View Single Post
Old 09-08-11, 02:10 PM
  #34  
753proguy
Senior Member
 
Join Date: Feb 2008
Posts: 1,092
Mentioned: 1 Post(s)
Tagged: 0 Thread(s)
Quoted: 4 Post(s)
Likes: 0
Liked 1 Time in 1 Post
Originally Posted by cpsqlrwn
OK, I follow your logic. I agree that it is shady that the bidder went right to $400 and there were 20 minutes left and he had to know that the high bid was only $.90 higher and yet he refused to outbid him. But you're saying that these 6 shill bids were put in by 6 different users. That's quite an elaborate method for increasing the price when the moderator (eBay) doesn't really appear to give a **** about it anyway, don't you think? And some of your statements are not accurate and don't reasonably draw the conclusions you are suggesting. Perhaps you're a member of media. Only one of the bids was actually within a minute of the prior bid. And the fact that the bids are each $50 higher means nothing. I don't think those dots connect. That happens all the time in the last hour of an auction when a high bid exists. You are suggesting that this guy bid, logged out, then logged in as a different user and bid again, and then repeated the process multiple times. The only way we would know for sure that this happened was if we could trace the IP address of the computer he logged in on. That is assuming he was not so organized as to have machines on different networks doing the bidding. Now that would be elaborate. I agree that this last bidder was a shill and he was lucky the way the numbers worked out. He didn't have to retract. But I would say in a court of law you couldn't prove beyond a reasonable doubt that all those other bids were shills unless you had the IP address and knew they originated from the same physical location. You can't prove that conclusion just by the bid history which shows six different bidders in a natural progression. Are these bidders from the same geographic location? Is there a history of them having bid on the same item before? Give me some hard evidence. And stop jumping from A to C without B. I remain unconvinced.
Wrong, I'm saying (more likely) that it is a small group of buds that shill for each other, and he called / texted / e-m'd said buds in advance, told them to be ready to bid in $50 increments (you really think all of those $50-higher bids at about sixty second intervals, by seven different IDs, is a coincidence? If so, I've got a bridge in Brooklyn to sell you!), then texted or conference-called the 'go' command.

EBay gets more money, the sellers get more money, why should any of them try to prevent this (except the buyer, who got hosed)???

I can tell you that, in all sincerity, I've probably never seen a more clear-cut case of (perfectly executed) shill bidding in over a decade of active eBaying (and I've seen some pretty bad doo-doo go down on eBay).

No, it can't be proven in a court of law - that's kind of the whole point!
753proguy is offline