Update on PWCC Bid Monitoring Program
 

Dear members,

As some of you know, PWCC implemented a pilot program in partnership with eBay to limit the frequency of eBay users cancelling bids on our listings. This pilot program consists of several components including actions taken by eBay as well as actions taken by PWCC. The purpose of this post is to provide an update on this program.

As of April 1, 2017 PWCC places blocks on any user ID that has more than 10 bid cancellations in the past six months. This reflects a reduction in the number of allowed bid cancellations from 25 to 10. As the program continues to mature and continues to affect bidder behavior, PWCC will continue to reduce the threshold.

Overall, we are pleased to report that this program seems to be successfully reducing bid cancellations on our listings. You’ll see in the attached graph that while there is variety in the total amount of cancellations (generally mirroring the total number of items we have for sale each day), there has been a significant downward trend. While we used to see an average of about 14 cancellations per day, we are now seeing an average of five. We continue to work closely with eBay to highlight the problems associated with bid cancellations and ways to address them.

Thank you for your continued support of this important program.

Lol

It should be a straight horizontal line at zero. Anything else is just ridiculous. Come on!!!!

Is this per listing?

😂😂

According to your graph, people who purchased items in the middle of September 2016 were extremely vulnerable. Am I mistaken?

Ummmm....Ebay allows bidders to make as many bid cancellations as they want to. Why are they in some "Pilot program" with you to try and reduce the number of bid cancellations when all they have to do is put an end to bid cancellations?

What the graph should look like…

Attachment 270154

Great point Dan...

I'm not sure if you are being facetious, but I started laughing when I saw that post..... :p

I'd lower the number to 2 because I can imagine there are times when people bone head something, but 10x isn't a bone head mistake...

Pwcc
 

So what he's saying is that there's only 10 fony bogus accounts shilling and bid retracting now than the previous 25 per item.

At least it's another step in the right direction. How many of those making fun of Brent's post ban buyers with more than 10 bid retractions from bidding on or buying your cards for sale on ebay?

THIS.

Also, there shouldn't be ANYONE with ZERO feedback/transactions bidding on items that are thousands of dollars in value bumping them up even further with bogus bids.

There should be a ZERO retraction policy and also a vetting process/standard to verify that the person is legit and can/will actually pay for the item and what they bid for it.

Gotta agree with Jesse! PWCC took the initiative to post here (knowing they'd face critics). There isn't a single ebay seller or auction house that could ever avoid shilling. If you don't like them don't bid, easy enough. I'm not a friend or consignor. I do buy from them, and bid where I feel comfortable.

People are always going to be complaining about something. Way to take another step in the right direction, Brent

Brent,

Kudos for this. Looks like a step in a positive direction.

I've got about 25 auctions listed with you that end in the next 2 hours of which I can confirm no shill bidding is being done. (Holding my breath on the Gehrig and Clemente cut autos and Ruth Game Used Patch card since I may take a bath on them...)

I don't understand why ebay needs to be a party to this? Ebay if they wanted could end bid retractions today, but they don't, and they won't. And this will have zero effect because anyone can and will retract bids if they want to because ebay allows it to happen. Anyone know what it actually takes for a buyer to get the boot from ebay?

Some lady got mad at me for turning her over for non-payment so one night she decided to hit the BIN on 30 or 40 of my highest priced items on ebay. I periodically checked her ebay ID to see if ebay would ban her, they never did. Another bidder asked me to end an auction early for a ridiculously low price, I answered him that I know what they typically sell for and would rather let the auction run to the end. Well he then used two accounts (including the same one he asked me to end the item early) to run up the auction to $1000 on a $300 item. I emailed him to ask him what was up, he denied even bidding on it even though I could see he was the underbidder. I called ebay and the lady told me she could see it was the same person. She said she would cancel their bids. I waited and waited but ebay did not cancel the bids so I did it myself and then blocked both accounts. Neither account was suspended.

Ebay doesn't give one crap what the bidder/buyer is doing as long as sellers keep paying their ebay bill at the end of the month. Shill bidding? Yeah, ebay loves it, more $$$ for them. Why do you think they made it harder for bidders to see each other? Bid retractions? Yeah, ebay doesn't care because they know that retracting a bid is part of the shilling game that makes them more $$$.

FWIW, I'm in the camp of those who hope this is a step in the right direction. Even small steps are progress.

Thank you Brent.....
 

Brent,

Thank you for the monthly checks that ALWAYS arrive on time and for the crazy prices you get on some of my items!

I have NEVER been withheld funds on ANY item I have ever sent. I guarantee you that some of my items were not paid for since I've been consigning for 2 years now but I have been paid for EVERY item ALWAYS.

Thanks Brent!

Peace, Mike

OK. So you are seeing 14 cancelled bids per day and the best you can do is this? This problem is way worse than anyone thought you may have known it could possibly be.

Re-read that.

Do you not get any transparency into this and have the ability to flag any of it to EBay based on your own judgment factor? I can't believe that to not be the case. This sounds like asses and elbows.

What are you doing to limit first time registrations now that you have blocked people from bidding? I have seen an influx of low feedback buyers in your auctions and to me, it looks like every single person you are quote un-quote blocking, is just registering for a new user id.

This compromises your entire graph and makes you look really, REALLY sub-intelligent. You have ZERO reputation management. You allow ebay to handle it all for you. You don't require a minimum feedback score to bid. This whole post is a freaking joke.

Lets seem some non paying bidder stats.

Wow - Tuff Crowd Here...........

Just to weigh in a little...

I'm probably a good example of why you can't just blanket ban people based on criteria. I'm recently more active in the hobby after an absence, I have a low eBay feedback score (68) and I like to buy vintage cards. I don't do so too often, but I never cancel bids and always pay on time. And even for the smaller auction house websites - I lurk and if I see something, I'll sign up day of and bid on/win a desired lot. Now, it may suck for the guys who are better customers, bid all the time, follow the auction and are more active but this is how I do it - and at the end of the day, we're ALL merely trying to get what we want.

I tend to bid on some items in the last minute - definitely on a PWCC item or two over the years, I can't specifically recall what - because I KNOW that I am competing with snipers, autobidders and other people like me so, often, in the last 10-15 seconds of an auction, I put MY best bid in and hope for the best - sometimes double the current bid. I'm not shilling; I'm trying to win a timed auction. It looks and feels like 'someone screwed me' but in reality its just a different bidding style that has to do with the fact that I don't want my presence as a bidder known to the auctioneer, the other bidders or eBay, for a myriad of reasons.

I think it is a attempt at getting ducks in order. BUT can we now see the shady dealings chart ? I don't think eBay has a pilot program for shady dealings. ( ahh if you have 10 or more shady dealings I will not be doing business with you) I guess I got my own pilot program and it's working fine .

Shady dealings include sending consignors their payments in cash instead of a check.

Seriously, good work!

Other shady dealings are but not limited to.

Buying,cleaning and reselling cards.

Telling cohorts when to bid on auctions.

Driving up values and then selling the card with inflated value.

Shill bidding.

Extremely low feed back bidders.

Cool, are we listing things that are normal in PWCC auctions?:D

There should be a ZERO retraction policy and also a vetting process/standard to verify that the person is legit and can/will actually pay for the item and what they bid for it.

^^^ This!! If someone retracts a bid with me and they DO NOT place the correct bid, then they are done. Period.

Full disclosure should be made for any cards owned by said consignor, PWCC.

You have not given any good example or reason that excludes existing problems from easy remediation.

I don't understand the hostility directed at PWCC for at least trying something. I have had real issues with them in the past unrelated to this issue, but it seems like some of you are expecting them to solve eBay weaknesses and cure a few diseases at the same time.

It may be a surprise to some of you, but PWCC can't tell eBay how to run their business. Yes, there is a problem with apparent shill bidding and BS bid retractions on some of their items. Maybe a not insignificant number of their items. There are consignors out there who will have friends and family, and maybe even themselves with alternative accounts, pump up the price of their auction items. This is an auction fact of life. Happens on eBay and happens everywhere else. Could happen at the church auction down the street. The guy bidding against you may have no interest other than helping someone else make more money. Deal with it. It's reality.

As far as bid retractions go, I have no evidence that they are worse for PWCC than any other major card seller. Nor do I have any belief that they are any worse than say some dude selling 10,000 hummels or 10,000 watches a month on ebay. Game playing will go on. If eBay allows people to retract bids with impunity, and PWCC reaches out to them to do something, I take this as both a tacit admission that there is a problem here that should be addressed and a positive sign that Brent thinks his company's credibility is taking a meaningful hit.

My final point is that I DO NOT find 5 bid retractions a day high for an outfit that often has 5,000+ items listed at a time. That might get 25,000+ bids in a day I'd guess. 5 or 10 or even 20 of those bids are retracted. I'd say at least 50% of those could have been genuine errors. Doesn't seem overly crazy to me.

Long winded way of saying that it seems many of you have real problems with eBay and blame PWCC for them.

If someone is retracting more than 5 times on PWCC in a 3 or 6 month period they should be barred from any PWCC auctions for 6 months. Although that probably wouldn't solve the problem anyway, as a person who wants to defraud others can just open a new account.

And they can stop that also. Require them to buy and receive 10 feedbacks before being allowed to bid. Stop it, no. Make it much harder, yes. Easily, without getting EBay involved.

That's true, but I would be hardly surprised to learn that some dudes have been carefully cultivating 10 or 12 separate eBay accounts over the course of a number of years to deal with precisely those kinds of issues.

+2.7 In my experiences almost every time I think of something,
it has been thought of before, usually much before.

Back to the subject. Of course PWCC is an advertiser so that is my biased in it. My view is PWCC is headed in the right direction but as with most others I wish it were a bit quicker. From recent, first hand experience I know change takes time on the bay...

If someone is inclined to shill their own auction, requiring 10 feedbacks is pretty meaningless.

You are not going to stop the one guy that wants to shill one auction to sell the one baseball card he owns and will ever own, but you can make it harder for the chronic offenders.

It is still one extra step. One extra PayPal account sign up. 10 fake transactions per account, time to leave the feedback, or payment on a real item they likely don't want. Trails and evidence of fraud. One extra EBay registration.The accounts will eventually be blocked for non paying bids, shilling, and retractions.

Would you want to do this for every auction you list an item in, every 30 days for multiple accounts? The fact that it can be circumvented doesn't mean it is meaningless. The option has been there for 20 years for a reason.

I get it that you are trying to find a solution to the problem, but many of the worst chronic offenders of massive retractions have feedback in the thousands and still shill/retract with impunity. As far as requiring 10 feedbacks creating evidence of fraud, again, there are many, many accounts on eBay with feedback in the hundreds or thousands that are on the site despite many retractions.

If eBay doesn't care about accounts with feedback in the thousands that rampantly shill auctions, they are going to be vigilant about someone with 10 feedbacks?

As far as non-paying bids, why would anyone buy an expensive item then not pay if the goal if just to build up your suggested 10 feedbacks. The easy way around that would simply be to buy 10 items at 99 cents or "buy" from yourself/a friend with a different account to simply build up feedback.

I've been convinced for a while that some of these said consignors/consignees have multiples people/multiple accounts bidding up items

edited: the watch count alone, having HUNDREDS more than others sellers with the exact same items, lends credence to this theory

Meaningless window dressing, the asinine equivalent of saying that you are cracking down on drunk driving because you only allow a driver ten DUIs before suspending his license. Here's an idea: bar any bidder with more than two retractions and do it now. All this waiting is nonsense. No amount of double-talk and graphics conceals the fact that your auctions are riddled with fraud, that you know it, and that you would rather aid the crooks in stealing from your customers than resolve the problem.

Agreed...I can sell the EXACT same card and grade and get nowhere near the watch count, bids, nor final sales price. And I am OK with that.

+1

+1

I think until eBay returns to days past this is going to be the status quo.

Why was it so easy to avoid this 7 - 10 years ago? I could adjust listing settings to avoid negative feedback, low feedback and npbs.

eBay should bring back negative feedback for buyers. If they are worried about the return of bidder blackmail, then provide it only in the case of an non- payer.

Auction settings need to return to the ability to block low feedback, negative feedback ratings and non-payers. This should not be my responsibility as a seller to locate non-payers, it should be eBay's responsibility to alert me. Also any bidder should lose the ability to withdraw bids at anytime without approval of the seller. I don't care that accidents happen, you should get dinged and if it happens twice in 6 months your incompetence should get you banned for a minimal year.

In 18 or so years on ebay I have never retracted a bid to the best of my memory. I am sure most guys here could say the same. The 25 in 6 month limit was meaningless. I guess 10 is better but I still can't imagine 10 legitimate retractions in that timeframe, unless it was some real one-off situation where a seller misrepresented cards and the bidder found out and backed out of a group of listings.

Will a motivated individual work around getting blocked? Some will. But that doesn't excuse the lack of a more sincere effort.

Just not entirely clear to me how much power PWCC really has to put the hammer down and enforce regulations on auctions being run by another company.

I've sold with pwcc before and can say 2 things:
1) he definitely has more people watching his auctions listings than most. This is logical given that he has many times the followers that most sellers have. (By followers I mean people who get alerts when he lists items)
2) some of his items sell for considerably more than items from other sellers without any shilling. Of course some sell on the low side as well. I had around 30 items that sold over the last couple of days. I took big hits on a few that sold for a lot less than expected (one went for 40%-50% of my expectation) and most sold for around going rate but there were a few that sold for a lot more (for example a card I expected $250 for going for almost $500).

A seller can block any bidder he chooses to block. Next question?

Ebay should build a buyer scoring model similar to whats used for credit scores. This way sellers could use this information when accepting best offers or setting minimum bidder score criteria when selling through auctions. This model could be based on the following criteria:

-Proportion of bid retractions compared to winning bids (10 to me isn't a big deal if someone has won 500 items in the last 6 months)
-Cost of average purchase
-Average time between purchase and payment
-Number of NPB cases opened against
-Number of purchases

I know this sounds a bit out there but does anyone else feel this would add value?

If someone wants to commit systematic fraud believing they are making $$ that is a teeny tiny speed bump. Let me reach for ebay identity #4 or ask my brother in law for a favor.

I have had people ask me to "help" move their auctions along. I am sure many people on this board have gotten similar requests.

It's better than nothing
 

Full disclosure, I'm both a consignor and buyer with PWCC...

I understand that Brent lost credibility with some after the WWG DiMaggio fiasco, but at least he's doing something. It might not be at the speed that some want, but he's the only seller on eBay putting in these limitations, and he said up front it would be a slow process. Because of that, he needs to be careful because if consignors think that at any point these policies are limiting his ability to get top dollar for his lots, they'll simply move to someone without the same restrictions.

I have told people when I am giving a card away...it wasn't to cheat the system. If I am giving a card away, I rather it go to someone off of here than some Joe Blow out of Kansas. I like seeing my friends make money, if I can't.....

Hey now
 

Hey now,let's leave Kansas out of this! 😉

Lol

I see the problem as Ebay, not PWCC. They are a publicly traded, for profit corporation. That tells you most of what you need to know as to why this stuff goes on.

I don't understand the eBay excuse. If your capable of controlling the retracted bids then eBay has done enough. If you decided to take advantage of the loopholes then that's the individual not eBay.

I have zero in 5000 purchases. If two percent (which is your 10 number) is allowable is it ok if I had 100?

The allowable number should be one...ever. If people make more than one mistake I feel a one year banishment is fine. no one with 10 retractions in 6 months isn't doing it deliberately.

So if it makes you more money it's justified? I don't follow that one, at all. I mean of course I do, but not as a matter of integrity or ethics.

PWCC could announce that they are giving away all cards that they have listed and some people here would still bitch about the way PWCC went about doing so.
James

Id feel a heckuva lot better about someone with 100 retractions and 5000 purchases than someone with 10 retractions and 15 purchases.

The real bizarreness of PWCC is that they are an auction house that doesn't run auctions. They post to eBay and say "worthy of attention" a few hundred times.

Doesn't run auctions? They run auctions on eBay, a platform for online auctions. How is this even remotely bizarre?

Agree, though, that they've never had a card that wasn't "worthy of attention" or "perhaps the best they've brokered in recent memory."

This whole thread proves that these are eBays auctions under eBays rules. Al from LOTG has his rules. As does Goldin and the others. These are run under EBays rules.

And conversely they could commit blatant fraud and some people here would be making excuses for them and praising them.

..as well as continuing to buy and consign to them

Michael Jordan cards are usually a good place to find some shady bidders. I didn't even look through half the 473 Michael Jordan auctions that PWCC is running currently, and the number of auctions in which the high bidder and/or underbidder has double digit retractions is just overwhelming.

The following auctions are just a sample of the bidding going on with Michael Jordan cards, and this is why posters are at least skeptical of how serious the attempt is to stamp out the problem. It's not like there are one or two auctions (or 20) out of thousands is which a questionable bidder is flying under the radar.

Edd*e Sm*th




Here is a Jordan Star card in which the high bidder has 15 retractions in the past six months (and feedback of over 50,000):

http://www.ebay.com/itm/142348167708...%3AMEBIDX%3AIT

Here is another Jordan Star card in which the high bidder has 26 bid retractions in the past six months (and feedback of over 40,000):

http://www.ebay.com/itm/352029920968...%3AMEBIDX%3AIT

Here is a Jordan auction in which the top three bidders have 7,8 and 21 bid retractions in the past six months:

http://www.ebay.com/itm/1999-UD-MJ-M...4AAOSw~CFY8Sk4

Jordan auction for a 1986 Fleer sticker in which the high bidder has 14 bid retractions in the past six months:

http://www.ebay.com/itm/1986-Fleer-S...MAAOSwj25Y8COL

Another Jordan auction in which the bidder with 26 retractions from above is also winning:

http://www.ebay.com/itm/1987-Fleer-B...4AAOSww3tY7~6i

Another Jordan Star auction in which the underbidder and second underbidder have 15 and 14 retractions, respectively:

http://offer.ebay.com/ws/eBayISAPI.d...p2047675.l2565

A 1998 Jordan Flair Showcase card in which the high bidder has 11 bid retractions in the past six months:

http://www.ebay.com/itm/1998-Flair-S...wAAOSwGy5Y8SiC

Jordan Star card auction in which the underbidder is the previously mentioned account with 15 retraction in the past six months:

http://offer.ebay.com/ws/eBayISAPI.d...p2047675.l2565

Another Jordan auction in which the high bidder is the previously listed account with 26 bid retractions:

http://offer.ebay.com/ws/eBayISAPI.d...p2047675.l2565

Another Jordan auction in which the account with 26 retractions is the high bidder. Not to be outdone, the underbidder has 27 retractions:

http://offer.ebay.com/ws/eBayISAPI.d...p2047675.l2565

Jordan auction in which the top two bidders have eight and 21 retractions:

http://www.ebay.com/itm/1999-UD-MJ-M...EAAOSwj25Y8SlP

Jordan card on which the underbidder has 14 retractions in the past six months:

http://www.ebay.com/itm/2002-UD-Lege...QAAOSwB-1Y8Sm9

Another Jordan auction being won by the bidder with 26 retractions:

http://offer.ebay.com/ws/eBayISAPI.d...p2047675.l2565

Jordan card in which the earlier mentioned accounts with 14 and 15 retractions are the current top two bidders:

http://www.ebay.com/itm/1985-Star-Ga...QAAOSwGy5Y8B-A

Jordan card being won by the account with 15 bid retractions:

http://offer.ebay.com/ws/eBayISAPI.d...p2047675.l2565

Another Jordan auction being won by our old friend with 26 retractions:

http://www.ebay.com/itm/1993-Ultra-S...kAAOSw3utY8SVB

Mr. 26 retractions is the underbidder on this Jordan card:

http://www.ebay.com/itm/1996-Topps-C...8AAOSwCWFY8Sc2

The account with 15 retractions is again winning this Jordan auction:

http://www.ebay.com/itm/1985-86-Star...i:401307987090

Our man with 26 retractions is on top again in this Jordan auction:

http://www.ebay.com/itm/1987-Fleer-B...cAAOSwc49Y8CIe

The 26-retraction account again leads the way on this Jordan card:

http://www.ebay.com/itm/1993-Ultra-S...8AAOSwTM5Y8SVZ

Jordan auction in which the underbidder has 27 retractions:

http://www.ebay.com/itm/2008-Exquisi...UAAOSw~CFY8SvG

Another Jordan Star card in which the account with 26 retractions is on top:

http://www.ebay.com/itm/1986-Star-MJ...cAAOSwnF9Y7~6N

Yet again, the 26 retractions account is the high bidder:

http://www.ebay.com/itm/1986-Star-MJ...AAAOSw03lY7~9H

This Jordan auction has an underbidder with 21 bid retraction in the past six months:

http://www.ebay.com/itm/1999-UD-MJ-M...oAAOSwmgJY8SlQ

Jordan card in which the top two bidders have 13 and 21 retractions:

http://www.ebay.com/itm/1999-UD-MJ-M...i:401308459405

Attachment 270424

There's a problem

Eddie, I copied your post to and sent it to Brent. While relying on the public for reporting seems like a bit of a cop out, if someone goes through all the work you did we might as well pass it along. If you want, keep us posted if those auctions see a bunch of bidders kicked out.

Eddie: Thanks for bringing up the issue with Jordan sales, that is surely 'worthy of our attention'.

"As of April 1, 2017 PWCC places blocks on any user ID that has more than 10 bid cancellations in the past six months."

Uh...ok. Eddie, you must be mistaken.:eek:

Depends on how literally you take news coming out that day... ;-)
But they have told us since they can't see the bidder info when they're logged in, they require us to do the research for them. They probably should have written "PWCC places blocks on any known user ID". Or they could just keep a different browser open and look it up themselves? Or work with eBay to make bid retractions visible to sellers? Or have eBay create an automatic block against those bidders? Or just stop holding auctions?

What happened to the new hire whose job was to monitor auctions or whatever?

Ah here it is.
"First, we hired a full-time customer service and bid monitoring representative. Her job is to promptly answer email, phone calls, and review bid activity on our auctions. She takes action on all notifications of bid retractions that we receive from eBay real time as well as spot checks our listings for bidders with a high number of bid retractions, zero-feedback bidders, and low-feedback bidders. I am also assisting in this process. She started working with PWCC in the second week of January and is now fully engaged in her role in monitoring auctions."

I was quite surprised that the info they printed late last year about about bid retractions, shill bidding and the other one I can't currently think of, was also written the year before, and from what I remember, a year or 2 before that as well. :eek:

I was fairly new here and thought that was great of them to do but to my chagrin, I seen their promises were nothing new nor had anything changed.:confused:

To quote Robin Williams in Aladdin:
""There are a few exceptions, a few provisos, and a couple of quid pro quos."

Thanks. :) I had some free time last night. LOL.

I actually would like to pick up a couple of Jordan Star cards at some point (the Star No. 101 is out of my budget), but Jordan in particular seems to be a favorite subject of rampant bid retractors. I didn't even go through nearly all of the 473 Michael Jordan auctions PWCC is running right now, but the amount of shady bidders even shocked me when I started looking at auction after auction. That was why I kept looking at one auction after another.

No Problem. :) Like I wrote, I had some free time. But I was shocked by the degree that Jordan auctions were infested with serial retractors. I didn't look at any other player, but many of Jordan's cards have made a gigantic move upward in the past 12-18 months. There is wide speculation that many of his popular cards have been shilled to extreme measures recently.

A legitimate question.....
 

Great question...

Must have run off with Probstein's Wes Spece

An idea
 

Why don't they start a bidder mentoring program?

Maybe we just have several bidders who can't quite decide which Jordan card they really want. :D:cool: