More frickin' shill bidding - HED rims...

[john]

@Lee - please inlcude the full links, they are help to pay for our hosting

You may note that the same group of bidders have bid up a lot of vintage items early. You may also have noted that in the case of the Grafton levers, they pulled bids at the last minute to permit a win at $56. Nice scheme, eh?

Interesting. Pretty old scheme but the first time I've heard that it be used on retro mtb stuff (although I'm sure it has in the past). Lets see how this one pans out.

 

[pete_mcc]

John, this is highly organised and orchestrated. The issue is eBay allow people to withdraw bids when they shouldn't. They say that you can't retract a bid in the last 12 hr but are letting these people do so by their using the 'can't contact buyer'. They must be using some reverse sniping software to do this so well and are systematicall doing it as is proven by the 30 odd retracions from the 3 ids involved in this scam. If eBay don't stop this then it will destroy the basic eBay model.

Rather than waiting we should all write to eBay and the sellers of any items which these guys are bidding on showing the grafton lever example as a warning.

 

[pete_mcc]

Oh, and bare in mind that the practice is illegal not just against the spirit of eBay-this is punishable by fines and prison time in much the same way as shill bidding is. This is effectively a form of fraud and misrepresentation through adversely influencing the outcome of an auction.

 

[JeRkY]

Any other items that these two bidders have been active on?

So far I have seen these rims, the Grafton levers and the Cooks stem currently running.

It would be interesting to see if there are any more completed listings for desirable items that have sold for well below what would normally be expected.

 

[pete_mcc]

Biscuit tiogas ( has anyone else figured out that these guys are german? Who else would go for nos graftons and biscuit tiogas!)

 

[john]

Pete, I am indeed well aware of this scam model.

Are you saying this is the same lot who bought the graftons? Surely the IDs aren't visible until after the auction.

 

[beshroomed]

It does look like the same pair.


One has 4 bid retractions in the last 6 months. And look at their last 8 bids, all in the same categories at the same times..


http://offer.ebay.com/ws/eBayISAPI.dll? ... e_ViewLink

http://offer.ebay.com/ws/eBayISAPI.dll? ... e_ViewLink

It's not liking the links, post comes up blank if I use tags.

 

[JeRkY]

Yup definitely looks to be the same people on all these items (including the Grafton levers). I have not been aware of this type of scam before...lil' old innocent me

 

[pete_mcc]

One of them has 19 retractions in 6 months!

John, I just work on the 'sort of names' that eBay provides during auctions along with comparisons of feedback scores and previous bidder items and I believe that there are three accounts working together to create this scam and they are currently bidding on at least 4 items and won on the graftons and who knows what else. My big concern is that eBay should prevent this by their rules (ie no retraction in the last 12 hours unless agreed with seller) but they are not!

One of the dodgy bidders is a person called tootbrush, although he does change his user id on a regular basis. So if you get him bidding, get worried!

 

[sinnett177]

I'm pretty sure you can highlight this to ebay and they will get the law involved. A guy was sent to prison for this same thing not so long ago (there is a thread somewhere), the daft thing is they think they can get away with it, i guess they know little about ip addressing.[/b]