PWCC and eBay: Commitment to an Honest Bidding Environment
 

My name is Brent Huigens, founder and owner of PWCC Auctions. I tend to detach myself from reading and posting to message boards as I believe they offer the hobby a forum for discussing issues openly without the influence of businesses like ours.

Let me be clear. My entire business, and in fact my personal pride as a business owner, hinges upon buyers feeling confident that they are participating in an honest, legitimate bidding environment. We have three rules at PWCC:

1. Consignors cannot bid on their own items. This includes collaborating with others to bid on their items on their behalf.
2. Winning bidders must pay for the items they win.
3. Bids cannot be retracted; any honest bid errors should be brought to us to handling personally.

While the overwhelming majority of bidders obey the rules, I find myself in a calm but constant battle to monitor bidding behavior. I truly appreciate those members of the collecting community who bring suspicious behavior to my attention and I am committed to investigating each instance of improper bidding and will take action when necessary.

Our auctions are run on the eBay platform, and we strongly believe that eBay’s software offers the most transparent, impartial bidding software in the industry. For example, neither PWCC, our consignors, or anyone else has the ability to know maximum bids. This ensures that folks don’t have the ability to drive up prices up to another bidder’s maximum and essentially eliminates the possibility of shill bidding as it’s classically defined in reference to past bad behavior in our industry (i.e. Mastro, etc.).

Having said this, there are still a number of opportunities for improvement. PWCC has developed a close partnership with eBay, and through relationships with eBay Trust & Safety and the eBay Collectibles Team we’ve been able to raise important issues around bid legitimacy to eBay executives. We’ve described to them the vulnerabilities that eBay has, and how bidders can potentially cause harm to the bidding environment. Issues such as artificially driving up prices, improper bid retractions, and other forms of manipulation are now being viewed as legitimate issues within eBay management.

We applaud eBay for cultivating a free marketplace with limited restrictions. Within this context however, PWCC is a unique eBay user and requires additional oversight due to our position in the industry. PWCC has now empowered eBay to monitor our account, using the tools they have available, to help us police the venue and ensure our auctions are the most trusted in the industry.

The exact tools that eBay plans to employ will remain confidential, but we can say with confidence that they are indeed powerful tools that we fully believe will help ensure an honest and trusted marketplace. Please spread the word that starting with Auction #7 of this year, eBay will begin their increased oversight. We are proud of the action both we and eBay are taking on this matter.

Attached is a letter from eBay outlining their plan to address these issues.

Thank you for your continued support of an honest bidding environment.

P.S. PWCC will be attending the National Sports Collectors Convention this week in Atlantic City (booth 1700). If you plan to also attend and have any questions about this new approach to monitoring bid behavior in partnership with eBay, please don’t hesitate to come discuss in person. I am also available by phone and email at any time should you have any concerns, suggestions, or questions.

Brent Huigens
PWCC Auctions

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Brent Huigens, PWCC Auctions
3 Monroe Parkway Suite P #601
Lake Oswego, OR 97035
510-725-7853

Thanks Brent, one thing I wish eBay would implement is a delay on when bids go live. They could give bidders an hour before their bid goes into effect, which is plenty of time for legitimate retractions, and in the meantime they wouldn't be able to see the high. Then, shut down retractions entirely in the last hour.

While this is all very well with regards to shill bidding and bid retractions, I find it hard, considering E-Bay still allows sellers such as Battlefield to continue selling, that anything more and above what we currently have as far as rules and procedures go, will be enhanced?

I know this is not your issue or what you are talking about here, and in no way shape or form is this directed at you, but personally, I really don't see a lot changing with E-Bay unless there is money in it for them?

Thanks Brent. You have a good thing going. While I don't expect you or any auction house to root out the duplicitous behavior some of our fellow collectors engage in, I applaud your effort to do what you can reasonably do.

Like you said this has nothing to do with Brent, however if he is in a position of influence with ebay (something very few people are) It'd be cool if he could address, counterfeits, doctored cards etc... It's a slow day when I don't report a dozen counterfeits being sold as reprints, I've even tried to get Topps involved in protecting their copyrights, but apparently they don't see the secondary market as a large concern (short-sighted at best)

So Brent, what about maybe pitching the idea of an "advisory" group specific to sporting collectibles to the powers that be at Ebay. Not to enact policy, but to make suggestions and be able to explain to Ebay managers who aren't card savvy the many issues (legal as well as "merely" ethical) surrounding so many of the listings? I imagine ebay sees shutting down bad sellers as a loss of revenue, but I maintain that a safe and secure environment could do nothing but improve the revenues in the long run.

See you at the National!

I do appreciate you coming on this board, as many would stay clear. As an example, the bidder on the 51B Mays with the 275 feedback total should NOT be allowed to participate in my opinion. There should be a limit of retractions at some level. And I don't get why some bidders feel the need to bid 30-40 times on a single auction?


30-Day Summary
Total bids: 318
Items bid on: 76
Bid activity (%) with this seller: 66% Help
Bid retractions: 4
Bid retractions (6 months): 17

17 bid retractions is absurd. Someone's clearly playing games.

Hard to point to lots of bids on same auction as meaning anything. Some people like to slow walk it for days. I guess that's their prerogative. Maybe they enjoy the game that way.

Posted on Blowout since that's where I found this post first:
If eBay really cared about fighting shill bidding, they would stop encrypting bidder IDs. That's one way to control shill bidding. Allow other users to track bidders from item to item, and allow you and other consignors to see when bidder IDs on your items are made by the consignor or their friends.

Until then, it's just lip service.

That used to be policy, however too many people used that information to circumvent ebay fees and sell off site. I know nobody on here would ever try and circumvent fees for a service they use >cough< paypal >cough< but it did happen and that was how they chose to combat it.

It's about transparency/credibility to me. If, like Brent states, E-Bay is going to work with him, I take that with a grain of salt, or as someone else said, it's just lip service as they currently don't follow or obey even their own rules and guidelines, but in fact reward corrupt/shoddy sellers, (with tons of negative feedback) with rewards/logos such as "Top Rated Plus" :mad:

Currently, battlefield has a lot of cards listed on E-Bay with a lot of bids, so if E-Bay wants us to believe they are a stand up company and are forever making improvements for the consumer, they should do something about her rather than just look at all the money she makes for them.

Personally, I see nothing changing, even though Brent may think so (based on what E-Bay told him), with E-Bay's current way of doing business.:(
http://www.ebay.com/itm/WARREN-SPAHN...8AAOSwARZXnBtf