Absolute anonymity of bidding: help bring eBay to heel

[PhilipCohen]

I apologise in advance for the length of the following comment. If you are an unethical shill-bidding seller, or a buyer who lives in Australia, the UK, Ireland or the Philippines and you are not concerned that, on these sites, eBay is effectively (and knowingly) “aiding and abetting” such shill-bidding sellers to cheat you, read no further.

eBay introduces absolute anonymity for (shill) bidders

A draft for a submission to government and others regarding unconscionable conduct by the online auction facilitator, eBay

19 July 2008

eBay is a very large international company with such a market share of the online auction business that their behaviour has to be viewed as “monopolistic” in nature.

As an eBay “addict”, predominantly a buyer, my principal concern with eBay is their introduction of whole-of-auction absolute anonymity of bidders to their Australian, UK, Ireland and Philippine sites, and undoubtedly coming (again?) to other eBay sites. I consider this action to be unprincipled, unethical, reprehensible, even unconscionable; however you look at it, it is an outrage.

eBay has now obscured auction bidding on the above-mentioned sites to the point that genuine bidders have got absolutely no chance of detecting and thereby protecting themselves from “shill” bidding (a criminal offence in most civilised countries) by unethical vendors. Notwithstanding eBay’s statements to the contrary, this application of absolute anonymity by eBay serves no other purpose than to deceive consumers by the removing of the genuine bidder’s ability to detect suspicious patterns of (shill) bidding on any particular seller’s auctions; and the same criticism has always applied to eBay’s other classic shill bidders’ facility, “User ID kept private”. Again, notwithstanding eBay’s various pronouncements about shill bidding being banned on eBay, eBay is now knowingly “aiding and abetting” such shill bidding sellers, at the expense of buyers.

What other reason could eBay have for increasing the level of bidding anonymity from that of a bidder-specific level (as currently used in the US, for instance) to this absolute level? The only possible reason can be to make blatant shill bidding “disappear”. If shill bidding cannot be detected, then genuine bidders cannot report it and, as a consequence, eBay does not have to waste any of their valuable resources pretending to do anything about it.

That is not to say that eBay will not ultimately suspend or ban a seller that is reported for and is shown, beyond any reasonable doubt, to be shill bidding—particularly if that exposure is accompanied by negative publicity in the press; it is to suggest, however, that eBay will do nothing about shill bidding if such shill bidding cannot be noticed and therefore cannot be reported in the first place. (eBay itself has made statements to the effect that eBay investigates only user reports of shill bidding; they do not actively test all auction data for signs of shill bidding.)

On 26 February, on the eBay Workshop Board michelleoz@ebay.com, in anticipation, posed the following rhetorical question and a response thereto:

“Won’t the recent changes to ‘safeguarding member IDs’ allow more shill bidding to take place?

“No—the changes will not make shill bidding any easier.
“Our experience is that the detailed information [now] provided on the buyer, and how it is presented, has been more useful to members of the community who report such activity. That is, we still get good quality member reports.
“Furthermore, ebay continues to monitor the back end of the site using both data provided by members and also data captured from members as they transact on the site.
“And ebay continues to adapt registration and account activity rules to make the site safer overall.
“Shill bidding is banned by ebay for good reasons: it hurts buyers (who see less value—one of the major drivers for internet purchases) and also hurts legitimate sellers. Any person who argues that ebay wants shill bidding to drive up revenue through inflated final value fees is way off the mark.”

Space does not allow the matter to be here explored with further examples but it is apparent from many of the statements made from time to time by eBay that nowadays very little that eBay says can be accepted at face value, and the first sentence of the above answer (“No—the changes will not make shill bidding any easier.”) is a classic example of what appears to be a progression towards habitual disingenuousness—it is a patently absurd statement. Of course total bidder anonymity makes shill bidding easier—as it would so do at any personally attended live auction—just as the absolute anonymity offered by eBay’s “User ID kept private” facility has already enabled shill bidders to operate on eBay with little fear of detection—notwithstanding eBay’s dubious claim of having “sophisticated tools” for the detection of such shill bidding. And, at an attended live auction (assuming the auctioneer is not complicit in the activity—flies on the wall have been known to make bids), a shill bidder bidding on an unreserved auction risks having to pay the auctioneer’s full selling commission and a buyer’s premium to boot; no such risk for shill-bidding sellers operating on eBay: if the supposed “buyer” does not pay then the seller pays only the nominal listing fee.

Note that michelleoz@ebay.com said:

“Our experience is that the detailed information provided on the buyer, and how it is presented, has been more useful to members of the community who report such activity. That is, we still get good quality member reports.”

The “detailed information provided on the buyer” now supplied is, to the contrary, not more useful: you really can’t expect the majority of the sheep that graze on the eBay slopes to be interested in sifting through multiple pages of such “detailed” information to try and ascertain whether or not a competing bidder is a shill—assuming they are aware of such activity in the first place. I am certainly not interested in doing so; I prefer to be able to put a “face” on another bidder, so that I can more easily make that judgment. The supply of this “detailed information” may seem like a good idea in theory; in practice this information is an ambiguous, confusing, and pointless set of statistics: in some circumstances it can actually make a genuine bidder look like a shill.

And, do please explain to me how eBay can possibly say that “Our experience is …” and that eBay “still get good quality member reports” when genuine bidders, in Australia and the UK, at least, now have effectively got absolutely no chance of detecting shill bidding activity? Where does eBay get these “good quality member reports” from? This statement and the balance of this particular response is simply more disingenuous tosh. eBay had better start reading their own discussion forums: I suspect the very few positive comments thereon are placed by eBay stooges or those few people who naively take eBay’s statements at face value.

On the same workshop venue danieloz@ebay.com responded to a questioner who asked if there was any “publishable data to back up the claims that second chance offers are such a problem, or that shilling has not in fact increased since the introduction of “hidden” bidder IDs for bids >$250?”:

“It is difficult for us to get accurate data on second chance offers because this activity happens outside of eBay’s systems and is not always reported to us.
“However, I can assure you that eBay wouldn’t have lowered the limit to $0 when hiding bidder IDs if the results from the initial launch over a year ago weren’t positive.
“Once again, this initiative has no impact on shill bidding. There is no correlation between hidden IDs and shill bidding.”

“It is difficult for us to get accurate data on second chance offers because this activity happens outside of eBay’s systems and is not always reported to us.” Does not that say it all! This whole response smacks of outright disingenuousness, and if ever there was another patently absurd statement, it is the last sentence: “Once again, this initiative [the introduction of absolute anonymity] has no impact on shill bidding [and] there is no correlation between hidden IDs and shill bidding.” …

The form of “anonymous” alias currently in use in the US (“a***b (N)”), although comprised of two (initially) randomly generated characters and three interposed asterisks, is the alias used consistently for that bidder across all auctions, and when viewed in conjunction with the accompanying feedback count, “(N)”, is effectively bidder-specific at that moment in time and still offers a genuine bidder some opportunity to watch for suspicious patterns of bidding by individuals across a particular seller’s auctions.

On the other hand, the non-bidder-specific absolute anonymity of the form of alias now in use in Australia and the UK (“Bidder N”) is just that, totally anonymous, and serves no other purpose than to deceive the consumer. The whole bidding process, rather than being “open and transparent” as it used to be, is now “closed and opaque”. For buyers, in particular, eBay is no longer “a safe and fun place to trade.”

Regardless of what a buyer may be prepared to pay, the only way to now get some protection from shill bidding is for buyers to “snipe” their maximum bid very close to the end of the auction, because if a genuine bidder lodges a maximum value proxy bid early in the auction, a shill-bidding seller can keep “nibble” bidding until the genuine bidder’s maximum is outbid and can then withdraw their last bid (with some ridiculous excuse) so that the genuine bidder is again the “winning bidder” but they then pay the highest amount that they were prepared to pay regardless of whether or not there were any other genuine bidders. Not a bad trick, eh? (Of course, what should happen in such circumstances, where a “winning” bid is retracted, is that all the “retracting” bidder’s bids should be voided and the under-bidder’s bid value should revert to what it would have been had the retracted bids never been made; but apparently this is not so.) Serious “nibble” bidding early in an auction is now only for naïve buyers and, of course, shill bidders.

The other possible indication of shill bidding by a seller is the too prompt receipt by an underbidder of a second chance offer supposedly because the “winning” bidder did not pay.

eBay claims that absolute anonymity of bidders was introduced to stop fraudulent “second chance offers” being sent by direct email to underbidders. This reason appears to me to be disingenuous in the extreme. This supposed problem could have been better controlled by other simpler means (doing away with the second chance offer, for one)—and indeed has since been otherwise controlled with the blocking of access to underbidders’ direct email addresses!

Further, generally, a member can now only contact another member via the eBay messaging system, so it is not now possible for anyone (including scammers) to ascertain who another member is (or their direct email address) if that member does not want to disclose such details.

And, it is not now possible to contact any but the winning bidder of an auction as the winning bidder’s “contactable” user ID is the only ID disclosed at the end of an auction.

So, apart from what would appear to be another nonsensical and disingenuous claim by eBay that there was also a problem with scammers “guessing” members’ direct email addresses from members’ IDs, there appears to be, in fact, no need for any increase in the level of anonymity at all; and there certainly is no need for the level of absolute anonymity (ie, “Bidder N”) that we in Australia and the UK now suffer: again, that level of anonymity serves only to deceive the consumer.

Just in case you missed it, I will repeat that statement, with emphasis:

… there appears to be, in fact, no need for any increase in the level of anonymity at all; and there certainly is no need for the level of absolute anonymity (ie, “Bidder N”) that we in Australia and the UK now suffer: again, that level of anonymity serves only to deceive the consumer.

eBay apparently claims that they are only a “notice board provider on which users post notices”—surely, another absurd and disingenuous contention, as it is they who make all the rules by which users must play and it is they who have created the totally anonymous bidding structure, here complained of, that now enables unethical shill-bidding sellers to mercilessly “rip off” buyers without fear of detection.

eBay apparently also suggests that as simply a “notice board provider” they should not be subject to any regulation (indeed, I suspect that they are terrified of the possibility of any such regulation) and that therefore they can apply whatever conditions and processes that suit them, without any consideration to the effect on eBay users.

So, it appears that all an unethical trader has to do to avoid an “Office of Fair Trading” is to put a “notice board provider” between themselves and their consumers. Now, there is an interesting concept for the consumer lawyers. Surely, any such notice board provider should at least be barred from knowingly providing the processes that allow such unethical traders to more easily operate, to the detriment of consumers, and without fear of detection

If you follow eBay’s line of reasoning that they are only a “notice board provider” then, with regard to the current matter in the U.S. of Pennsylvania State Board of Auctioneer Examiners v Barry Fallon, indeed all sellers—not only those agents, such as Mr Fallon, who act for others—who list on eBay and choose to offer goods for sale by the auction process must be “auctioneers”! Surely, for every auction, someone has to be the auctioneer, and surely, it is eBay that is this auctioneer, after all, as previously stated, it is they who create all the rules and processes by which everyone else must play, and in particular, the process that now allows shill bidders to have a field day every day without fear of detection.

The logic of this organisation is totally incomprehensible to me: I cannot make up my mind whether these people are simply disingenuous or just plain stupid: how could a person of any intelligence possibly think that the introduction of such total anonymity of bidding could create anything but a shill bidders’ paradise and have other than a serious adverse effect on buyer confidence? No, they simply cannot be that stupid (can they?) and therefore it has to be a cynical exercise in disingenuousness.

Maybe a better understanding of eBay’s true attitude to the crime of shill bidding is contained in this quote from an email I received from the Office of the President of eBay: “… we do not immediately remove a member from our site if shill bidding is detected” because eBay believes “… that people are basically good and sometimes people need an opportunity to be educated instead of removed”. That statement clearly indicates that, to protect its income stream (what else?), eBay is prepared to at least initially condone such criminal activity. The problem with this policy is that it appears that the only shill bidding eBay is ever going to recognise is that which is blatant and habitual—and noticeable, which, thanks to absolute anonymity of bidding, it no longer is. Shill-bidding sellers do not deserve and should not get further chances. And, what about the extra consideration these cheats have taken from unsuspecting buyers who have bought in good faith—and trusted eBay?

This totally anonymous “Bidder N” alias was announced in November 2006, to be applied on listings with a high bid of $200 or greater, and was introduced onto the US site in January 2007 but was subsequently replaced in August 2007 by the bidder-specific style alias (“a***b (N)”)—but still only for auctions over $200.

(refs (2 Nov 2006): http://www2.ebay.com/aw/core/200611021302372.html
and (8 Jan 2007) http://www2.ebay.com/aw/core/200701081004422.html
and (24 Aug 2007) http://www2.ebay.com/aw/core/200708241544222.html
and (24 Aug 2007) http://blog.auctionbytes.com/cgi-bin/blog/blog.pl?/pl/2007/8/1188006091.html).

In the eBay general announcement of 24 August 2007 Evan Lian said:

“… my Buyer Experience group has teamed up with Trust & Safety and the Community over the past few months to look at ways to make the bid history more transparent without jeopardizing the safety that SMI [“Safeguarding Members IDs”] has added. I’m pleased to let you know that this week, we’ll be making the following adjustments to the User IDs displayed on bid history for items over $200:
“Actual Feedback Score is back—We will be bringing back the bidder’s actual feedback score next to each member’s respective User ID.
“New User ID Masking—We are replacing the current aliases (Bidder 1, Bidder 2 and Bidder 3) with a masked ID that consists of two random characters from the member’s User ID—for example a***b. For any given member, this masked ID will be consistent across all auctions over $200 for which they place bids. At the end of a listing, the winning bidder’s User ID will be displayed on both the item and bid history page.”

Notice also the below-stated difference in the treatment between the UK and Ireland (and ask yourself why so?):

“On eBay.co.uk, each bidder is assigned an anonymous name such as ‘Bidder 1’, ‘Bidder 2’, which is used consistently throughout the duration of the listing. The colour of the star next to the anonymous ID indicates the bidder’s Feedback score (e.g. 10-49 = yellow star). Note that anonymous names may be used for different bidders across different auctions.
“On eBay.ie, the anonymous names will use two random characters from the User ID, with three asterisks in between, e.g. ‘x***y’. The bidder’s actual Feedback score will be shown, and the masked ID is consistent for that bidder across all auctions.”

(ref: http://pages.ebay.co.uk/help/policies/safeguardmemberids.html. However, although this “Help” topic statement indicates that Ireland is using the bidder-specific anonymous alias (x***y), this is not the case: the totally anonymous alias (Bidder N) is now being used!)

Undoubtedly, eBay retreated from absolute anonymity (“Bidder N”) on the US and CA sites because of the response from its North American users: undoubtedly buyers did not appreciate the shill-bidding sellers being given free reign over them; or, maybe, it was pressure applied from the US equivalent of an “Office of Fair Trading”; who knows?

The question then is, why are we in Australia still suffering this absolute anonymity—now, for whole-of-auction—and why has the UK (and apparently Ireland) recently reverted from the bidder-specific anonymity back to this absolute anonymity? (If you log onto other eBay sites you will notice that the only other country that appears to be suffering absolute anonymity is the Philippines; all the rest have bidder-specific anonymous aliases!)

We in Australia have never seen the bidder-specific form of anonymity (“a***b (N)”) currently in use in the US (and previously in use in the UK); we got absolute anonymity (“Bidder N”) right from the commencement of the increase in the level of anonymity in November 2006 and then for whole-of-auction in February 2008.

Australia being a small market eBay can apparently afford to trial their outrageous ideas here without too much affect on the bottom line (and another such example is their naive attempt to impose “exclusive dealing” for PayPal). However, absolute anonymity has now been (re)introduced to the UK, and one can only assume that eBay intends to (re)introduce same to the US in due course.

With all the radical changes made by eBay recently (absolute anonymity of bidding; the “grab for cash” in Australia with the naïve attempt to introduce exclusive dealing for PayPal; seller-unfriendly tinkering with the “feedback” system) it would appear that the new “trail boss” of the cowboys at eBay thinks that he is still riding the range of the old wild west of the 1870s, and that he can do whatever he likes regardless of the effect on the consumer sheep grazing thereon. Clearly, eBay management has a low opinion of the intellectual capacity of those sheep that graze on its slopes; but I am reminded of an old “Snake” cartoon strip, Q: Oh, great spirit, what is the lesson for today? A: Never underestimate the power of stupid people in large groups!

Shill bidding is nothing more than an attempt to defraud and is illegal in most civilized countries. For example, in the UK it is made illegal by the Fraud Act 2006. The increased level of anonymity provided by the alias currently in use in Australia, the UK, Ireland and the Philippines (Bidder 1, Bidder 2, etc) serves no other purpose than to deceive the consumer in that its anonymity is absolute and eBay is aware that this absolute anonymity can (indeed, will) be exploited by unscrupulous sellers. Knowing this, eBay is apparently still prepared to, in effect, “aid and abet” such unscrupulous sellers to defraud buyers, and one would hope that the “aiding and abetting” of such behaviours (whether intentional or not) would also be illegal under the terms of the UK Fraud Act. If nothing else it is an arrogant abuse of market power.

Then there is the ruling in the recent US case of Tiffany v eBay:

“… the issue is whether eBay continued to provide its website to sellers when eBay knew or had reason to know that those sellers were using the website to traffic in counterfeit Tiffany jewelry. The Court finds that when eBay possessed the requisite knowledge, it took appropriate steps to remove listings and suspend service. Under these circumstances, the Court declines to impose liability for contributory trademark infringement.”

Could this ruling logically be reconstructed to apply to eBay’s knowingly providing shill bidders with the dream facility (absolute anonymity of bidders) to defraud consumers?

“… the issue is whether eBay continued to provide its website to sellers when eBay knew or had reason to know that those sellers were using the website to defraud buyers by the practice of shill bidding. The Court finds that following the introduction of absolute anonymity of bidding whereby buyers were denied the opportunity to be on guard against shill bidding, and as a result shill bidding became rampant, when eBay possessed the requisite knowledge it did not take appropriate steps to remove listings and suspend service, nor cease the use of absolute anonymity of bidding. Under these circumstances, the Court imposes liability for the aiding and abetting of shill bidding.”

It may well be that the law has not kept up with such developments in online commerce, and that this supposed “notice board provider” can indeed do whatever they like. If that is the case, then it is about time that government regulators had a good look at such organisations (eBay in particular) and legislated to require from them acceptable practices towards consumers. Surely, in the case of reprehensible conduct, such as this deliberate obscuring of (shill) bidding, which serves no purpose other than to deceive the consumer, consumers have a right to bring that conduct to the attention of the appropriate authorities and expect that those authorities will act to give consumers relief from such despicable conduct.


But, action is required

There is not much point complaining to one and other on the eBay bulletin boards, they are such hopeless, bottomless “bogs” that I doubt even eBay’s robots read the posts thereon unless some eBay stooge “reports” them (notice how easy it is to “report” a post but how difficult it is to report a shill bidder). eBay certainly are not influenced by members’ uncomplimentary posts (they simply remove the more detailed criticisms that get too close to the bone and ban the posters): once eBay management have made up their minds, we will be inundated with the usually disingenuous, sometimes absurd, statements in support thereof, and we consumers have to like it or lump it; and there may well be nothing that we can normally do about that; unconscionable conduct surely is another matter …

Members are therefore invited to comment (the noting of any errors of fact would be appreciated) on the latest version of the above pro forma submission (at AuctionBytes.com). That document may then be used to inform government regulators, members of parliament, the media, ombudsmen, etc, of this reprehensible action by eBay.

I know that I appear to go on and on and on, but how else can one try to cover every devious move, and disingenuous excuse for same, by this gaggle of cowboys without attempting to dot every “i” and cross every “t”?

Please feel free to mercilessly plagiarise any of my posts on the AuctionBytes.com forums; and remember, unlike eBay’s forums, on the AuctionBytes.com forums you can discuss such matters and “stew” about it for a while and then come back and further refine your posts.

Sellers in Australia are currently squealing like stuck pigs: between the recent introduction of absolute anonymity for (shill) bidders upsetting buyers; the nonsensical new feedback system upsetting sellers and the publicity surrounding the farcical attempted “grab for cash” with “exclusive dealing” for PayPal annoying everybody; here, just about everybody (except the shill-bidding sellers) is unhappy.

We are now getting an increased flow of eBay promotional material here in Australia, including half price listings for sellers, etc. eBay promotional advertising is appearing on free-to-air television (at July 2008). Now, why do you think that would that be? Unfortunately, it appears that the cowboys at eBay are totally incapable of understanding and/or admitting that they have made some bad decisions in recent times.

And, the term “eBay member”, of course, is a classic misnomer: eBay “members” are not members in any sense that eBay is operated for the benefit of those members. eBay is a publicly-listed company and its only interest is to maximize its revenue from those consumers who use eBay.

The fact is that although it is sellers who pay the bill, any ill conceived eBay policy, such as this absolute anonymity of bidders, that will reduce buyer confidence, will hurt scrupulous sellers—and ultimately eBay itself. But apparently nobody at eBay has the intelligence to understand that; then, probably, their only immediate concern is the triggering of the next executive bonus, for which they will require an improvement in the bottom line: a reduction in the number of customer support staff required to respond to a greatly reduced number of reports of shill bidding will help effect that end; unfortunately, any saving in that area will probably be more than offset by a reduction in overall revenue caused by a lessening in buyer activity.

I also like the idea that the communicative capabilities of the internet, that eBay has so well exploited, also gives consumers the best chance of bringing them to heel. I am not ordinarily a cruel person but I do enjoy poking a stick at these snakes. Keep the pressure on. Let’s at least give them a run for their money (or, to be more precise, Donahoe’s executive bonus scheme).

Write to your Member of Congress/Parliament/…

Disclaimer: Notwithstanding any statements by eBay to the contrary, no action taken by the current management team at eBay has anything to do with benefitting eBay users: eBay’s every action is purposed towards improving eBay’s bottom line, and consumers should be aware that if at any time there appears to be some benefit to consumers, that is purely coincidental.

Some more links to comment on some other contentious eBay matters

A message to Pierre Omidyar
(Some suggestions on how to fix the problems at eBay.)
http://www.auctionbytes.com/forum/phpBB/viewtopic.php?p=6498752#6498752

eBay disingenuousness (some classic examples)
(Some examples of absurd statements made on a Workshop introducing whole-of-auction absolute anonymity of bidding.)
http://www.auctionbytes.com/forum/phpBB/viewtopic.php?p=6498775#6498775

On the eBay “naughty chair” again!
(Some examples of what eBay won’t let you post on their forums.)
http://www.auctionbytes.com/forum/phpBB/viewtopic.php?p=6498570#6498570

eBay introduces absolute anonymity for (shill) bidders
(An earlier version of my criticism of absolute anonymity.)
http://www.auctionbytes.com/forum/phpBB/viewtopic.php?t=23227

Please eBay, function before form
(A comment on eBay’s tendency to tinker with form rather than function on established interface pages.)
http://www.auctionbytes.com/forum/phpBB/viewtopic.php?p=6498837#6498837

eBay plea: Help needed reporting blatant listing violations
(eBay invites us to report “blatant listing violations” while removing the buyer’s ability to be on the alert for and protect themselves from blatant shill bidding!)
http://www.auctionbytes.com/forum/phpBB/viewtopic.php?t=23341

An invitation to eBay: minutes of meetings
(Come on eBay, let’s see the true reason behind the introduction of absolute anonymity of bidding.)
http://www.auctionbytes.com/forum/phpBB/viewtopic.php?t=23326

A comment on the new eBay feedback system
(Having annoyed the buyers with absolute anonymity, they now proceed to irritate their sellers with a clunky revision of the feedback system.)
http://www.auctionbytes.com/forum/phpBB/viewtopic.php?t=23383

Feedback changes in offing?
(Another thread on Feedback.)
http://www.auctionbytes.com/forum/phpBB/viewtopic.php?t=23126

Upcoming Licensing Hearing Could Impact Many eBay Sellers
(Who is really the auctioneer?)
http://www.auctionbytes.com/forum/phpBB/viewtopic.php?t=23323

Psychopaths in the Workplace
(Included just for fun.)
http://www.auctionbytes.com/forum/phpBB/viewtopic.php?t=23338

eBay Australia mandates PayPal as sole payment method
(Some comment on eBay’s naïve attempt to introduce “exclusive dealing” for PayPal in Australia; a classic clumsy example of an attempted abuse of their market power.)
http://www.auctionbytes.com/forum/phpBB/viewtopic.php?t=23275

Absolute anonymity of bidding: help bring eBay to heel
(If you are reading this comment other than on the auctionbytes.com Online Auction News Forum then this is a link to a possible later version.)
http://www.auctionbytes.com/forum/phpBB/viewtopic.php?p=6498345#6498345
_________________
Clearly, the lunatics at eBay have taken over the asylum and are bent on burning it down.
“The difference between genius and stupidity is that genius has its limits.” ~ Albert Einstein.

[PhilipCohen]

Is anybody interested in trying to bring these cowboys to heel?
_________________
Clearly, the lunatics at eBay have taken over the asylum and are bent on burning it down.
“The difference between genius and stupidity is that genius has its limits.” ~ Albert Einstein.

[PhilipCohen]

I'm still waiting for someone to point out some errors of fact or otherwise in the above analysis, or offer some detail of some other disingenuousness by eBay that I have missed.

Hello ... Is anybody out there?
_________________
Clearly, the lunatics at eBay have taken over the asylum and are bent on burning it down.
“The difference between genius and stupidity is that genius has its limits.” ~ Albert Einstein.

[SandysFancyPants]

http://www.auctionbytes.com/cab/cab/abn/y08/m06/i20/s02

Evidently they think it is working fine.
_________________

[PhilipCohen]

Hi Sandy,

Not wishing to offend, but you don’t actually believe anything that eBay says, do you?

Sellers in Australia are screaming like stuck pigs: between the recent introduction of absolute anonymity for shill bidders upsetting buyers; the nonsensical new feedback system upsetting sellers and the farcical attempted “grab for cash” with “exclusive dealing” for PayPal annoying everybody; here, just about everybody (except the shill-bidding sellers) is unhappy.

http://www.australianit.news.com.au/story/0,24897,23874693-15306,00.html

I guess we will just have to wait and see what happens when eBay applies all their crazy ideas, that they have trialed in Australia, in the US; I look forward in particular to the US buyers’ response to eBay’s deliberate obscuring of shill bidding, when that reprehensible feature is introduced.

On the principal aspect of the eBay item you quoted: if I want a “retail” experience I occasionally go to Amazon; for me eBay is all about “the hunt”; if they destroy the auction facility (as they appear to be doing), they ultimately lose me and a lot of others I suspect.

Not one change that eBay has made recently has been in the interests of consumers (except for the shill-bidding consumers, who are undoubtedly rubbing their hands in anticipation); all have been aimed solely towards improving eBay’s bottom line (nothing wrong with that per se as long as you don’t openly abuse your customer base in the process). I have come to the conclusion that the current management team at eBay are a disingenuous mob of cowboys.
_________________
Clearly, the lunatics at eBay have taken over the asylum and are bent on burning it down.
“The difference between genius and stupidity is that genius has its limits.” ~ Albert Einstein.

[SandysFancyPants]

[PhilipCohen]

Well, I’m on the eBay “naughty chair” again: for 30 days this time. A permanent ban next time? They really do make it difficult for an honest eBayer with only one user ID and one email address to make any serious comment; I guess I’ll have to go with the flow and take out multiple IDs and get some more email addresses! ...

A summary of my “naughty” posts at:
http://www.auctionbytes.com/forum/phpBB/viewtopic.php?t=23406
_________________
Clearly, the lunatics at eBay have taken over the asylum and are bent on burning it down.
“The difference between genius and stupidity is that genius has its limits.” ~ Albert Einstein.

[crymeariver]

[frankcoins]

Legitimate auction houses NEVER reveal information about other bidders, and in some European countries, privacy is valued more highly than in the US, and it is in fact ILLEGAL to display other bidders' names on ebay.

Many coin collectors and been robbed and killed in their homes for their coin collections, and it's not too hard to browse feedback and completed auctions to find people with expensive collections, then buy something from them, setting their name and address. Very scary.

We start most auctions at a penny, so we have many repeat bidders place a low bid on everything we list, hoping to win an ocassional bargain. For years we and our customers received constant reports that we were shills, in 3 or 4 instances having my account suspended for a week or 2 simply because some busybody made numerous reports that someone was bidding on several of my auctions, and they had fed the data through some online "shill analyzer" ... I think it was called safe2bid or something...

[PhilipCohen]

frankcoins,

I am not aware that actual names of eBay users have ever been displayed on eBay, only the user’s ID is (now sometimes) displayed; and that ID is an alias of the user’s choice.

Obviously, once a buyer has traded with a seller on eBay that seller knows where that buyer lives (not necessarily vice versa). How else could any remote system work? I am not aware that otherwise anyone could ascertain the residential address of a particular eBay user. Maybe you can enlighten me?

Unlike a traditional attended auction where shill bidding may be almost impossible to prove anyway, it is an entirely different matter for internet auctions: there, the “auctioneer” has complete “black and white” records of the proceedings (user IDs, email addresses, IP addresses, credit card details, bank account details, etc, of all the people involved in the particular auction), so that I suspect shill bidding could easily be investigated and proved certainly on the civil basis of “on the balance of probability” if not on the criminal basis of “beyond any reasonable doubt”.

Of course, one has to have access to those records to be able to do anything about it, and eBay has by their actions made it clear that “joe public” has got no chance of getting any access to any of that information, therefore: no detection; no media coverage; no action—that is the simple fact of the matter.

Indeed, if eBay was actively using the so called sophisticated tools that they claim to have to analyse bidding data there should not be any habitual or blatant shill bidding for genuine bidders to notice and report.

But then with absolute anonymity of bidding we buyers can no longer look out for such blatant shill bidding anyway: it is said that ignorance is bliss; not for your wallet though.
_________________
Clearly, the lunatics at eBay have taken over the asylum and are bent on burning it down.
“The difference between genius and stupidity is that genius has its limits.” ~ Albert Einstein.