eBay Faces 'Vertical' Setback amid Shill Bidding Scandal

by: The End

I once paid a ridiculous amount of money for a SCSI drive tower and the guy who sold it to me said, "WOW ! You really wanted this didn't you".....
SHILL BIDDER.
So now, I don't bid anymore.
Lately, I don't even Ebay anymore.
Ya, when I was buying, "Ebay" was a verb.
Years ago....

by: COVID-19

Ahahahahaha! I couldn't laugh hard enough!

by: Silver Ice King

That has been a well known fact in the industry for years that PWCC allowed shill bidding so that their prices went through the roof.  Many times their items sold for more than double what the same card sold for elsewhere on Ebay, partially because Ebay also did not show the other Sellers items in favor of PWCC.  There is at least one other auction consignment house on Ebay that does the same thing and I am sure also pays almost nothing in fee percentage compared to what Ebay charged others.  Personally I would not care if PWCC paid less than anybody else if Ebay didn't also hide others items so that PWCC items were sold instead of the so called level playing field.  This is probably going to finally be the straw that others needed and wanted to move the majority of buyers away from Ebay in the sports card industry.

Funny how Ebay did its best to hide what the true selling price of so many cards were by hiding the best offer selling price and instead only showing what the Seller originally was asking.   Many times that was double what the item actually sold for.

by: Old School Seller

BEWARE: Not only shill “bidding” which has been a problem forever, but even more of a problem, is shill fixed price buying which is now rampant on the platform.  Why? Because eBay long ago did away with showing actual sale price for “best offer” items in sold search.   Unscrupulous sellers use this tactic to try to artificially inflate the value of a collectible category.  Go ahead and do a sold search for Beanie Babies sorting from highest to lowest and you will see very quickly what I mean!  I guarantee there is no such thing as a $25,000 Beanie!  Seller buys it themselves for $1.00 using an alternate account or they click the “Make an Offer” button while responding to a messaged inquiry by a conspirator and it looks to the world like it actually sold for $25,000!  Easily solved by changing coding to reveal actual sales price in search for ALL items!  I also wouldn’t put it past eBay employees to play this game for the same nefarious purpose.  

by: zeek6228

eBay gets 10% FVF.

Maybe the CEO can bring this up at the next board of directors meeting? Someone is pushing up our revenue, lets stop them?

by: WaLK-aWAY

Haaaaaaaa!
And what about EBAY LIVE AUCTIONS??????????
I was involved with the Live auctions platform generating millions of dollars and would attest in court to our involvement (company I worked for) that Ebay knew about it and cooperated with us.

Short memory on these folks!

by: Silver Ice King

@Old School Seller

Ebay used to show the actual Best Offer Price but eliminated that a few years ago.  So many 3rd party applications were still showing this information which upset Ebay immensely so they finally just cut off all access to that information..  Nobody knows the real reason for it but one big one that I would speculate was a big part of the reason is that Ebay reports GMV every quarter to Wall Street and I will lay very large odds that they were and still are showing the values of what the item was listed at instead of what it actually sold for and were afraid of once again getting caught providing false information to try and increase their stock price.  That number is not audited nor verified but anybody other than Ebay so they can make up any number they want each and every quarter and now there is absolutely no way to determine just how accurate that information is.  

I also look for Ebay to start trying to monetize that information in the very near future as they are so desperate to show any type of growth that they will alienate their sellers even further by charging for this information which used to be readily available.  Nothing wrong with trying to make more money as that is the goal of any publicly traded company, its just the way they continue to go about it, knowing full well that even those prices they are now willing to show include sales that were never paid for and also reported at grossly inflated amounts.

This revelation is going to impact their trading card sales immensely although not necessarily their income as I am sure that PWCC had much lower fee rates than all other sellers due to their volume.  Most knowledgeable collectors already knew that PWCC was allowing shill bidding as their prices were always considerably higher than other sales for the same card on Ebay and you would find many of the same bidders on many of their auctions, but these buyers were rarely if ever the winner and if they did win the card would usually wind up back out for sale almost immediately due to non payment.  There are so many newer people in the hobby now who had no clue about the shill bidding nor how to ever determine that it was happening.  Many of those will now no longer trust buying on Ebay and will start looking for other sources to spend their money on.
 

by: Old School Seller

@Silver Ice King
I totally agree with your theory r.e. GMV reporting to Wall Street, absolutely!  Also, due to the shill bidding and buying going on, it should make anyone highly skeptical when eBay or anyone reports on top sales within categories.  As an example, some professional analyst recently posted a list of the top ten prices realized on eBay for trading cards.  Don’t remember where I read this list, but because eBay is no longer publicly transparent in regard to their sold sales, it is now impossible to prove prices realized and this fact should always be stated as a caveat by any writer. It is also never known whether any sale is on the marketplace is 100% consummated.  When researching prices realized for any high-ticket antique or collectible, eBay should be the last place you look.  There are plenty of established auction houses and dedicated websites where authentic sales histories can be found.

by: lancecorp

Breaking on Twitter - a licensed pharmacist sold offical ID vaccine cards on Ebay in March and April before caught. They are quick to pull listings on legit items but it takes time to catch up with the true fraud. Now don't you think they should have been on the lookout for this?

by: pace306

.... the San Jose Mafias partner got into a fight with its mark and now "this".

Who do you believe?

NEITHER of them.

eBay is as crooked as they come - you are better off with La Costa Nostra or the Triads. Even the Yakuza has some moral standards.

I would surmise that this got out of control due to cash or lack there of - everyone Ive asked said that these 2 were "in bed" together for the longest time and that it was an open secret that eBay was looking the other way .. "just move the merchandise".

Maybe eBay (now that the stock is at the top of the mark and the Walmart goof thinks hes the next Bezos) wanted more then %10 vig, maybe eBay wanted more "action", maybe PWCC just balked .... the truth will come out - its just a matter of time and financial inducement.

eBay is in bed with alot of people - they DONT make $$$$ from the marketplace (anymore) - DW said it himself - sellers are UNreliable sources of income and he meant it.

ALL of VERO is pay for play .... just ask Casio, Sony, JVC, Kenwood, LEGO, Skullcandy and many more - each one feeding the other.

Thankfully I dont sell these items/sell this way/deal with this - but it brings a smile to my face when the greed causes eBay to implode.

As for ANY set of eBay numbers - they are ALL fake. Its why Wall Street debacles happen - you take the lieing cheating companies at their words and never do any due diligence .......

by: I Must be Crazy

Part of me can't help but think that eBay got their analysis wrong and PWCC wasn't doing anything improper. At least not at the level eBay would believe.

In any case, the company is setting up their own website so eBay loses anyway.

Reduced fees and anonymized userid's make shill bidding easier. The shill could get stuck buying his own item, meaning the fees will eat up a lot of margin, unless they are deeply discounted.

These things would be reduced if eBay offered a level playing field.  

by: Nothingnewecrater

😱Shill bidding on eBay!?😱 Say it isn't so? Hahahaha Hahahaha Hahahaha

by: spooky

several points: I have been selling with eBay for over 23 years and used to do 100% auction style but now do 99% BIN as auctions are near dead for multiple reasons with shill bidding being a big one. Also - if eBay took this sports card dealer down it had to be extremely egregious and obvious as eBay allows shill bidding all the time from my vantage point. Also to elaborate of my second point - there is a huge dealer of antiques and artwork on eBay based out of Rhode Island (I am sure many of you know exactly who I am talking about) that has a long history of shill bidding that I have personally reported over 100 times to eBay but still shill bids to this very moment. Its easy to tell as check bid history of any of their items and underbidders always seem to do 80% or more of all their bidding with this particular seller.  

by: toolguy

I believe shill bidding happens.

But most of the time it does not.

A seller listed an old Leatherman for a starting bid of $9,99, before any bidding took place I offered $40. The seller turned me down, I ended up winning that auction for $38. That right there told me the seller was honest and I scored a great tool at a great price. . .

by: Silver Ice King

@Toolguy

I agree that most Sellers on Ebay do not use shill bids, however almost all of the larger sellers who run auctions unfortunately do and Ebay does nothing to stop it even when it has been reported.  Instead of stopping this problem, Ebay has done all it can to make it harder and harder to spot the shill bidding in an attempt to not have to worry about dealing with it as the higher the bids, the more money Ebay makes on the deal.  

I am sure there is a lot more to this story that will be coming out down the road but Ebay saw there was going to be an issue and decided to strike the first blow in and effort to once again try and save face when they have been in bed with this partner for years and have gladly turned their heads and allowed all of this to happen as long as they continued to make money on it.  The odds are good Ebay discovered that this partner was developing their own website to start running their own auctions and cut Ebay out of the picture so Ebay decided to strike first and cause as much damage to that companies reputation as they possibly could.

This is just another variation of the harassment that the Steiners have gone through and will once again wind up being sued by another company for the damage they have caused.  Ebay still seems to think that they can do anything and everything they want to and if they do not get their way, they attempt to destroy the other party, just as they did under Wenig.  Its going to be interesting to see how many more rats jump the ship as Ebay continues this path of self destruction all because they have this mentality that they can do anything they want no matter what the laws say.

by: Smallseller

@Silver Ice King

What a great summary. You expressed what I thought and have been reading about. Ebay has known about this for years and chose to do nothing until they discovered that PWCC was going to be selling on their own site. So they happily took their money for all these years and now they are trying to look like the hero by taking them down.  

by: ShortSeller

Why is anyone surprised that they were receiving a much lower FVF rate? It's widely known that ebay buys listing inventory to make the site relevant, almost every "mass" or targetted vertical seller of repute is on significantly reduced rates. It's the only way they've been able to attract sizeable accounts since the retail industry considers the buyer base highly problematic.

by: stage_won

@pace306

''- DW said it himself - sellers are UNreliable sources of income and he meant it.''

That's because our colleges are producing tyrants like this and they can't force their will on the American seller. They have absolutely NO understanding of human nature and why forcing their insane will on people doesn't work. It's just a microcosm of what is going on in our culture today. You try to enforce insane policies, it's human nature that will push back. The American sellers have pushed back and told ebay to go pound sand.

I did that several months ago when they tried to force me in to their new payment system. I did some research on it and wasn't at all comfortable with what they were doing and the personal info they were requiring. The new payment company is based out of South American & Europe so who knows how secure your info is. With the recent high-level hackings of major companies, it's just not something I wanted to gamble on. No matter how ebay pushes it, they cannot guarantee that security, especially since this is all based in another country. Also reviewing their new payment system showed it was far inferior to Paypal. I told their reps, I don't mind them using a new payment system but trotting out an inferior product is not good. I also told them selling off Paypal was a huge mistake as many, many websites use it now, along with being very easy to use. The Paypal selloff was probably used to deceive investors in to thinking the revenue & profits were better  than they were. I let them know since this was a huge mistake, both buyers & sellers have to pay with a inferior product (yeah, they want that long float period so they can make interest and show investors the revenue & how smart they are, SMH). Since I refused to go to their payment system, I have now been suspended, even though they still offer for now, Paypal, as a payment option.

So the CEO may be correct in a way where he claims the sellers are unreliable but that's because of the forced crap and other insane policies they've been doing for the last 15 years plus. Ebay management is the reason their own sellers are no longer reliable. The fault is all on them if they would just look in the mirror. These people running these corporations are more in the mold of communists, instead of freedom-loving Americans. I was 23 years on ebay with perfect feedback. I did my part over the years, but it's Ebay's management which has failed many of us over the years. jSo don't try to pin this on us Ebay management, you and your commie-mindset caused this. Silicon Valley is loaded with these crackpots, unfortunately.

by: Nothingnewecrater

Forgot to mention price fixing started when eBay started. During the hey day of auctions I know a few art dealers that were involved in price fixing.

by: Frank Abagnale

@ShortSeller

Great point about the Final Value Fees. It looks like ebay wants to be the leader in categories that attract younger shoppers and the only way to have that perception is to offer special rates to large sellers in certain categories and for special categories such as sneakers (over $100) with no commission fees. And as the recent ecommercebytes article about pricing data shows, ebay is including the phony sales of beanie babies (and other items such as Disney VHS movies) to increase their GMV with no actual fees collected.