Just a warning to all eBay users about a widespread scam that is going on there. eBay
refuses to prevent sellers from bidding on their own items and thus driving the prices
up. This tactic is called shilling and I recently found out that many sellers are
doing this to fleece prospective buyers or to retain their goods if it they will
otherwise sell to a real buyer at a lower price than what the user wanted. It is
possible that in many auctions, most of the bidders are in fact just aliases being
used by the seller.
eBay claims to be fighting shilling and that it rarely occurs. They are wrong on both
counts. I recently caught a seller bidding on his own auction using a number of
aliases to drive the price up. I emailed eBay the proof that the seller was doing this
(he made a stupid mistake and was using his real email addresses in his aliases) and
eBay claimed to have removed him from their site. I later found out it is possible to
easily search eBay and find all auctions a particular member has been involved in.
Doing searches of some suspicious bidders in auctions I was involved in showed me that
many - if not most - of the auctions I checked had sellers bidding on their items
using other aliases. I contacted eBay with more information about other fake aliases
used by sellers, but now they claim they are unwilling to act because they do not have
enough evidence.
It appears obvious that eBay is fully aware of the rampant abuse of their system, but
they chose to pretend it is not occurring as they do not want members to become aware
that they are being scammed. Since eBay choses to not protect members from
unscrupulous sellers, I would suggest anyone who disagrees with their policy contact
them at: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
If eBay realizes that members find the current refusal to enforce honesty
unacceptable, they will make the necessary changes to prevent shilling. Until they do
so, I will never use eBay again.
I apologize for this off-topic message, but I hope it is of some benefit to readers.
If you know anyone who uses eBay and feel it may be helpful, please feel free to
forward this warning on to them. I only wish I was aware of this information six
months ago. It is sad to see that eBay apparently does not care that thousands of
their members are being swindled daily.
Sincerely,
a former eBay member
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