Posted by Eric B. on Sunday, March 25, 2007 at 13:27:54 :
In Reply to: But.. posted by The Other Ross on Sunday, March 25, 2007 at 13:19:02 :
I agree, shill bidding can happen, though I hope it is rare.
I have gotten the same complaint from people, that they can not tell if there is shill bidding with the new system.
One point on that is that even with the bidder names showing up it is not easy to know if there is shill bidding going on from a single transaction, as you often do not know who the bidders are anyway.
One way to protect yourself if you are worried is to ask the seller to E-mail you the bidder list, something they should be willing to do if you are in there and bidding.
If you get a bad feeling from something other then the lack of bidder ID info then don't bid, just like you would when the IDs were visable.
If I won a large ticket item for which the bidding looked weird to me, or I had a strange feeling about, I would request the bidder history to see who was involved.
I do not know if shill bidding is a major problem or not on E-bay, but I have never run into it that I know of.
Eric
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