. If you are seller x, and you always have buyer y bidding on your stuff (as before, never winning, just running up the price), then the chances are high its a shill bidder. Take action.
Ebay is good at raising fees every quarter, but it does a terrible job on customer support, getting refunds to sellers when the buyer never pays, and changing the TOS with little notice. Ebay is a victim of its own success, in this regard.
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Bulbboy on February 27th, 2007
It’s very easy to get caught up in the bidding war. Use Hammersnipe.com to set your maximum and it’ll bid for you in the closing moments.
Will Spencer on March 5th, 2007
Lorien:
That is an awesome idea to not only prevent bid sniping, but actually to profit from bid sniping.
It’s like overtime periods in sports. It’s genius and it’s almost embarassing for eBay that they haven’t thought of it themselves.
Philip Cohen on April 12th, 2008
eBay introduces absolute anonymity for (shill) bidders
Revised 13 April 2008
A comment principally on the whole-of-auction absolute anonymity of bidders recently introduced to Australia (and more recently to the U.K.) by eBay, including responses to the various, sometimes nonsensical, statements being offered by eBay in support of this decision—with apologies to all the shill bidders out there.
For those of you with a very short attention span I will summarise my comments on my principal concern, the issue of “shill” bidding:
It is said that “Justice must not only be done; it must also be seen to be done.”
It follows therefore that “eBay must not only be free of shill bidders; users must also be able to see for themselves that it is free from shill bidders.”
Putting aside for the moment eBay’s existing “shill-bidders’ hide” facility, “User ID kept private,” if eBay thinks that making all bidding aliases absolutely anonymous (ie, “Bidder n”) will not make shill bidding easier or that experienced eBay users will now trust eBay, of its own volition, to rid eBay of the shill bidding that will undoubtedly now run rampant, then eBay management is living on a different planet to that on which I reside, and I have no doubt that such anonymity will ultimately have a detrimental effect on eBay’s business.
Actually, they are on a different planet: they have already stated elsewhere that “… we do not immediately remove a member from our site if shill bidding is detected” because eBay believes “… that people are basically good and sometimes people need an opportunity to be educated instead of removed” (ie, eBay needs to protect its income stream). The problem with this policy is that it appears that the only shill bidding eBay is ever going to recognise is that which is so blatant and habitual that such sellers do not deserve and should not get further chances! And, what then about the extra consideration these shill-bidding cheats have taken from unsuspecting buyers who have bought in good faith (and trusted eBay)?
Clearly, eBay does not have any automated processes for the detection of shill bidding (we all can direct eBay to obvious instances of such activity); eBay apparently relies solely on the reporting of such suspected activity by users—yet eBay has just removed the user’s capacity to more easily notice such activity … Dah!
Further, I would not be surprised if eBay could not be held to be complicit in any shill bidding that can be proven as eBay, for what would appear to me to be a petty if not a disingenuous reason has chosen to lessened the capacity (to practically zero) for buyers themselves to be on the alert for and thereby attempt to protect themselves from such despicable activity.
If the various governmental “Offices of Fair Trading” had any backbone they should have the power to make eBay undo this absolute anonymity nonsense as the simple fact is it serves no purpose other than as a blatant hide for shill bidding—in which eBay appears happy to be complicit.
For those of you with a longer attention span, the full detail of this and some other eBay matters at:
http://www.auctionbytes.com/forum/phpBB/viewtopic.php?p=6497776#6497776
or a fully formatted pdf file on request from formset@exemail.com.au.
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