I don't know if this has been covered before but I was curious about members thoughts and experiences with what I believe is officially known as "shill bidding", ie friends and family of the seller placing false bids to drive the price of an item up.  Bidders on flea bay in Australia are now anonymous where previously there was the ability to look at a 'bidders' feedback while an auction was still live.  This occasionally produced interesting results. 

I have done this on many occasions and found, shock horror, that both the 'bidder' and seller have significant activity with each other, ie they have bid on each others items regularly.  It becomes really obvious what is occuring when the 'friend' is unfortunate enough to be the highest bidder at the end of the auction and next thing you know the item is relisted, following which the previous 'buyer' ie the accomplice, appears again as a bidder.  Would you allow someone to bid on a relisted item if they were the ones who had previously backed out of the sale?  I don't think so, neither would I.  I've also seen items 'won' by one person then relisted by them days later, following which the previous seller begins to bid on the thing that they supposedly just sold, changed their minds and want it back?  I don't think so either!  Personally I don't believe in coincidences however I do believe that it is a huge problem that flea bay don't pursue actively enough and unfortunately with anonymous bidding these things can't be identified any more.  Do others in the Forum have similar views and experiences?  Clive

Hi Clive,

yes, shill bidding is alive and well and made even more easy by the dimwits at eBay who care more about profits (from listing fees, auction end fees, Paypal costs etc) than they do about their real customers who are the SELLERS, not the buyers.  Nobody has anything to sell, you can't have any buyers.  But all they say they are intersted in is protecting the buyers!

Shill bidding has happened to me.   I noticed that another bidder on something I was about to bid on was from the same remote village in France as the seller.  I questioned them via 'contact a seller' and by return of message i.e. within the eBay message system, the guy admitted that his wife was bidding on his item to up the price as nobody had yet bid.  Once I pointed out to him that this was against eBay rules with threat of being barred from eBay - what did he do?  He sent me the item free of charge, no bidding, no postage costs.  I however never bought from him again.  I know work colleagues do it all the time between themselves.  It's fraud and I suspect eBay know it is done but don't have the inclination to stop it as it's not in thier interests to do so.

I'm going through nightmares of non-payers at the moment.  I've sold my first 4 items last week and only heard from 2 winners.  It's putting me off selling more stuff.  That and people having unrealistic shipping cost expectations.

Dave.