Zero Feedback Bidders on Ebay - Newbies or Shill Bidders?

[NelsonAI]

 

I have seemed some high profile listings as of late where bidders tend to be newly created IDs with zero feedback.

 

While I am sure there are new users signing up on ebay each day, I find it hard to believe that they wouldn't test out ebay on a few low ticket items before bidding $11,000 on a cover. Some buyers obviously didn't care as they continued to bid up the cover. I personally get suspicious when the seller doesn't reject the bids. I avoid these auctions altogether.

 

Cheers!

N

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

[Weird Paper]

I'm wondering, though, if there is no longer seller-to-buyer feedback on ebay, how you even build up a feedback rating. If you only buy on ebay, and never sell, will you remain a zero rating, or has ebay done something to take that into account?

[Dick Pontoon]

I'm wondering, though, if there is no longer seller-to-buyer feedback on ebay, how you even build up a feedback rating. If you only buy on ebay, and never sell, will you remain a zero rating, or has ebay done something to take that into account?

 

There's no longer seller-to-buyer negative feedback. Sellers can only leave positives.

[Weird Paper]

Duh-ohh.

 

Thanks

[comicartcom]

generally speaking when I see an item being listed and several zero feedback bidders on it driving the price up, I believe that the bidders are totally shills. Sometimes there will be areal bidder in the middle of it, but I generally see this with a non-movie poster person selling a movie poster. The price seems to get higher than even I or Heritage or Bruce Hershenson etc can get and that is a pretty good bet that the bidders are friends of the seller hiking up his price.

 

the days of fleaBay have past.. now it is just a crapshoot of thieves with not that many honest sellers anymore.. but that's why I started my own auction site..

[comicartcom]

I should also have mentioned that usually when I see what I think are shills, they have had a fleaBay account for a considerable period (1-2 years) and have bid on nothing until this item that has already reached hundreds or thousands where they are "fighting" back and forth with someone else of equal suspicion

[NelsonAI]

 

Thanks for the additional insight Rich.

Let's not forget ebay masking bidder names which makes shilling easier.

 

 

 

[comicartcom]

here is a perfect example of shill bidding

 

http://offer.ebay.com/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?ViewBids&item=250274950635

 

this is for Adobe Premiere Pro CS3. the software sells for about $400-600 depending on where you look

 

even if you example the top bidder with 33 dfeedbacks, his bidding history is 100% with this seller who only has 39 feedbacks