Shill Bidding on eBay: A Case Study For anyone who buys anything on eBay, a detailed case study of shill bidding and the abuse of eBay’s proxy bidding system—all exacerbated by eBay’s introduction of “hidden bidders”—plus a detailed general criticism of eBay’s “clunky” auction platform, at
http://www.auctionbytes.com/forum/phpBB/viewtopic.php?t=24033This auctionbytes post may have been previously viewed by some, but it has over the past three months grown considerably and has developed into a general criticism of just about the whole of the mechanism of eBay’s auction platform, from the point of view of a buyer. The gist of that criticism is as follows:
Synopsis:
? very little of the auction system security, that eBay claims to offer buyers, exists in fact;
? contrary to their claim, eBay has no “sophisticated” nor “proactive” system in place for the detection of the criminal fraud of undisclosed vendor (“shill”) bidding and indeed appears to do nothing about such criminal activity except as a reaction to a user’s report of suspicious bidding activity;
? eBay appears to have no effective matter-of-course verification of users; unscrupulous users can have as many user IDs as they may have email addresses;
? many of eBay’s “rules”, concerning the retraction of bids, cancellation of auctions, etc, are nominal only and are no bar to the machinations of the unscrupulous seller;
? as a result, eBay’s “proxy” bidding system is so open to abuse by such unscrupulous sellers that to use it, the way eBay intends it to be used, can be an invitation to pay your maximum;
? the lack of any such effective security effectively “aids and abets” unscrupulous shill-bidding sellers to defraud naïve buyers;
? anyone naïve enough to bid on a seller-selected “private” auction (ie, “User ID kept private”), on the balance of probability, is going to be defrauded;
? when suspected fraud
is reported, and is found by eBay to be proved to their satisfaction, eBay will conceal that fact from the victim of the fraud; this then effectively is the concealing of a crime after the fact, surely a crime in itself;
? eBay will never acknowledge to a victim that a fraud has been perpetrated, nor indeed acknowledge that such fraud is even a problem on eBay; eBay therefore sees no reason to provide any mechanism to aid in the recovery of any monies so defrauded;
? if eBay did have any truly sophisticated and proactive system in place for the detection and control of shill bidding, we would not now be having this debate; and
? for those buyers (and honest sellers) who embrace eBay believing that eBay acts as an “honest broker” between buyer and seller, I can only say that there are fairies at the bottom of the garden too.
As a matter of interest my “15 minutes of fame” came about after Cade Metz of “The Register” followed up my auctionbytes case study with the following story on 10 July, at
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2009/07/10/ebay_and_shill_bidding/The national Fairfax group (in Australia) then picked it up and on 14 July also gave eBay a serve, at
http://www.smh.com.au/technology/biz-tech/phoney-bidding-rampant-on-ebay-20090714-djsr.htmlThe following morning I had a call from “A Current Affair” which I declined; then ABC radio called and talked me into doing an interview (eBay got to respond with their classic disingenuousness 30 minutes later); then the “Today” show called …
The Australian Nine Network “Today” show also ran the story on 16 July, at
http://today.ninemsn.com.au/article.aspx?id=838042Even the author’s local newspaper gave the story a run on 21 July:
http://www.theleader.com.au/news/local/news/general/bid-to-stamp-out-fakes-during-online-auctions/1572834.aspxAll the three “newspapers” invited responses from eBay. Apart from the usual pathetic, disingenuous responses reported in the above articles (that I have further responded to in the auctionbytes thread), the author is yet to receive any direct communication from eBay as to any aspect of the facts that are presented, or the conclusions that are drawn therefrom, that eBay may care to dispute.
But, of course, the real question is, will we ever be able to shame this greedy, unscrupulous, disingenuous organisation (eBay, that is) into providing the auction security for buyers that it claims to provide but that it, demonstrably, does not?
In the meantime, the journo at the Herald has expressed an interested in following up this matter of eBay’s facilitating of shill bidding with the regulatory authorities and so would anyone who notices any activity that is very probably shill bidding, please supply the auction number(s) and suspect ID(s) to the author at
formset@exemail.com.auBear in mind that, alone, a high percentage of “Bid activity (%) with this seller” may or may not be an indicator of shill bidding: 100% of bids on only one auction with this seller, may well be meaningless. As the number of auctions of the seller that a bidder is bidding on increases the probability that it could be shill bidding also increases, regardless of the number of bids on each auction. I wonder why it is then that eBay does not supply that statistic (ie, “Items bid on with this seller”), nor do they directly identify the seller in the “30 Day Bid History” list (you have to try and figure that out yourself)? Could I be so cynical as to suggest that the information is supplied in such a clumsy format deliberately so as to make it as difficult as possible for genuine bidders to work it all out?