On Jan 28, 8:06 pm, D Peter Maus wrote:
Roadie wrote:

On Jan 28, 8:09 am, "Bignose Bernie the Bagelman"
wrote:
Revealed: How eBay sellers fix auctions

http://www.timesonline.co.uk/newspap...570050,00.html

Recorded excerpts of meetings with Paraskevaides

CUSTOMERS of the internet auction site eBay are being defrauded by
unscrupulous dealers who secretly bid up the price of items on sale to
boost profits. An investigation by The Sunday Times has indicated that
the practice of artificially driving up prices - known as shill
bidding - is widespread across the site.

I guess I'm not surprised - shills have been a part of Ebay since the
early days. It is so easy for an unscrupulous seller to set up fake
bidder ID's, or to just call a few buddies who will cross bid on one
anothers auctions. And now Ebay has made fraudulent bidding even
easier by hiding id's. Apparently Ebay is rolling out another
improvement that hides bidder id's and bidding history. In one of the private Grundig radio fora I belonged to a few years
ago, it was routine for members to bid up another members auction. They
even bragged about doing it before the auction closed.

The rationale as explained was that bidders enter the contest with a
maximum bid. If that's the price the bidder was willing to pay anyway,
and a few shills bid up to near that figure, what's the harm?

I don't know what the repercussions may have been, I resigned the
group. But the group itself didn't last very long.-

Manipulation of auctions whether on Ebay or elsewhere is nothing new.
Pre-auction bidding agreements and bidding against the box have been
around for as long as there have been auctions. Unfortunately Ebay
seems to have taken steps to make it easier for sellers to create the
illusion of buyer interest.