Smee,
I thought the reference to "smelly red herring" was quite reasonable and could not be more accurate for the comments of my opponent, "Tradguy". You apparently managed to read the drivel about statistical analysis that he offered in rebuttal of my OP; what other conclusion could one come to as to the purpose of his comment other than “red herring”?
Tradguy has been following me around for the past 18 months; he, like our own resident eBay apologist, RiffRaff, only ever comments in the negative on my posts critical of eBay. My considered opinion is that both he and Riff are most probably eBay employees, or possibly shill bidding sellers, but most probably eBay employees.
Whether my responses to their comments help "my case" or not I really don't care. I simply present some facts and comment thereon. Hopefully, the people who read my posts will be a little more on guard to the very real dangers of being defrauded when buying on eBay.
For those that are blind or simply choose to not see, for whatever reason, so be it. I accept that there is no way that any argument that I could put forward could elicit from either RiffRaff or Tradguy an acknowledgement that shill bidding is even a minor problem on eBay. I believe, indeed I know, that shill bidding by professional sellers is rampant on eBay and that probably a large majority of professional sellers are shill bidding. Buyers should be aware of that situation.
One of the advantages of posting on AuctionBytes is that posts can be edited ad infinitum, and I do take advantage of that ability. I note such editing with a “revised date” and if you look closely you may notice that some of my posts have been edited 100s of times. I never claimed to be a gifted writer; it’s hard work, and I can’t resist continuing to try to refine whatever it is that I have written so that the message is clear and free of any ambiguity and is supportable by the facts—unlike the great majority of statements that emanate from eBay’s Department of Spin.
And I am a little disappointed that you express a concern that I might falsify the facts to bolster my criticisms of eBay; my criticisms are shaped by the facts, not the reverse, and if you require proof of that you can always do a random audit on some of those facts that I present. As I have said elsewhere, I enjoy dabbling on eBay; I have no wish to damage eBay, I simply don’t enjoy having to be on constant alert for the eBay-facilitated shill bidders, about which it can be demonstrated that eBay, contrary to their claims, does nothing proactively and what they do reactively appears to be little more than a charade.
Fluffy*Duckee,
My hypothesis about seller beckertime’s possibly buying some of his own Best Offers is simply an extension of what appears to be much winning of many of his auctions by regularly-appearing IDs and the fact that successful sales are often contiguous in small daily groups. Anyway, as I have said, I’ve recorded the numbers of the successful Best Offers for the past 14 days and time will tell if there is anything strange going on, although one cannot guarantee that a genuine buyer will leave feedback (and in such cases eBay should leave nominal feedback by default after a period of time).
Your comments on Best Offer are taken. I don’t suggest that there is any “fraud” involved per se; if as you say, you can’t know what others have offered; it’s more to give the impression that expensive items are moving via the Buy It Now or Best Offer process; there is no direct intention to “gain an advantage or cause a loss”, just create activity.
Only auctions can be analysed in any depth (but not UK auctions: the sophisticated shill has free reign in the UK) and so only auctions are recorded in the spreadsheet; I can only say, look at the data in the spreadsheet, see all the unsuccessful common bidders; see the number of common bidders that have made very many bids on many auctions but whose feedback count never, or very rarely, increments.
These are Rolex watches and I understand that some people do collect such items, but so many bidders with single digit feedback, or high value feedback and nibble bidding, etc. And, although I have not recorded descriptions, I am pretty sure that I noticed the same nice ladies Rolex three or four times; unfortunately it’s not practical to record and compare every detail—only eBay, with some effort, could programmatically do that!
Having said that, if you look at the data you will see that the majority of those IDs that have bid on more than one auction and have won an auction, have only won that one auction, but five IDs have won 2–3 auctions; it’s possible that the former simply wanted a Rolex watch and the latter are collectors of Rolex watches. However, there are a number of underbidder IDs that have bid on so many auctions and have never won anything and so they would have to be suspect. One ID (“s***s (3637-59)”) has bid on 31 auctions and only recently actually won one (200396867202); ended 28 October; watch for feedback). A number of other IDs have bid on between two and eighteen auctions but never won any of them. Many other of the common non-winning bidding IDs appear on individual auctions sometimes a week or two apart. Again, the number of auctions bid on by some individual IDs rises steadily through 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 8, 9, 10, 15, 18, with that one at 31.
Also, as you can see by the very high number of bids on many of these auctions, there is a great deal of nibble bidding thereon; although I have made provision for such detail in the spreadsheet, I have not attempted to collect that detail nor flag those IDs that are doing the nibble bidding; too much work involved. (Maybe some programmer will one day write a program that will collect all the appropriate info for such analysis.)
With respect to the administrative work involved, there is also much administrative work involved in making the many multiple-ID shill bids that I believe this seller is making. When sellers start auctions at 99c for items worth some thousands you have to know that they are going to have some mechanism for insuring that they get the price they want. And there’s no less work involved in avoiding the FVF on a self-bought failed shill-bidded auction. Regardless, they cannot allow the punters to get the impression that nothing, or very little, is selling; punters have to be encouraged to get in there and compete, and I would suggest that the spreadsheet analysis suggests that this seller is creating much of that appearance of completion all by himself.
It’s not obvious from simply perusing the spreadsheet but as I update the data on a daily basis it noticeable that there is a pattern of “rolling” IDs in and out of use on the auctions, and usually, but not always, many of the common IDs have single digit feedback counts. I have observed this effect on many other sellers auctions in the spreadsheet to the point where I seriously wonder if some third party might be supplying some sort of automated shill bidding service.
If the above appears to be getting a little ratty that’s because I’m having trouble keeping track of all the possibilities.
As a matter of interest the following are the numbers for those successful Best Offers:
BeckerTime "Best Offer" 360202265059 200397583259 360199352480 200397583256 360199352479 200394667510 200395035603 360198764751 370275309734 200397226497 370274829106 360199663626 360199352481 200397218604 360200240541 200393594454 360198462643 200396103878 370276267265 200396489602 200395364651 360198152418 360197856702 360198462652 360198457850 200391887521 370275295753 360195811898 370272809033 360197543782 360195215688 370272804967 200391174064 370273281599 370273819517 |
Sold for $7,800.00 $6,600.00 $2,799.99 $22,000.00 $2,000.00 $4,250.00 $1,750.00 $2,000.00 $3,000.00 $200.00 $4,999.00 $4,500.00 $1,999.00 $2,100.00 $2,050.00 $2,200.00 $8,000.00 $1,799.00 $3,969.00 $4,999.00 $3,970.00 $1,750.00 $1,999.00 $2,500.00 $6,000.00 $3,000.00 $4,799.00 $1,925.00 $3,000.00 $349.00 $2,299.00 $4,500.00 $3,150.00 $3,900.00 $2,000.00 |
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