PWCC and eBay: Commitment to an Honest Bidding Environment

[Brent Huigens]

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